A major part of the work of The Mathetes Trust is to support the Rooted in Jesus discipleship programme for Africa, which Roger and Alison Morgan first founded back in 2002 along with Stanley Hotay, and which is now in use in 80 dioceses or denominations in 16 countries. Rooted in Jesus is a discipleship course written for use in rural Africa, where nothing else of its kind is available. We estimate that between 70,000 and 100,000 people have done this course so far, and we know that the impact on the lives of ordinary Christians has been enormous. Every year we send out teams from the UK both to new dioceses and to places we have been before.

This is the time of year when we compile an Annual Report based on feedback from the previous year, and it is available for download here; it includes many testimonies from those whose lives have been changed. We have also posted a new blog entry with news from South Africa, where they use both Rooted in Jesus and our companion discipleship programme The God Who is There – both now endorsed for use across the Anglican Communion. If you would like to receive regular updates you can sign up to receive an email notification on the blog itself.

We have been particularly moved by recent messages from two places : Uganda, where they are experiencing great growth, and South Sudan, where they are experiencing great hardship.

• Canon John Musaasizi writes from the Diocese of Mityana: “We give glory to the Lord our God for providing the Rooted in Jesus program as a means of fulfilling the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus. We are excited to see the involvement of Rooted in Jesus members in growing their fellow members into Christ likeness and at the same time preparing themselves to start new groups in their local settings. With the availability of this program, the church ceases to be an auditorium in which the audiences passively watch what is done by a few people on the stage for years. The program makes it clear that the church in which we are members is on the move where growth and multiplication of believers moves  on like fire, catching every area of human location without discrimination. Members discover not only  who they are in Christ, but also the Spirit given gifts that they can  employ in building up one another and the Church at large.  The Spirit is teaching us a lot.”

• Bishop Emmanuel Modi writes from the more challenging situation of the Diocese of Kajo-Keji: “Three quarters of the population are in the refugee camps and others are internally displaced. We are going to make new strategies among the refugees. I am going to establish the churches and find out those Christians who were trained in Rooted in Jesus so that they will start their groups. The believers need Rooted in Jesus at this time of distress and spiritual need. Rooted in Jesus is the only tool and way forward to nourish the Christians and make the newly born Christians grow.”

Both of them ask for our prayers as they pour their energies into the task that the Lord has given them.

This year so far we have invitations to send teams to seven dioceses, and requests to support the work as it expands in many more. If  you would like to support Rooted in Jesus financially you can do so here, and if you would be interested in joining a team please do let us know!

Click on the images to download the Annual Report, the Prayer Diary or to read the blog.

As we move into the season of Lent we are delighted to announce the Mathetes Trust’s first publication : Something Understood – Poems for Reflection and Meditation.

‘Most people need poetry, but not much of it: it is a vitamin of which small familiar doses are enough. The poems most people know and enjoy and turn over and over again through their lives are like prayers addressed to the mystery of themselves’ – Geoffrey Grigson

A sequel to the earlier collection Distilling Life, this new anthology is designed to provide a starting point for reflection on some of the big questions of life – things we often avoid talking about, or for which we can’t quite find the words. It is arranged in five thematic sections: Seeing, Living, Loving, Trusting and Dying. Each section contains about twenty poems or pieces of prose, and each includes contributions from a wide range of authors, both historical and contemporary. Some of the poems are well known; others are published here for the first time.

Designed to be used for personal reflection, in poetry groups, or read aloud in larger gatherings, the book is beautifully illustrated throughout with high quality black and white photographs and drawings.

What people said about Distilling Life:

• “Our poetry group meets monthly. It is surprising how often this short anthology seems to contain a poem that just fits the bill, inspires new insight, provokes us to further discussion – and sometimes makes us laugh” – Anna Farago

• “I have just conducted a quiet morning with lay leaders. As well as Scripture readings I used a number of poems from Distilling Life. A very powerful and moving resource” – Bishop Stuart Robinson

The collection is edited by Alison Morgan. Alison has a lifelong love of poetry, and is known both for her academic and spiritual writing. Her books include Dante and the Medieval Other World, The Wild Gospel, and Following Jesus: The Plural of Disciple is Church

Copies can be ordered from our publications page or by post from The Mathetes Trust, 10 Dairy Close, Wells BA52ND, price £8. If you would like to order by post please include a cheque for £9.58, which includes p&p. Or you can order it on Amazon.

The core vision of The Mathetes Trust is to help make disciples in the local church, and one way of doing this is to produce innovative materials for use in small groups. Last year the Anglican Communion decided to put discipleship at the top of its agenda, and its report Intentional Discipleship recommended three discipleship courses for use worldwide. One of these in Rooted in Jesus, a course which we wrote for rural Africa, and another is The God Who Is There which we wrote for the UK but is now also widely used in South Africa.

Most group discipleship materials adopt the method which put Bible study back on the map a generation or so ago: group members were invited to look up Bible verses at home and then answer some questions. The answers were then explored fully when the group met.

