The Course of Your Life provides a sound opportunity for people within your church to pause from the busyness of their life, slow down and ask the BIG questions of life: ‘Why am I here, and what will I do with my life? And is MY life on the Course God would have for me?’ The pace of the course is excellent and the content is thought-provoking and easily leads to meaningful discussion. I highly recommend it!

The course of your life has been one of my favourite studies that I have completed with our Men’s group so far. I found the course to have a good balance between biblical exposition and direct practical application. It was also directly and personally challenging about my relationship with God. One aspect I found particularly encouraging was the image of evangelism as being about moving people a bit further along the continuum towards maturity in Christ. This was useful because on the one hand it makes you appreciate that you can be doing God’s work even if you don’t immediately see new converts, and also that after people have come to know Christ there is still a lot that can be done to encourage growth. Toby

The Course of Your Life sharpened my vision for understanding how every Christian should think about his or her life. God’s agenda is for every one of us to be conformed into the image of His Son, and He has given us His Word, prayer and other people to accomplish this task. This course will be the basis for our discipleship training because it is richly God-centered.

Here are few thoughts and feedback from the first time through COYL here in _______.

First a bit of context for background:

We are a small church (avg attendance of 50 each Sun) in a small country town (population 2500).
COYL was conducted in a Home Group environment both as a trial for the material and because we are a fairly small parish anyway.
Conducting COYL as suggested in the leaders manual was simply not considered viable here.
The way we conducted COYL was to look at one of the 9 sessions each Wednesday night and condense the intensives into 3 nights with some homework between sessions 8 and 9.

Overall the the feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive.

They…

• appreciated Tony’s clear and thought-provoking talks.
• commented on the clarity that came in thinking about conversion being a TRANSFER (from darkness to Light) followed by TRANSFORMATION (to be more like Christ). They said that this analogy was very helpful in understanding and applying God’s agenda.
• really appreciated the practical example provided in the one-to-one bible reading program. All wanted to continue in this practice. Very encouraging.
• highly recommended the COYL and will encourage others in the parish to consider doing it.

A little constructive criticism:
Whilst the content of the talks from Tony are great and thought provoking the overall reaction from this group was that the constant changing of camera angle and switch from colour to B&W was overly distracting and annoying. It was suggested that if there is ever a version 2 published that the talks are shot at various locations, some of which might reflect something of the content to better engage the viewer.

From my perspective of leading the group I thought that COYL was excellent. The general trajectory of encouraging participants to better align all that they do with God’s agenda rather than their own is a great reminder for all.

The one to one bible reading “exercises” are fantastic. They provide a great example of a tool to use to move each individual one step along the continuum, (either to transfer or transform). And they demonstrate how easy, flexible and valuable one to one bible reading can be.

Finally, as a Pastor, I was appreciative that the final application was not “go out and save the world” but a far more practical – think of one person you already know and prayerfully consider how you might be God’s means to move them one step along the path from where ever they might currently stand.

We are yet to see what growth God will bring as result of this watering. It is my prayer that the folks here (and others who use this resource) might be invigorated and refreshed by the revelation that God indeed has a plan

I hope this is helpful to you and if you anything you would like clarified or I can be of any other assistance in some way then please don’t hesitate to call.

Yours in Christ’s Service
Phil

I’ve appreciated the simplicity of the “Course of Your Life” small group series! Its straightforward presentation allows people to engage with the content in meaningful ways without being distracted by too many “extras” that don’t serve to point people to Christ. The focus on “rewriting our agenda” has strengthened our church’s grasp of the essentials and helped us to dig down into Scripture and anchor ourselves to it’s truth. The spiritual growth has been exciting to see as people allow God’s agenda to become the top priority in their life. Thank you for a great, Gospel-centered tool to aide in our pursuit of the ultimate course of life!

Doing COYL as a church mens group was a priceless experience. Reading the bible weekly with another, and meeting as a group fortnightly, meant friendships were deepened as we joked, laughed, cried and reflected on God’s word together. Looking at God’s agenda for our lives, mapped out in the bible, was a life-changing experience and I am very thankful for COYL. I highly recommend it.

The ‘Course of my life’ enabled me to see more clearly, what God wanted my life to look like. The course closely looked at his word in the Bible, and showed me what I can expect living as a Christian man in society today. It details the enjoyment we can expect in our lives, the trials we will inevitably face, and our rescue in Christ which has been God’s plan from the beginning. The ‘Course of my life’ enabled me to better understand Gods plan for my life.

I am the Director of Ministry Programs for the Albuquerque Rescue Mission which is a para-church ministry that preaches the gospel and provides food, clothing, and shelter as well as residential treatment programs for homeless men, women and children. The Executive Director, Pastor John Hill, and myself have long realized that ministry in an urban setting to homeless men, women and children is rewarding, but can also be very stressful, to say the least. In light of this truth, Pastor Hill is as concerned for the spiritual well-being of the staff of the Rescue Mission as he is for the people to whom they minister. The Course of Your Life with some adaptations has served as an excellent resource to use in the Mission Academy, which is the in house training program for the staff of the Rescue Mission. The staff has been challenged and encouraged and trained to not only be disciples of Jesus Christ, but to also become disciple-makers. Staff members especially enjoyed the one-to-one Bible reading part of the course, because they were able to get to know each other better, and they were also able to study the Scriptures in a much deeper way.

Rev. E. Rene Palacios
Director of Ministry Programs
Albuquerque Rescue Mission

For your information here are some of my thoughts.

My Men’s LifeGroup (what we call our Bible study / Growth Groups) did The Course of Your Life in term 2 on Tuesday nights.
Overall I thought it was great, we had plenty of good discussion. For me the two words that still stand out and are on my mind are ‘transfer’ and transform’.

You could say we only partly did the course and for that reason probably didn’t benefit as much as we could have. We were definitely challenged in our thinking, but how much of ‘a personal revolution’ has taken place I’m not sure. How much has it changed our thinking and behaviour? I fear for us in many ways it may have been a bit like a course which we have done and have now moved on to the next series. As the leader I am learning I need to keep using the terminology and referring back to what we discussed and learnt. So that is a good challenge for me, how to do that, so it isn’t just a course we have done. So that’s key, how the leader can maintain the momentum. That is something I didn’t think enough about.

We did not do the one to one sessions. I’d love to but I just couldn’t see it happening and when the guys would do it. I’ve since spoken to someone else who has done the course over two terms, and alternating weeks between meeting together and meeting one to one. It would be good to hear from him how this goes (Gary Koo from Crossway).

We preached through Colossians as we did the course, which was a perfect fit. Really helped reinforce what we were looking at on Tuesday nights.

We did an intensive session one Saturday arvo / night on work (intensive part 3 & 4). This worked pretty well, part 3 late arvo, discussion over dinner, then part 4 early evening. In many ways this was our best session as we saw it all come together and the implications in one big area: work.

To be honest it was probably too ambitious of me to do it all in a term. I thought I had planned it out well so we could do that, but lose a week here and get a poor attendance week another week, meant we couldn’t do every session.

As I write this I’m thinking it would be good to revisit with my group. To raise again what we learnt, and see how we can make it more of our life. I think the key word here is ‘intentional’. That’s something we all saw clearly, the need to be intentional. So I think I will return to that early term 4 – how are we going being intentional and I’ll try to make that a constant talking point and praying point in our group.

If you want me to clarify anything just ask.

Hope that is helpful in getting a glimpse of what COYL looked like for us.

Steve