History
The Alpha Course started in 1978 as a small group of seekers in the home of Charles Marnham, a curate
(associate pastor) of Holy Trinity Church (HTB), London, England. Over a 14 year time-span, the leaders
of the course surveyed the participants to discover how the course might be improved. By the winter of
1992, the Alpha Course had emerged into its present-day format, one that features 5 key components:
- Simple, friendly meals
- Seeker sensitive worship presentations
- Straight-forward talk on basic aspects of the Christian faith
- Small group discussions
- A weekend retreat
This 15-session, 10-week course was attracting 600 new people a year to HTB, nearly all of whom would not
have called themselves "Christian" prior to the course. However, more than half of the people who took the
course later indicated they came to faith during it. Further, 4 of 5 of the people who indicated they had
started a new life in Christ during the course subsequently joined a home group. The leadership of HTB had
no idea the Holy Spirit had led them into a ministry approach ideally suited for evangelism in the emerging
post-modern world. The Alpha Course had an interesting mix of offerings for new-millennial spiritual
sojourners:
- Relational ministry (small groups)
- Experiential ministry (the weekend retreat)
- Sacramental Ministry ( a Last Supper-like meal)
- Cell and Celebration (pulpit ministry connected to group discussion)
- And Socratic teaching (not "sage on the stage" but "guide beside")
As a result, church leaders throughout London asked the leadership team at HTB to teach them how to run an
Alpha Course. By the end of 1993, 200 churches throughout the UK were running the Alpha Course, welcoming more
than 4,600 seekers.
Alpha explodes
During 1993 and 1994, the team from HTB was invited to conduct 5 more 2-day training events, Alpha Conferences, in
several cities in England. By the end of 1994, 750 congregations were conducting an Alpha Course. These congregations
asked HTB to publish a curriculum for the course and a notebook for the guests. Nicky Gumbel scribed the manuscript for
Questions of Life and The Alpha Manual, and after submitting them
for review to 44 theologians in 40 different Christian traditions, he gave the rights away for both to Kingsway, the
affiliate of Cook Communications for the UK, in order to get them published.
In the fall of 1995, Truro Episcopal Church hosted the first US Alpha Conference. By the end of the year, approximately
50 churches in the US were conducting an Alpha Course.
During 1996 and 1997, stories and testimonies about the Alpha Course rippled throughout the Church. HTB was receiving
hundreds of requests for training in how to run the Alpha Course. Alpha International was formed to meet this demand.
The strategy was simple: when invited, send a team to conduct 2-day Alpha Conferences throughout the world.
By the time Alpha North America (ANA) was formed in April of 1997, about 350 churches were running the Alpha Course in the
USA and Canada. The mission given to Alpha North America was to increase the number of Alpha Courses running fruitfully in
the US. Its strategy is the Alpha Conference. Tactically, ANA accomplishes this through partnerships with Christian
organizations, denominations, and congregations.
Over the last 4 years, Alpha North America has conducted 83 Alpha Conferences in 54 of the largest 60 US cities welcoming
30,327 delegates. Alpha Conferences have been conducted in Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, Episcopalian, Assemblies of
God, Salvation Army, Lutheran, Methodists, Presbyterian, and Vineyard churches, to name a few. Currently, 7,000+
congregations are using Alpha resources.
Alpha-growth through God changing lives
As the number of churches that are running the Alpha Course has grown, the need for a staff of dedicated people to support
and nurture the new course leaders has also grown. However, early on, the team from Alpha North America was coached by the
leaders of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary to avoid building a
large team of professional Christians. Instead, the staffing tactics of Alpha North America has been to seek capable,
God-fearing, and trustworthy leaders who have experienced a life-changing through Christ as a result of an Alpha Course.
As one board member of ANA, Bob Buford, puts it, ANA should find people who have been "successful but who now are looking
for significance".
A good-for-nothing staff
Virtually all of the staff of Alpha North America are volunteers. Many, such as the Executive Director of ANA, are lay people
who were converted through Alpha and who have come out of the business world. Others are clergy, often senior pastors, who
have seen fruit as a result of running an Alpha Course. All Alpha Conferences and nearly all Alpha regional support groups
are entirely staffed by volunteers. Alpha North America never uses professionals to organize, manage, and run Alpha-related
events.
Just as the Alpha Course is a lay-led, volunteer ministry, so are the ministries of Alpha North America. Alpha North America
maintains a skeleton staff of 13 full-time paid professionals. Nearly all of them have the same job description: identify,
recruit, train, and deploy partners to do the work of the ministry.
