Bundled Resources   Ideas that changed the world Bundle Package of DVD and 8x Workbooks, save over $10. More Info... Items available individually: Ideas that changed the world DVD DVD includes sessions on: Grace alone, Faith alone, Bible alone, Christ alone & personal testimonies. More Info... Ideas that changed the world Workbooks include: biographies of Reformation thinkers, personal testimonies and bible studies on: Grace alone, Faith alone, Bible alone & Christ alone. More Info... Speaking notes and powerpoint presentations are also available.
	With the Roman Catholic church waking up for World Youth Day in July 2008 and the Pope stating that Protestant churches are not valid churches we need to educate our people on the great truths of the reformation all over again. To help we have produced a teaching series on the four great alones of the Protestant Reformation: Grace, Faith, Bible and Christ. You can use this material in small groups (with the DVD and discussion questions) or as a Sunday series with accompanying mid week small group discussions.
Workbook	Download a sample of the workbook.

It includes:

• Vox Pops of former Catholics on how their views changed on Grace, Faith, Bible and Christ.
• Teaching on the four alones from Introducing God's Dominic Steele
• Dominic explaining and defending his thesis in question time,
• Talk outlines,
  
• Bible study questions,
  
• Features on the Reformation greats (Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, Cranmer)
• Personal testimonies (both in the booklet and the DVD) of individual Australians making the switch from Roman Catholic faith to Protestant faith,
• Hosted by Samantha Boog

Reviews:

• By Jen Clark, Sue Wells & Margaret Powell, St.Paul's Castle Hill.
• By Stuart Bonnington, Australian Presbyterian

Thank you to all the people from Annandale Community Church who helped in the production of this resource.

Dominic Steele writes...

When I was 19 I left the big smoke of Sydney and headed to the country to work as a radio station disk jockey at the only station in northern New South Wales that didn’t play country music (2MO Gunnedah).

On my first Sunday in town I went along to St Mary’s Catholic Church. I think at that stage you could have counted on two hands the number of Sundays in my life that I hadn’t been to mass.

On my second Sunday at mass I was invited to join the church council. I thought I was too young but I was encouraged to stand and was appointed.

I had been Christened and I participated in Confession, Communion and Confirmation in the Catholic Church, I attended a Catholic School for eight years and served as an altar boy at mass for five years. Now I was on the church council.

However, in the months that followed I became increasingly disillusioned with Gunnedah’s priest and church. It came to a head when in a homily during mass he criticised something I had said on the radio. I left that day (not the church in Rome, but the church in Gunnedah).

When I moved back to Sydney I went back to my family’s parish church at Pennant Hills. I’d been there virtually every Sunday for 15 years (apart from the last 15 months). But, no one said ‘Hello Dominic, we’ve missed you!’ I’d grown up belonging to the Catholic Church, but felt I didn’t belong anymore.

Either I’d rejected church or church had rejected me. But I still knew that God existed and somehow things needed to be fixed with God.

When my friend Russell Powell invited me to church and I eventually nervously accepted his invitation to his Protestant church I was astonished at the differences.

There wasn’t the same ceremony. But there was an authenticity that I hadn’t seen before. Instead of walking straight out to the car park after receiving Communion people stayed for hours talking about the things they had been taught from the Bible.

Having been in church for years and then out of church for a while, I (shockingly) would say I became a Christian (began a personal relationship with God through Jesus) on 26 January 1986. After this I spent a long time working out how my new faith differed from the faith of my childhood.

Growing up I wouldn’t have said that I was saved by God’s grace alone. I trusted in my own works to make me right with God rather than having faith alone in what Christ alone had done. And my authority came from the church institution rather than from the Bible alone. I have come to see that these differences are enormously significant.

In these talks and studies we introduce you to people who grew up Catholic and see how they have wrestled with the four major ideas of the 16th century Protestant Reformation: Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Bible Alone and Christ Alone. We will see people interviewed,watch a talk, discuss some Bible passages and engage in a question time.

Whether you see yourself as Catholic, Protestant or neither our aim in these studies is to have a better understanding of what it is to be saved by Grace Alone (God’s gracious initiative in Jesus), made available to us through Faith Alone (not by us being good enough). Further we will aim to know God through the Bible Alone (and not through any church authority) and to see that we can pray to the Father through Christ Alone (and not through the saints).

Yours in Christ,

Dominic Steele