'It's friends bringing friends'

The Alpha course has been running for 20 years, but it was only in 1993 that its astonishing possibilities as a vehicle for evangelism began to emerge. This is the story of how it happened:

In 1977, Charles Marnham, a clergyman at Holy Trinity Brompton, London, began looking for a means of presenting the basic principles of the Christian faith to new Christians in a relaxed and informal setting. He devised the Alpha Course.

The talks addressed such questions as 'Who is Jesus?', 'How and why do I pray?' and 'How does God guide us?'. When Charles Marnham moved on, others took over leadership of the course and made their own changes.

By the time Nicky Gumbel took over Alpha in 1990, the course was a central feature of the church's life, with the number of participants regularly totalling around 100 people on each course.

It was while leading his second Alpha course that Nicky made a discovery which transformed the church's whole approach to the course and gave it a new dynamic. As he looked around the 13 members of his 'small group', he realized to his surprise that apart from the three Christian helpers, all the other 10 members of the group were non-churchgoers.

"They had all the normal objections: 'What about other religions?'; 'What about suffering?', and so on - and we had a stormy first six weeks," he said. Then they went away on the weekend and all 10 announced their Christian conversion together.

The experience transformed Nicky's thinking about Alpha. He realized how this simple course in basic Christianity could become a powerful medium for evangelism. He quickly worked to give the course the kind of ‘feel’ that would be particularly attractive to non-churchgoers.

The method of welcome, the atmosphere of the small groups, the food, the seating, the flowers, the sound, and the material of the talks themselves were all changed to make them as attractive as possible to the person who walked in 'off the street'.

He emphasised to the Alpha small group leaders that no question should be treated as too trivial, threatening or illogical. Every question would be addressed courteously and thoughtfully - and none would ever be 'pestered' if they chose not to continue with the course.

Nicky Gumbel explains: 'It's all friendship-based. There's no knocking on doors, there's little advertising, but it's friends bringing friends.'