Faith & Friendship Groups

Over the last few years St Joseph's church has hosted seven Alpha seasons and other groups such as Faith Explorers and The Gift, a Life in the Spirit seminar, reaching about 130 people. It has been a great success and has highlighted the need that people have to share their faith with others. A comment that has come time and time again is that people miss their meeting with others and the sharing of faith in an informal setting when Alpha comes to an end. For this reason, Fr Philip has come up with the idea that small groups of parishioners could meet in different settings to share faith, prayers, discussions in small informal groups to strengthen the parish life outside Mass. Initially, a group will be run for people who in turn think they can start their own group when they feel ready to do so. There is no strict format to this but the vision is that the faith element should be essential at the core of the group. The exact format of a group is to be decided by the people involved in the group themselves and would reflect the interest that people have but would probably include some or all of time for prayer, bible reading, discussions and socialising. The group would be a place to meet not only seasoned parishioners but would also be welcoming to new ones and people unsure about their faith. As you can see there is room for much freedom and interpretation on how to run these groups and if this is something you would like to try, please do come along to the initial group to see if this something you would set up yourself in the future and contact us on alphalancs@gmail.com