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.