A Living & Telling session in progress and, inset, Tim Moyler.,,,
As we looks towards 2023, it may be useful to use the winter midweek meetings as a training/equipping opportunity. Gary Gibbs talked to Tim Moyler of Agapé UK, which presents a remarkable FREE resource.
As I sat in a small side room at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, I had no idea what to expect other than I would be meeting with two people who only knew my first name and where I was from.
I was soon reduced to tears as the first lady described my life, work and passion in the most amazing detail. I had no idea God was about to take me on a journey that would result in the launch of Living & Telling.
Five years later, to the day, co-developer Dave Pegg and I presented the new Living & Telling course at a seminar for church leaders at the National Christian Resources Exhibition.
The response was extraordinary. At the end of the seminar one leader stood up and proclaimed, “This sounds like the Holy Grail!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe, but I think it was his way of proclaiming that we had delivered something that was unique – and something he was desperate for.
Living & Telling is a course for every Christian, whether you are 16 or 116, whether you have just completed an Alpha course or have followed Jesus all your life. It will help you share Jesus, naturally and helpfully, as a way of life.
It frees Christians to leave behind the awkwardness and cringe that holds back so many from sharing.
It sounds like an evangelism course. In fact, Living & Telling is a discipleship course, with sharing our faith running right through it. What do I mean by that?
My experience of working with many churches tells me that we have often taken ‘faith sharing’ out of our discipleship and handed it to the ‘specialists’. We end up with evangelism being for the evangelists, and our discipleship becoming dysfunctional, devoid of the engine that causes us to grow.
Jesus told us to ‘go and make disciples’ knowing that his disciples would share the good news of the Kingdom, naturally and helpfully, as part of that everyday process.
But many churches, when we meet together, seem to allow a culture where sharing stories together of how we are making disciples in our everyday lives is politely ignored.
TOGETHER
There are plenty of superb evangelism training courses available to Christians, but Living & Telling is a course you cannot do on your own. The ten sessions take us on a journey together, sharing, processing and praying through the content in pairs.
This is where we see growth and multiplication starting to take place. It is easy to overlook this important method that Jesus used to train his own disciples as he sent them out in pairs; first the twelve (Mark 6:7-13), then the 72 (Luke 10). As they agreed together in prayer, God would do as they asked (Matt 18:19).
Another important element of Living & Telling is the key role of the Holy Spirit in sharing our faith. Jesus spells this out so helpfully in John’s Gospel, chapters 14 to 16, but we can be guilty of emphasising other teaching in the New Testament at the expense of these precious chapters.
Whatever our theological emphasis or understanding, these chapters can unite all Christians, making Living & Telling useful training when we work together with other local churches in mission.
Churches of all denominations are now running Living & Telling courses as part of their ‘discipleship pathway’.
• Living & Telling is presented by familiar faces such as Phil Knox, Matt Summerfield, Sarah Yardley and Tim Alford and is free to download from Agapé UK at: www.agape.org.uk/living-and-telling.
From Direction Magazine issue 242