The originality of The God Who Is There lies in the interactive lesson plan format, a familiar concept for any school teacher. The course consists of 30 topical lesson plans beginning with Creation, continuing with Sin and Suffering, and going forward from there; group members are given a copy of a booklet with spiritual and practical exercises to complete at home after each session. It’s probably true to say that The God Who Is There offers a lesson plan for almost any major Christian topic! The other original feature of this course is that it places a much greater emphasis on the corporate nature of discipleship, following Alison Morgan’s observation that the plural of disciple is Church. We cannot be disciples of Jesus alone; we can only be disciples together.

It has been particularly encouraging to work with Colin Cooper, an Anglican minister in Chesterfield. Colin has invited the entire church to join a group to follow the first part of the course, Beyond Ourselves. Colin feels that people have grown in both understanding and commitment, and the church is soon to start on the next book, The New Community. Every Sunday the sermon takes the next week’s topic from the course; Roger has been delighted to be invited to visit the church and preach some of these sermons.

If you would like to find out more about The God Who Is There have a look at our page on Small Groups, where you will find some commendations from those who have used it, and be able to see the outcomes that can be expected for churches who follow the course.

It’s that time of year!

If you still haven’t sorted yourselves for Lent, you may like to take a look at our tried and tested Lent Course Season of Renewal. Written by Alison Morgan and Bill Goodman, it follows the same interactive format, with lots of exercises to do during and after each session. It can be previewed and ordered from our Publications page.

“A group of about ten of us finished ‘Season of Renewal’ last night. It was unanimously agreed that it had been the most inspiring and helpful Lent course we had ever shared in” – Canon John Gunstone

The vision of The Mathetes Trust is to help make disciples in the local church. One of the ways we plan to do this is to provide teams for parish missions. Our first two will take place in September and October in Purley (Reading) and Breaston (Derby). In both places we will be working in partnership with Richard Scott, the Director of Through Faith Missions, who is also an Associate of TMT.

We will be providing three Saturday morning training sessions in each place (based on our Beautiful Lives evangelism course), and inviting church members to join the home team. We know from long experience that in a successful mission those who become Christians are usually those with whom the church members already have relationships. The old-fashioned way of doing missions where the church organises events and the visiting team does all the work is much less effective than a genuine reaching out from within the church itself, so preparation is important. It’s also fun!

If you would like to find out more about our parish missions please do get in touch. If you would like to follow this blog just click on the ‘follow’ button at the bottom of the page.

Canon John Musaasizi writes from the Diocese of Mityana in Uganda: “What we are seeing with our own eyes as far as Rooted in Jesus is concerned is an apparent manifestation of God’s answers to your prayers and prayers of other God loving people spread widely. We thank you very much.” The Diocese plans to host a second Rooted in Jesus conference later in the year. To read some of John’s recent news, including the remarkable story of a man who gave his life to Christ following the violent death of his wife, visit the Rooted in Jesus blog.

We have just received a report from the Diocese of Lango, Uganda, where Diocesan Coordinator Ronald Eguny has been visiting some of the Rooted in Jesus groups founded just under a year ago. Ronald reports that there are now groups in 48 parishes, and he shares many testimonies of changed lives from group members– read them here on the  Rooted in Jesus BLOG.

We have also received news from the Diocese of Fianarantsoa, Madagascar: Revd Pez Raobison writes to say that he has just had the joy of baptising Alpha and his brother, the first two new Christians in Ambositra, where Pez and his wife Louise are using Rooted in Jesus to plant a new church.

Meanwhile Nicole Corlew reports from South Africa that “RinJ Junior continues to be used in the following dioceses: Cape Town, False Bay, St. Mark the Evangelist, Mthatha and Pretoria. The Province has embraced the Decade of Intentional Discipleship initiative, and plans are in place to offer training over the next three years for leaders of Rooted in Jesus, Rooted in Jesus Junior and The God Who is There in each of the Province’s 28 dioceses. We see all of these resources as being integral to discipling people and teaching them to disciple others. We are very excited about the next three years!”

The Anglican Consultative Council made the following formal Resolution last year: ‘In the light of the Gospel and theological imperative to make disciples, the ACC recognizes the need for every province, diocese and parish in the Anglican Communion to adopt a clear focus on intentional discipleship and to produce resources to equip and enable the whole church to be effective in making new disciples of Christ Jesus.’ Rooted in Jesus and The God Who is There are both endorsed by the Report as recommended resources for discipleship training.

The Mathetes Trust was registered as an independent UK charity by the Charity Commission on 24th October 2016. The Trustees are Roger Morgan (Director), Mike Cotterell and Andrew Evans. Roger was for many years Vicar of Holy Trinity Leicester, and from 2008 to 2016 worked with ReSource. Mike is the Vicar of St Paul’s Church in Slough, and has long been associated with Rooted in Jesus, leading teams to South Africa, Tanzania and South Sudan. Andrew is the Vicar of St Katharine’s Church in Holt, and has been a key member of EQUIP over a number of years; Andrew has also been involved in missions with Roger. The Trustees held their first full meeting on 13th December 2016.