Alpha Adventure

Over the last 10 weeks of termtime, a treasured volunteer - Joel and myself had a unique opportunity to present a Big Questions session to a group of 8 Katherine Warington School students in year 8 who had opted in with little foreknowledge of what we would be discussing.

We had half an hour with them each week during a session which the school affectionately call Period 7, this is an end of day option which students can choose based on their interests and curiosity. The 3 options categories revolve around either body, mind or soul and the students must choose one from each to attend weekly for a trimester.

We oscillated between some of the young people’s expressed questions such as: Why did God make me? (the way I am?) and some of the Alpha video material which explain the Christian Gospel message.

Later on during our weeks together Joel and I felt prompted to depart from the video material slightly in order to share parts of our testimonies which we hoped would help the young people to understand why we follow Jesus. During this time and hearing our testimonies, one youngster whom I vaguely recognised as living in the same village as me, put up his hand to share a testimony.

He explained that a few months prior he had been with his friend outside a shop in Harpenden, when two young adults had chatted to them about their faith for a time and then offered to pray for him and his friend. As they were praying, our student had felt like a physical weight had been taken from his shoulders, afterwards one of the young adults had mentioned that he had a word of knowledge that one of them felt like an uncomfortable weight had been removed, and this boy had remembered the encounter and knew it was special. He told us he believed in God because of this, and this was why he had chosen to come to our session.

My jaw dropped open, I had wondered why this young person had signed up to join us for Big Questions, and to hear him articulate this experience in front of his peers as well filled me with a sense of amaze and gratitude at how God can work. Please do pray for us as we seek to continue our journey with these young people now that the Period 7 sessions have moved on.