BLOG 1: The beginning of the ‘Gateway to Life’ Programme

This is a programme of exploration and discovery to be undertaken by a small group of between 2 and 4 people (or a family) who are willing to work together to help one another into a greater appreciation of various aspects of the Christian faith. This is not a programme that should be taught to passive listeners, but aims to involve each person in making their own discoveries. For generations now, too many people have simply been told what they should believe and consequently have developed no personal experience of the Christian faith. They have become passive listeners for whom Christianity contains no real excitement or sense of fulfilment. The Gateway to Life Programme seeks to redress this situation.

It all started when our church in Abergavenny wanted to produce something that could be used to help new visitors who were coming into the building to understand the basics of what we believe. It needed to be something that would be easy to follow for people from very different backgrounds and experiences, regardless of their academic ability, and something that would enable them to express themselves with all their doubts and disappointments or their fears and phobias without feeling threatened in any way. We quickly identified the advantages of working in a small group which would provide people with opportunities to ask as many questions as they wish and then to be able to spend as much time as they need to look for the answers without being under any pressures to conform.

Our research had shown us that many people (including Christians) go through life without having any real opportunity to ask the kinds of searching questions that no-one seems to want to answer. This invariably causes people to stagnate in their faith, or even to turn their back on it altogether. So the concept here is that there are no questions that are irrelevant, foolish or unimportant, but that every one should be used as an opportunity for the group to explore together what evidence they can find in The Bible to provide them with an answer.

Every stage of the Gateway to Life Programme is totally Bible-based and participants are encouraged to look up and memorise the relevant verses in each step of the process. The intention here is to motivate each person to take responsibility to discover for themselves what The Bible has to say and to call out to God for His help in developing their own strategy for growing towards spiritual maturity.

Order one of our Gateway to Life booklets now

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