Preparation
Faith Alive Stirs Up The Valley
It was only three months ago that parishioners at St. George’s
Anglican
church were introduced to Mr. Graham Ernest-Jones and the idea that they
would soon participate in the parish’s first family based renewal
program
called “Faith Alive”.
“Faith Alive,” Mr. Jones explained “was going to be
an experience that would
change the parish forever. More than 2,000 Faith Alive weekends have been
held in Anglican and Episcopal churches, as well as churches of other
denominations, in the United States, Canada, Spain, The Bahamas and South
America.”
Faith Alive, as the parishioners would come to learn, is a weekend program
in a specific parish where a group of lay people come at their own expense
to talk about what God has done for them in their daily lives. The visitors
or witnesses are lodged with members of the parish. In a series of large
and small gatherings, they seek and share with the parish how God can
be
more real to everyone.
It was with this background that members of the Parish began the necessary
work and preparation to host its first Faith Alive.
A planning committee, headed by Corine Fountain, the People’s Warden,
began
the arduous task of forming and putting into operation the seventeen
committees needed to pull off a successful weekend. Meeting every Thursday
for three months, and reporting every small detail was required for the
accommodation, feeding, staffing and hosting of the witnesses and the
members of the parish family.
“Prayer was the secret source behind our successful weekend,”
said Elaine
Deveaux, coordinator of the prayer committee. “Our group met and
made
strategic plans for prayers to support our working committee, our pastoral
staff, our coordinators and his witnessing team. In fact, Ernestine
Douglas, a member of the prayer committee, wrote a prayer for the success
of
our Faith Alive weekend, which we all prayed before each service held
in the
parish up to the day that the weekend began.”
Adding to the special prayer for Faith Alive, the parish also put in
place
during each Sunday service “Minute to Mission” which gave
the congregation a
glimpse of what Faith Alive would be like and the preparations being put
in
place for the special weekend.
As the clocked ticked down to September 27th, the weekend set aside for
Faith Alive, the publicity committee stepped up its promotion of the event
by issuing flyers and staging its “Balloon Day” which saw
every car in the
parking lot of the church decorated with balloons that bore the Faith
Alive
logo and name. “We sought in many ways to create some excitement
around this
program,” said Adrian Archer, chairman of the Publicity and Correspondence
Committee. “Balloon Day was just one aspect. More importantly we
knew that
we needed to get parishioners creative juices flowing as they anticipated
the weekend so we asked that each organization to create a banner that
would
be displayed on the walls and balcony rails of the church. Just the
fellowship and interaction of the groups, in the creation of the banners,
we
believed would have brought our parishioners closer together.”
It’s a GO!
On Thursday, September 26th, twenty-four hours before the start of the
Faith
Alive weekend, parishioners gathered at the church to begin the twenty-four
hour prayer vigil.
Just a few hours earlier there was some discussion that the week might
need
to be postponed because of the threat of Hurricane Lilly. As predicated,
the
hurricane took a path away from The Bahamas so the weekend was a GO!
Members of the parish had, with the week prior, committed themselves to
fasting and hourly prayer via a roster system that had people in the church
praying through the wee hours of the morning. “Even before the weekend
began, the prayer vigil was one of the most amazing experiences for me,”
said Bradley Miller, a Senior Acolyte, or server, in the parish. “I
arrived
at 1:00 AM from work and remained in the church until 4:00 AM.”
Other
parishioners came and went through the twenty-four hour period, praying
for
God’s holy spirit to guide and direct the weekend.
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