The Influence Course

Your Journey into God's Heart for Good Governance

,

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780830782482
• eBook ISBN: 9780830782499
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

your journey into God’s heart for good governance
 
Christians know how to make noise. It’s in our DNA. Whether it’s trumpets at Jericho, cymbals in the Psalms, or worship bands with huge PAs. We can mobilise huge numbers of people to march to make poverty history, send emails about climate change, or write letters about abortion. But there’s a difference between just making noise and having real influence. That difference is RELATIONSHIP. Can we make the journey from disconnected armchair commentators to participants who are being salt and light in the midst rather than at the edge of society?
 
We all have influence.  The Influence Course  will give you a biblical understanding of God’s call for every one of us to be involved in the public square. It’s not all about being a candidate - as the course says, it’s as important to be holding the clipboard as it is to be holding the microphone. 
  Visit  www.influencecourse.co.uk  for more resources, including videos for your church, small group, or individual study.

Busy Church

Summary

This first session will look at how loving our neighbour in the biblical sense leads to questions which may require political answers. We will celebrate the church’s efforts that are having a huge impact all over the UK, and we will also ask if perhaps we need to be more strategic in order to see sustainable kingdom transformation. There will also be a chance to solve some of society’s biggest problems using the power of clothes pegs!

Structure

Each week will involve Bible-based input from videos and talks, group discussion, prayer, and a practical activity. This week, we recommend you do them in this order:

• Welcome (8 minutes)
• Video (2 minutes)
• Feedback (8 minutes)
• Activity (12 minutes)
• Talk (10 minutes)
• Discussion (20 minutes)
• Prayer (10 minutes)
• Takeaway (2 minutes)

72 minutes total

To run this session, you will need:

• Access to the internet or the downloaded video (and if needed, a projector and laptop setup) to watch the ‘Show Up 2.0’ video.
• Pens.
• Three pieces of string or similar to act as temporary ‘washing lines’ stretching across the room.
• Twenty clothes pegs.
• About twenty small pieces of card or paper that you can peg to the washing lines.
• Two large sheets of paper.

Welcome (8 minutes)

Invite each person in your group to introduce themselves and answer the question, ‘Would you consider yourself “political”?’ Then open the session with a prayer asking God to speak to everyone present, deepening our understanding of what it means to love your neighbour.

Video: Show Up 2.0 (1:38 minutes)

Play the Christians in Politics video ‘Show Up 2.0.’

Here is the video script to give you an idea of its content:

All over the UK, the church is doing an incredible job. We’re running foodbanks, mentoring at-risk teenagers, counselling those in debt, being friends to the elderly, sheltering the homeless, running parent-toddler groups, homework clubs, music/arts workshops, healing on the streets, and sports camps, working with prisoners and community choirs. This is wonderful. But there is a danger.

Martin Luther King said that as Christians we enjoy being the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside. It often feels good to help someone and see the change up close. But he went on to ask, ‘Who is going back to the Jericho road?’ In other words, who is making sure that no one else gets mugged? Do we need more street lighting? More CCTV cameras? More police on the beat? The thing is that those political decisions happen in fairly dull committees poring over statistics and reports. Not as exciting as seeing that change right in your face. But if we don’t show up in those places, the church may spend the next fifty years as the nation’s paramedic, treating the victims of a flawed system but failing to bring righteousness and justice to the system itself.

It’s good to be the Good Samaritan, but it’s also good to give him the odd day off. Some of us need to be in the system. Might that be you? Don’t just vote. Show up.

It’s good to be the Good Samaritan, but it’s also good to give him the odd day off.

Feedback (8 minutes)

The aim of the discussion time is to ease the group into reflecting and engaging with the session topic, not necessarily to have all the answers.

1. What jumped out at you from the video?

2. What needs are you aware of in your local neighbourhood/s?

3. How could your church try to meet some of those needs and how is it doing so already? Note that here we are including the church gathered (for example, through church projects) and the church dispersed (for example, through individuals in their work).

4. What insights have these efforts given you into those needs?

Activity (12 minutes)

The personal and the political—joining the dots

On the left-hand wall of your room, put up a sheet of paper that says PERSONAL, and on the right, one that says POLITICAL.

Ask the group to now choose just one problem that impacts the lives of people or an individual in their community—it may be a need or issue that has just been mentioned in the discussion. It doesn’t have to be the most challenging problem in your area, but it will help if it is an issue of which at least some of the group have some understanding. Some examples could be debt, not being able to speak English, isolation/loneliness, alcohol dependency, homelessness, or youth violence. Write the one you have chosen on a small piece of paper or card.

Stick or hang the ‘problem’ on the far left of the room (not implying the political far left!). From that point, stretch three ‘washing lines’ of string across the room to three separate points on the right-hand side. Now ask everyone, ‘What is the “problem behind the problem”?—and what might the steps towards solving it be? What would it look like to “go back to the Jericho road” for this problem?’ Scribble these steps down in short form and hang them in sequence to the right of the problem on the washing line.

There will of course be more than one ‘problem behind the problem’, but just choose three, and each gets its own washing line. It should look something like this … using the example of road traffic casualties.

You might also jump straight across to the right-hand side, to a political reason for why this problem exists or to a political solution that might address it. Hang this on the far right of the ‘washing line.’ You can then also work backwards towards the left, perhaps meeting in the middle.

You may want to split into teams, taking a washing line each, to discuss what connects the left to the right. Your answers on these sheets will hopefully join the dots between the personal and the political.

For example, you might choose ‘youth violence’ as your problem. One person may suggest that the root causes are ‘boredom’ linked to ‘lack of adequate youth resources in the area’ linked to ‘council cuts’ linked to ‘lack of funding from central government’ linked to ‘poor management of the economy.’

Someone else may say ‘lack of good role models’ linked to ‘family breakdown’ linked to ‘lack of parenting support’ linked to ‘lack of national government priority around family.’

One person may say ‘drugs’ linked to ‘lack of effective deterrent’ linked to ‘failing policing strategies’ linked to ‘home office policy.’

That gives you three ‘lines’ emanating from the same problem. ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Session 1 Busy Church
• Session 2 What Belongs to God?
• Session 3 Transformation
• Session 4 Behind the Scenes
• Session 5 We Can’t Agree
• Session 6 What’s Next?
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Notes