Alpha today
Alpha Courses are running in every state in the US and in churches of every denomination. The Alpha Course is also running
in such diverse settings as prisons, universities, public high schools, housing developments, coffee shops, military bases,
and on deployed US Navy vessels.
Sales of Alpha Resources have grown in parallel to the number of Christian Groups who are conducting an Alpha Course.
- Over 300,000 copies of Questions of Life have been sold
- Over 600,000 copies of the Alpha Course Manual have been sold
- Over 750,000 copies of the Why Jesus, an evangelistic tract akin to the Four Spiritual
Laws, have been sold.
On Monday, September 3rd, 2001, Alpha North America took over the publishing of Alpha Resources from D.C. Cook. On that day
alone, ANA took over $100,000 in phone-in orders.
Internationally, the growth of the course has also been considerable:
- 18,000 alpha courses are running in 123 different countries.
- Almost three million people all over the world have completed the Alpha course.
- Resources are available in 34 languages including Braille.
- 100,000 church leaders have attended Alpha conferences nationally and internationally in the United States, Australia,
Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Holland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Kenya,
Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and Zimbabwe.
The road ahead
The Alpha Course now sits in a uniquely blessed situation. Effectively, the Holy Spirit seems to have used The Alpha Course
as a means or reintroducing church-based evangelism back into the mainline, immigrant denominations of the U.S. The rich
histories of the immigrant denominations of America illustrate their original intent: evangelization of the relocated people
groups populating America. However, as the pot melted together, these organizations moved away from their original purpose.
Over time, many Methodists, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Congregational, Catholic, and Lutheran congregations stopped
intentional church-based evangelization. Thus, their skills in evangelization also withered. Their congregations shrunk,
both in number and in size.
Churches that cannot agree even on what day is Easter all seem to be agreeing that the Alpha Course is a safe, effective,
and efficient way of equipping that laity to reach the lost. What irony! For instance:
- The Southern Baptist Convention of Texas, in cooperation with the North Texas Annual Conference of United
Methodists, sponsored an Alpha Conference in Park Cities Baptist Church in March of 2001. Southern Baptists and
Texas Methodists invited Anglicans to teach them church-based lay-led evangelism.
- The Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is hosting an Alpha Conference for priest and laity in November, 2001.
7 of the 90 Alpha Conferences conducted in the US have been in Roman Catholic churches.
- 9 of the largest Presbyterian Churches in the US have recently or will soon host an Alpha Conference: National
Presbyterian in DC, Peachtree Presbyterian in Atlanta, 1st Presbyterian of Houston, 1st Presbyterian Menlo Park,
Belleview Presbyterian in Seattle, Wayne Presbyterian in Philadelphia, Ward Presbyterian in Detroit, 4th Presbyterian
in Bethesda, and Bonhomme Presbyterian in St. Louis.
- The Presbyterian Church-USA (Louisville) conducted a study of churches that had run the Alpha Course.
- 98% of the churches reported they like the Alpha Course or liked it very much.
- 52% said they experienced congregational growth.
- 24% indicated the church as a whole experienced a spiritual awakening.
- 69% said participants made personal commitments to Christ.
- 32% reported baptisms as a result of Alpha.
- 90% said they would recommend Alpha to other congregations.
- 97% said they would offer the course again.
- The Billy Graham Evangelist Association invited the leadership team of HTB to make a major presentation at the
Amsterdam 2000 congress of international evangelists.
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the American Baptist Church, and the Evangelical Covenant Church have
all officially adopted Alpha as their primary evangelist strategy.
- The largest and fastest growing United Methodist Church plant in the US, Church of the Resurrection UMC, Leawood,
KS, is hosting an Alpha Conference.
- Fuller Theological Seminary, Asbury Theological Seminary, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary are all hosting
Alpha Conferences for their students and graduates.
For several decades, the church in America had been fragmenting. Three major streams of Christianity are now evident: Evangelical, Charistmatic/Pentecostal,
and Catholic/Lithurgical. The Alpha Course has become a major meeting place for these three streams. The leadership of Alpha North America is called to continue
the work of denominational reconciliation so the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church can unite to fulfill the Great Commission and further the Kingdom.
The main question: how can the team from Alpha North America help the team from Willow Creek?
Ideas for discussion
- ANA invite teams from Willow Creek to present at future Alpha training events.
- ANA encourage Willow Creek to distribute WCA materials through Alpha distribution channels.
- ANA donate add space in Alpha News (readership 280,000 people) to promote Willow Creek events or resources.
- ANA donate ANA’s affiliate church list (n=7500) and mailing list (n=40,000) to WCA.
- ANA feature WCA events and resources in Alpha News
- Others?
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