The Alpha course ended with a wonderful potluck dinner on 14 December. After a series of 12 intense weekly meetings, 4 of those face-to-face, all the course participants could look back on a faith journey they started or consolidated, and look forward to continuing that journey in 2025.
The Start
The course participants met everyone face-to-face for the first time on 30 September 2024 with a kick-off dinner. As has become a phenomenon we have become used to, a couple signed up right from the word “go”, another emailed us at 6pm to sign up when we were going to be starting at 7pm the very same day, yet another joined in after the initial first few weeks because of a personal invitation from a fellow course participant.
As course leaders, it is always humbling to see how God works in the lives of different people and how He connects and calls people all in His good time. We just need to be going with His flow!
The Middle
The course moved to online meetings after the kick-off and everyone started getting used to carving out that time on a Monday evening to gather to learn about the Christian faith and to discuss matters of faith and present their own questions and doubts. It was wonderful to see how easily we all got used to the online format. People felt free to talk a lot or not at all which was completely fine!
The Holy Spirit Saturday
After a second physical meeting for our 5th session, the time flew by and we got to our full-day Saturday session. By then, we were all looking forward to seeing each other again for a full day to learn more about the Holy Spirit. We had a surprise in store for the participants with a LEGO building session led by Annelies Robinson. The idea was to let our hands do the thinking. We were told to build something which represented our view of God and build ourselves into that representation. Our LEGO creations gave us many insights to take with us! Of course we did more than play with Lego. In the afternoon session, it was one-on-one time with God. The Holy Spirit really moved amongst us.
The End
For our final session, we had a Celebration Dinner. With joy we came together and watched the final teaching video about what “church” is. Stories were shared around the dinner table and we had such a wonderful time together. Especially heartwarming was the story of one participant who left our Alpha course after the first session but went to another more suitable for her. She came just wanting to find out about this Christian God, and during the dinner she told us that she was going to get baptised!
It was very encouraging to see the participants grow in faith and to have been a part of their journey of knowing Jesus and making Him known. Along the way, we also had the opportunity to see and affirm some of their talents and giftings. What a blessing that has been for us!
As we closed this session, we agreed to meet up 6 months from now to see how everyone is doing. I am curious to see what God will be doing in our lives in the coming months. Till then or the next Alpha course….
Divya, Hsiang-Ling, Joan, Juan
The ALPHA course leaders
