With your team you will need to watch the Leaders film clip above where Jenny Baker covers the practicalities of how to run The Gift. We suggest you go through it section by section pausing to discuss. Use the Top Tips for Leaders alongside this to ensure everyone is confident and clear about what is needed to run The Gift.
We highly recommend increasing this course from six sessions into seven by adding in the powerful movie presentation of The Cross by the well-known American evangelist Billy Graham. This gives people the opportunity to take more time to reflect on what Jesus has done for us on the Cross and the difference it can make to our lives. To help position this for your audience we have produced a short clip entitled Introduction to The Cross which can be found on Disc 1.
We have been very graciously provided with this presentation from the Billy Graham Association.
Daily Prayer Reflections have been produced to help people to journey during the week in prayer together. These are available to download from the Resources page to hand out to your guests.
Recommended reading is also available from the Resources page. In particular the course book by Charles Whitehead ‘Towards a Fuller Life in the Holy Spirit’ is essential. We would suggest that you have a number of these, as well as the other books recommended, available for people to buy at the sessions. As leaders you can order on a sale or return basis - please contact us directly. A follow up resource is recommended, also on the Resources page.
Finally, you will find a short film clip about the Course Donation, which gives an explanation of why and what this is all about. We would ask you to watch this with your team before running the course please.
We pray that you will be anointed by the Holy Spirit as a team to lead your guests to a deeper experience of living life in the Spirit.
We hope that all the information you will need to run this course and lead small groups is covered in the downloadable PDFs in this section.
If you have never led a group before then don't worry just follow the Top Tips, and if you have, then we recommend you use this information to remind yourself of the do's and don'ts. The small group questions are included with this.
The Prayer Ministry Guidelines will help you handle this special time of the course.
Ideally you will need to organise two training sessions for your leaders although you might be able to squeeze this into one depending on the experience of leaders – but don’t leave out the need to pray!
Training Session 1.
Having watched the Leaders film as a team you will need to go through the Top Tips for Leaders covering all the different areas to ensure everyone is confident and clear about what is needed to run The Gift.
Training Session 2.
For this session you will need to cover the Prayer Ministry Guidelines to be prepared for the prayer time recommended following the ‘Encountering God's Spirit’ session. Please note there are two parts to this course session one to be shown before the prayer time and one after.
Publicity is key to running The Gift and in the Top Tips for Leaders you will read of many different ways in which you can publicise your course. It is essential to have eye-catching and informative Posters and Flyers available so, for your ease, we have produced some for you to download and then insert your details.
Many parishes print the location and starting date upon the front of the flyers and posters with an invitation, course dates, times and contact details on the reverse. Most high street and internet printers can help with this if you do not have the facilities yourselves.
To access further resources, click here.
We managed to raise about half of the £50,000 cost to produce The Gift from charitable donations. The other half we would normally raise through selling this course at a higher price to parishes and schools.
However, we feel called to offer this course at a subsidised rate to ensure as many people as possible can run it.
So we are asking that the leaders would be kind enough to take up an offering from those that have attended on the final session. We have produced a short film below that can be shown to explain what the offering is for.
We suggest that on the penultimate session the offering is mentioned and then taken at the beginning of the final session. This funding clip should be shown. We are hoping that each course would be able to make a donation of £50+, which can then be donated using the link below (with gift aid in the UK if possible). Alternatively a GBP cheque can be sent to The Gift, PO Box 333, St Albans, Herts, AL2 1EL, UK. Cheques need to be made out to CREW Trust. Thank you so much.
