Jesus Shaped People comes to Headingley.

The Reverend Gordon Dey on the left and The Reverend Tom Lusty of St. Chad’s on the right. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Johnson

ST. CHAD’S Church in Far Headingley has been trialling material from the discipleship course created by Jesus Shaped People.

Jesus Shaped People builds on five key priorities in the life and ministry of Jesus and St. Chad’s Church decided to do one of these every month since September last year.

The five priorities are: People, teaching, team building, prayer and prophetic challenge.

This is explored through interactive small groups studies, dynamic preaching and lively worship.

Each of the themes takes three weeks, making a fifteen-week programme in total.

Jesus Shaped People is lead by The Reverend Canon Gordon Dey who designed the course and preached at St Chad’s final theme of the course, Prayer, last month.

The Reverend Tom Lusty, 43, the Vicar at St. Chad’s Church said: “We haven’t done the intensive course, we’ve done a very unintensive look at the material and we’ve done it in our own way, not in a strict order.”

He added: “Having looked at the course, I thought it had real integrity.

“I thought we would benefit from using it here and it seemed to me that the idea of the discipleship course is not about imparting information, but really it’s about instilling these values as a Church, as a congregation, as a community.

“I thought if we could incarnate these values, then we will be more faithful to what it is to be disciples of Jesus.

St. Chad’s Church have lots of people in their congregation who have Doctorates as it is located in a university area of Leeds and Reverend Tom Lusty added: “The Jesus Shaped People have had a lot of success in urban priority areas in a very different context from a university themed Church.”

He explained how the Church have adapted the JSP programme to suit their congregation:

 

 

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The Church’s main service is on Sundays at 9:30am.