Have you ever had burning questions that you have always wanted to ask about Christianity, but not had the opportunity?

Alpha is a 10 week course where you can explore and find out more about the Christian faith.

We regularly run Alpha courses but this Autumn have with Tavistock Area Christians Together for their course which started on Monday 29th September. Contact Graham Boot-Handford for more details (see Contacts page). Click on the image above for the national website.

Throughout 2008 we are organising events and taking part in Hope 2008. The main areas we hope to cover are children's work, work with young people, with the hungry - both bodily and spiritually, with the lonely and healing the sick. Click on the image above to find out more about the project nationally. We are currently looking for an overseas project to become involved in as a church.

We held a children's Eggtivity day at Easter, which was great fun with various 'crafty' items being succesfully made by everyone to take home, as well as learning more about Easter and what it means. Forty children took part and they decorated biscuits, made chocolate cornflake or crispie nests, decorated polystyrene Easter eggs and created beautiful seedbox Easter gardens complete with three crosses and yoghurt box tomb! They also sang some lively songs, watched an Easter cartoon video (an Easter version of Christmas Carol!) and listened to a talk about the importance of Easter.

We had a wonderful time in the Bere Alston carnival parade, shuffling round the village in green cardboard boxes that had been transformed into a train and carriages by a team of hard-working people! It was about fifty feet long and there were about 25 of us taking part in the ‘Sunday School Outing’ of years gone by, from some of our youngest members to the ‘more mature’! We were delighted to win first prize in our class, and also delighted to manage to get all the way round the village as a complete train, although some of the ‘couplings’ linking the carriages didn’t quite make it! But apart from the fun, it was a great way to let the village see who we strange people are who go to the United Church!

Many of our members took part in a week of 24 hour prayer at Abbey Chapel in Tavistock, as part of Tavistock Area Christians Together’s preparation for Pentecost. Everyone who spent time in prayer there said what a wonderful experience it was and the time flew by so quickly. This was followed by Prayer in the Square, when some of our members joined other TACT members in Bedford Square in Tavistock on Saturday 17th May, offering prayer to those who passed by. It was commented on by some of those who took part that while some of the people passing by were quite happy to go into the town hall, where there was a spiritual fair, they were suspicious of even receiving a leaflet from the church members offering prayer! Quoting one member: ‘What did surprise me was the amount of church goers who, although admitted as such, appeared embarrassed and scuttled off muttering ‘I am a Methodist’ or ‘I go to St Eustachius’. The public seem to feel that it is cheating for us to come out from behind our walls and barriers and play in their bit of the world. For many years church was only done INSIDE the church where it belonged and where we felt safe. This is not what we have been called to do. We are to go and make disciples of all nations and I think that the operative word is go.’
Prayer in the Square is happening now at regular intervals and those taking part have become very encouraged with the response they are now getting.

All three churches on the Bere peninsula work together on various occasions and more details can be found here, including details of this year's Passion Play in Bere Ferrers, which took place over four days.