Rob Prendergast is a pastor at Calvary Chapel South London. He recently took his whole church through the CE course.
How did you come to run CE with your church?
I first came across CE about a year ago, and I was really excited to see it was based on Mark, and basically expository preaching that was evangelistic. It sounded fantastic for us, and we decided to run it and invite our whole membership.
Most people use CE as an outreach course. Why did you invite your membership?
Because we don’t want to take things for granted. As much as we teach through the Bible each Sunday, we don’t just want to assume that everyone gets the gospel. We do membership interviews, about 15 minutes long, but I know that people could say the “right thing” there, or I might not see something.
CE enabled us to build a solid foundation for our membership. It really undergirded people’s faith. We’ve had a lot of growth in the last year or so, and the course was really helpful with filling in any gaps for them. And more mature Christians said they found it really refreshed their faith.
When and how did you run the course?
Running CE for our congregation was a challenge, because it’s normally for smaller groups. But we wanted to do it as a whole church thing. We did it at 10.30, before the main service began, and about 70% of our membership turned up each week.
We decided to leave the meal part out, so we had a short introduction, then we watched the DVD, and then opened it up for questions and discussion. I didn’t know how that bit would go, but people proved really happy to discuss and question what they’d heard from Mark’s Gospel. In fact people got really excited and sometimes we had to just rein them in a bit!
Was it just your membership coming along?
No. We said to our members this would be a good thing to invite friends and family to. And we saw two people become Christians having been invited by family who were already part of our church.
How will you use CE in the future?
Well, doing the course as a whole church has absolutely motivated our members to brings friends to the course next time we run it. But also, lots have said to me that they’d love to run it in their own home, for their friends and family members who might be more likely to do it there than when we hold it in church.
Also, we had some people come along to the course who go to other churches. We had some guys from a black Pentecostal church who came and absolutely loved it. They were really excited by it, and are thinking of running it in their church too now.
Are you going to continue to do stuff for your membership before the service?
Yes—this autumn we’re going to do Discipleship Explored, the follow-up to CE. Our guys are really excited about working through Philippians with the DVD. We’re looking forward to it!
Rob used the CE DVD and leader’s guide to run the course at his church. To see the full range of CE materials, head to the US website or the UK website.
And to find out more about Discipleship Explored, the follow-up to CE, go to our US website or UK website.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
