Introducing God

  • Tony Payne
  • 10 October 2013

Introducing God is an evangelistic course in the genre of Christianity Explored and The Alpha Course. Developed by Dominic Steele and his team at Christians in the Media, the course utilizes the well-known Two Ways to Live outline of the gospel to introduce participants to the God of the Bible. This new version of the course has been re-worked from the ground up, including a tightened course structure and new videos.

Note about Participant’s Handbooks: Dominic Steele, the author of the Introducing God Course, has kindly agreed to making available most of the Course materials on GoThereFor.com. However, he believes it is worth investing in quality printed copies of the Participant’s Handbook to give out to the non-Christians who come along, rather than trying to print out less attractive copies from a PDF. The Participant’s Handbook is therefore not available for download. The physical copies are, of course, available for purchase through Matthias Media’s online store, and are inexpensively priced, especially for GoThereFor members.

Preface, by Dominic Steele

I am delighted that you are thinking and praying through running an Introducing God course. I’m praying that through reading this book and doing the things we talk about your friends might come to know, love, trust and serve the Lord Jesus.

Home Course

I’ve written this Leaders’ Guide primarily for a couple of enthusiastic Christians who would like to run an Introducing God course in their home, which they invite their non-Christian friends along to.

Our key strategy for seeing lots of people saved has been to keep running courses. Lots and lots of little courses, which evolve into Community Groups/Small Group Bible Studies.

As a result, it seems that there are always people trickling into the kingdom.

With this guide, and by watching our Explanation and Training Video, I hope that you will feel equipped and confident to run the course.

Larger Courses

Then, as a ministry, we run a larger course every 12-18 months. We find stamping this as a central item in our church calendar helps us ensure that the whole ministry spends a season with a collective focus of seeing our friends saved.

So, there are sections of this guide for the ministry leader who is running a course on a much larger scale.

Peer to Peer Courses

There’s a third sort of course that has started up; ‘Peer to Peer’ courses. This is especially for where the relationship with your non-Christian friend doesn’t fit into the teacher/student paradigm, or where you can’t get your friend along to a larger session. Perhaps your non-Christian friend is a brother, or a mother, a grandparent or an elder. While it would be uncomfortable for you to sit in a tutor relationship with them, watching the videos together would be appropriate. We’ve seen many, many spouses, brothers, daughters, grandsons and neighbours come to Christ as a result of their Christian friend showing the course in this way.

Thanks

Special thanks to Ken Sandell and his team at Audio Advice. Russell Powell at Sydney Anglican Media, Tony Payne at Matthias Media, our video producer Nick Watson, and designers Melinda Hunt, Tim and Tanya Ruxton. Thanks also to Tim Bowden, Karen Morris, Ben McEachen, Josh Maule and Kristy Griggs for their input and collaboration on various versions of this guide.

To the members of Village Church and members and supporters of Christians in the Media thanks for your support for Introducing God, which wouldn’t have happened if it were not for you.

I am again enormously and especially thankful to Catherine—my amazing wife, who has loved, supported and put up with a far too preoccupied husband during the development of Introducing God.

As we have worked together, we have become increasingly conscious that while we might create new approaches to plant and water, it is God who gives the growth. We give thanks to God for those who have come into a relationship with God through Introducing God. We ask him that many more might be saved as this course becomes more widely known and used.

— Dominic Steele, 2014