Growing as a Disciple course
We all need to find the right help for where we are on our journey of faith. The Growing as a Disciple course is another way of refreshing faith and learning together.
This course is about deepening our personal faith and raising our awareness of how God might be calling us to contribute our abilities and time to our churches. We hope that it will also generate enthusiasm and confidence to express our faith as we seek to live as Christ's disciples in our communities, workplaces and in the wider world.
In Growing as a Disciple, we delve into the Bible, getting the big story of the way God has worked in the lives of very ordinary people to bring about his purposes and our salvation. We zoom in to look at particular stories and ask, where are we in this story, and what about our journey of faith?
Course structure
The course is made up of ten sessions each lasting two hours:
- Introduction: Growing as a Disciple (includes how we read the Bible)
- Prayer: The language of faith
- The Old Testament story of faith: Abraham to Joshua
- The Old Testament story of faith: Joshua to the Exile
- The Old Testament story of faith: Exile to John the Baptist
- The New Testament story of faith: Jesus
- The New Testament story of faith: The gospel spreads
- The Church: The community of faith
- Mission: The response of faith
- The next step: Living as fruitful disciples
The introductions to the sessions, which give more detail as to the content and aim for each session, can be found by clicking here
The course is usually run consecutively on a weekday or evening, but sessions can be combined for five Saturday mornings, or a mixture of these formats. Please do contact us to discuss the pros and cons of these different ways if the course is being run in a particular parish.
What is expected of participants
Each participant has a course book with all the notes. The sessions are a mixture of input and discussion, either as a whole group, or in smaller groups. As a participant you are encouraged to go over the session at home and read ahead in the notes for some sessions. Course facilitators will understand the pressures on your time in daily life, but the more you are able to work at home, the more you will get out of the course.
We ask everyone, including facilitators, to participate respectfully and sensitively. Because the experience of faith and life that you bring to the course is an important contribution to the learning of the group, we encourage commitment to the whole course. Groups are kept quite small to enable good discussion.
The diocese is underwriting the cost of this course and is providing all the resources, training and help for facilitators, who are usually LLMs (Readers) or clergy. There are two facilitators per group, which helps to ensures no session will be cancelled.
Download the Leaflet, application for and details of how to run a course from this page.
Location and time
The course is being run in various venues across the diocese, either for a particular parish, in a deanery or in the diocesan office in Ely. It depends on where the interest is. Most courses run either in the autumn or post-Easter, as travel is easier then, particularly in the more rural parts of the diocese. At least once a year, we will try to run a group in Ely and one in the Cambridge area.
For up to date information on courses currently being planned contact the Mission and Ministry Team by email on missionandministry@elydiocese.org
