Thursday, October 25, 2012

KZN working together to bring unity and change



On Thursday 18th October , teams and guests from the 20 churches from the Highway area who completed Alpha courses as part of our 2012 invitation, met at St Agnes Auditorium Kloof for a celebratory ‘bring and share’ supper. It was a special evening with young and old, from different cultures and denominations meeting together in a wonderful display of unity, to praise and glorify God for what he is doing in our region through Alpha. At least ten guests gave testimonies of how God had changed their lives on the course, in a moving confirmation of the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing people into a relationship with God through Jesus.

This marks the second year that we have run an Alpha invitation.  God’s plan for our region started in 2010 when Janet Hotchkiss was on holiday in the Cape and met Peter Hodgkiss. He told her about the exciting Alpha initiative underway in Cape Town, involving numbers of churches coming together to start their Alpha courses at the same time.

Janet was determined to start something similar in our region, and early in 2011 we held a Vision Day in Gillitts to which we invited Peter to come up and address interested churches on the concept. From this, ten churches signed up to run Alpha courses more or less concurrently in the second half of the year. We formed a steering committee to coordinate training activities and joint advertising.

In 2012, we decided to extend the exercise to include the wider Highway area, and invited churches from Westville through to Hillcrest, Waterfall and Botha’s Hill, including Molweni, to participate. Twenty churches agreed to take part this year, and through them we were able to run not only conventional Alpha courses, but also a Student Alpha course, a Senior Alpha course in Kloof Rest Home, a Parent’s Alpha course through Thomas More School, and a Zulu Alpha course in the Molweni valley.

We are already planning another Alpha invitation in the Highway area in 2013 and expect to include more churches, and in the process lift the level of awareness through a more extensive advertising campaign.
One of the most rewarding aspects of these Alpha invitations has been the wonderful sense of unity we have experienced as the various denominations have worked together. Also the transformation value of young and old and different race groups working on Alpha at the same time.