Alpha generally
I haven’t blogged about the last few sessions, as the information is still sinking in. However, session 6 was considered as covered in the week 5 Bible Study talk, sessions 7,8 & 9 were shoehorned into an intense 4 hour period on Saturday last. As I was flying high enough on the Spirit (or a large dose of GF, if you’ve read “About”) to be a danger to civil aviation before I even walked into session 7, anything detailed will need more time, if indeed I am able to achieve rational analysis. My notes however indicate that in the discussion of Pentecost, the phenomenon of deindividuation needs to be considered as a contributory factor, as it does indeed in the one to one prayer session after session 9 and that sundry promises of the Spirit coming to every Christian do not in my experience, if true, seem to produce results which are actually sensible to a sizeable number, including lifelong and very devout Christians. I am not convinced that the statement “every Christian has the Spirit but not every Christian is filled with the Spirit” really answers this one adequately.
Apart from that, viewed as a sometimes figurative description of spiritual experience of this type rather than as a description of supernatural realities, these three talks seemed to me unexceptionable; they were very ably presented by a husband and wife “tag team” which actually made the presentation much more digestible.
I do not think that an afternoon is sufficient for these three talks. If a day is not achievable, could not an afternoon stretching into the evening have been considered?
As of tonight, we have had sessions 11 and 13 in one rather over-long talk, which as sessions 12 and 14 are to be “missed”, brings the course to a close. I have other comments, which are likely to be subsumed into a general overview and critique later, but did receive in answer to “Do you think that incompetent evangelism can be more damaging than none” or words to that effect, “Yes” with some further explanation.
I then proposed what I really think should be standard, namely that you should share how you came to believe something rather than trying to argue people into believing it. Ideally, you should also say what believing in it has done for you in the past and does for you today. That, I mentioned, tends to be difficult for people to take offence at, which is a major danger with the schoolmaster-like approach, and you can’t be as “in your face” in the process, which is always a plus for getting heard rather than ignored or attacked.
The discussion afterward largely went into what we had learned and where we intended to go. And at this point, I intend to go to bed…