At King‘s there are people
who have come along and are very happy to just stay in our ‘crowd’ and not
become members – from time to time we will challenge them to take a further step
in. We have a booklet we give to new people
which tells them about our philosophy and includes a diagram which shows the
sort of process that people go through.
So if someone’s not a Christian or they’re ‘backslidden’, we will
encourage them to go to Alpha.
There are mid-week groups
to join. They can become involved with a
particular ministry and begin to serve quite quickly or they can join a ‘life
course’ which could be the Marriage Course or a Parenting Course or our finance
seminar – all of which happen on an annual basis. We also run Freedom in Christ which has a more
pastoral approach and is for those dealing with life issues and the
consequences of the past. Each of these provides
the opportunity for further involvement in church life.
This means that at any
given point it should be possible to tell you where every new person is in
their journey – all from the data gathered from each ‘Like to Know More’ form
that has been completed and given in and our follow-up of those individuals. It could say this person is involved in
Alpha. That person is on Freedom in
Christ. This person has joined a mid-week
group - and it would be possible to go through our list in this way. This person’s left. This person’s going to another church. I can tell you that because we follow them up
regularly - it’s not just a ‘one off’ phone call. We actually stick with that person until we
consider they are ‘in’ and connected and they’re established in a mid-week
group or they’re part of a ministry.
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