Former radio journalist Dominic Steele, now a priest in the inner city suburb of Annandale, Sydney, presents the Introducing God series on video or DVD. The Australian-made series, pitched at a post-modern mindset, has proved to be an effective way of bringing people into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Katrina's Story

Katrina promised herself that if the community announcement was made again before she arrived home, then she would go. The announcement was about a church group who were going to talk about the movie The Passion of the Christ. Katrina had seen the movie, and she wondered what a church group would think of it.

The information night that Katrina attended led her to sign up for Introducing God, a course which would give her a chance to get to know the friendly people she had met at this church.

These new friends seemed to be offering something she didn’t have, so it was worth her while finding out just what the Bible said about God.

Katrina felt comfortable to ask the questions she had, and the relationships that were growing gave her confidence to come to the church on a Sunday. By the end of the course Katrina had decided to be a disciple of Jesus, trusting in the salvation he promised.

When Katrina left to study overseas, she went with a strong confidence in the love of God and the friends she had made through Introducing God. Her story is like so many others, where some brief contact with a church using this course led to great rejoicing in heaven, as one more child came into the kingdom.

Tristan’s Story

Tristan’s piano teacher had invited him to church, that’s how I met him. Being a musician gave him freedom during the day, although he was often busy at night with performances. I organized to meet him at a café. Through our conversation Tristan understood the offer of eternal life and chose to trust in the Jesus.

Tristan had grown up without learning much about Christianity, so every time we met there was so much to talk about. What was missing was a clear sense of how the whole Bible fitted together.

Tristan wanted to know more about what God was on about in this world.

Inviting Tristan to Introducing God had not occurred to me,

until a friend suggested it. It was the ideal way for a new Christian to get to know God. His questions could be answered and his confidence in Jesus strengthened.

After three weeks Tristan had the confidence to come along to the Bible Study group. It was tremendously exciting to hear him pray with me at the end of the night.

In my thinking Introducing God had just expanded its usefulness for helping a new Christian grow in faith.

Nick’s Story

The Reverend Nick Hearnshaw is the Rector of North Goulburn. Nick wanted to use Introducing God, and he wanted to find a way to connect with the people in the local area. It was time to try something new, ‘an experiment’ as Nick called it.

“We moved out of the church building and into the Wild Iris Tea-house,” Nick explained, “They open especially for us.”

For less than seven dollars per person food and drinks are supplied for the people attending the course. Nick told me how a number of young people in their early 20s have come along and a couple in their 30s who have already linked with the church. All of them have grown in their understanding.

“We’re trying Introducing God and with the atmosphere in the coffee shop and the gourmet food there has been a good opportunity for new Christians, those who are not yet Christians and table leaders (who have been Christian for a while) to meet together and grow together – we are all interested to know what it means to belong to Jesus.” Looking back on many years of using Alpha, Nick noticed that things had been tweaked along the way so that the course would serve the people. In the past Nick had done the talks himself. With the quality of media presentation in Introducing God Nick wanted to use the talks by Dominic Steele.

But there were other things that would be worked on when using the course again to make it more suitable for the people of North Goulburn.

“I definitely will try using the coffee shop again,” said Nick, “But the course tends to pitch the content at tertiary educated people.  We found we needed extra conversations in the discussion groups to unpack the meaning of phrases used in the talks, such as “declaration of autonomy”. Nonetheless he will be definitely running it again.

by Jonathan Holt. Originally published in Anglican News, December 2005.