Are you coming to supper? - A new Alpha initiative

Around one million people have been on the Alpha evangelistic course in recent years, and a new initiative is being launched to invite the nation to supper . . .

Around one million people have been on the Alpha evangelistic course in recent years. That is the impressive figure from the home of this enterprise, Holy Trinity Brompton, in London's West End.

As an example of Alpha's effectiveness, statistics from the Anglican diocese of Lichfield record that 5,000 people there have attended the 15-week programme of whom, it is claimed, 1,000 have become Christians. At a time when we are confronted with the fact that church attendance in Britain has fallen drastically even since 1980, with now only 7.5% of the population in church regularly, Alpha seems to hold out hope. 7,000 churches in Britain are promoting Alpha, and the course is being used in 108 different countries.

New initiative

This is the background to a new Alpha initiative beginning in September. Thousands of churches across the country will be encouraged to get involved in inviting the entire nation to supper. Parties will be hosted in churches, homes, halls and restaurants in the last week in September. This is designed as an introduction to the Alpha course, which is offered to non-churchgoers as an 'opportunity to explore the meaning of life'.

As with other Alpha initiatives over recent years, this new one will be promoted through a nationwide poster campaign. Individual invitations to supper will be distributed by churches in their neighbourhoods and will also go to local MPs and councillors.

The September suppers will include a 30-minute talk entitled 'Christianity: boring, untrue, irrelevant?' devised by Nicky Gumbel, the originator of the Alpha course.

EN attended the press launch of this initiative at HTB on March 3. With many journalists present, the reporter from The Guardian asked why the advertising emphasised the 'non-threatening' nature of the course. He felt this was a strange emphasis. Nicky Gumbel replied that he had repeatedly found non-church people who had attended Alpha expressing their delight in the relaxed atmosphere of the course.

Postmodern people

It is interesting to reflect on this. Behind those remarks, we have to realise that the church now operates in a post-modern society that is shy of commitment. Any claims to promote truth about life are perceived by people as power-plays to entrap them and take away their freedom to live as they choose. Perhaps more confrontational forms of evangelism, beloved by traditional evangelicals, are now simply completely misread by our contemporaries.

The Alpha course has potential for great good, but there are continuing question marks. Why is the course so gladly accepted right across the denominations, from the Baptist Union, through Anglicanism to the Roman Catholics? Is it that the denominations are changing under the desperate decline in church numbers? Or is it that Alpha has cut and presented its biblical content in a way that suits everyone? Asking this question, a spokesman for the Alpha course gave the impression to EN that it was more the latter. He said that Alpha was a kind of core of truth that all the denominations could agree on, and when they had finished the course they could go on to add their own distinctives from there. This sounds fine in the ears of non-Christians who have seen too much church squabbling, but rings alarm bells for conservative evangelicals.

Whatever we think of Alpha it is the only evangelistic effort which at present commands the attention of the nation and the media. Many churches will get involved with Alpha as simply the best boat to fish from. Who can blame them?

Alpha is now running in 122 of the 158 prisons in the UK and in 120 of the country's 170 universities.