PloverWing

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Our parish is going to be using the Alpha small group study program this fall, a curriculum that (as I understand it) comes from the Church of England. I'm going to be participating. Does anyone have experience with Alpha? How did you like it, and how well did it work in your parish? What should I expect?
 

Paidiske

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I've helped lead it several times over... gosh... the last twenty years.

It works in the sense that it does bring people into church who were not members before. In my experience, it works best in drawing back prodigals - people who already have some exposure to Christianity and some understanding of its claims but who have walked away - rather than in drawing in people who have never heard the gospel before.

I'll be honest; I'm not a fan. Each time I've done it I've become more critical of it. If I were ever to do it again, I would take their basic outline, but present my own talks each time rather than using their videos, because I just don't think their material does a good and balanced job presenting the faith in a way that I'm comfortable with.

When I was at college I actually wrote a paper on Alpha; a critical analysis of it against the Marks of Mission of the Anglican communion. If you're interested, PM me your email and I'll try to dig it up out of my computer archives.
 
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PloverWing

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Thanks. I'll send you my email address.

My parish has a lot of members who grew up in one or another Christian church (Episcopal, Catholic, Methodist, others), but who seem to have only a surface knowledge of the Bible and Christian doctrine. So maybe our priest has them in mind, and we'll see how well it works.

I was invited to join in because, at a vestry meeting a couple of months ago, our new priest mentioned wanting to start some Christian education programs in the parish for youth and adults, and I sent him email saying, essentially, "Yes! Please! How can I help?" (A couple of my previous parishes had substantial classes for adults, and I really miss that.) I'm probably not the ideal target audience for Alpha, but I still want to participate and find out what the program is about.
 
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Paidiske

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I've got a lot of valuable experience out of helping to lead, because the way it works is that the whole group watches the video together, then you split into smaller groups for discussion. And it's in the discussion groups that the really valuable conversation is had, because people can ask questions and explore what they're really interested in.
 
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Naomi4Christ

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Our parish is going to be using the Alpha small group study program this fall, a curriculum that (as I understand it) comes from the Church of England. I'm going to be participating. Does anyone have experience with Alpha? How did you like it, and how well did it work in your parish? What should I expect?
I’ve been involved in Alpha for about 25 years, so it’s safe to say that I like it.

The format is that you meet together for supper at the start of each session. This is followed by the teaching segment, delivered preferably live, but if not, using Nicky Gumbel’s videos (or a mix of both, of you can’t find a speaker for every week). After that, you get into small groups for discussion about the topic and to ask lots of questions.

In our fellowship, we run it twice a year at the beginning, but now it’s about once every two years. We’ve tried out other similar courses from time to time, such as Christianity Explored, Life Course, but always come back to Alpha.

I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.
 
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PloverWing

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We're almost at the end of our 10 weeks of Alpha, enough that I have some preliminary thoughts on the experience. In our group, each week we had light refreshments, listened to a video by Nicky Gumbel, and then had a small group discussion.

For some American background: In this country, about half of Episcopalians came to the Episcopal church from another religious tradition -- in most cases, another Christian denomination. If you think about it, that says something really good about our ability to attract members, and something really bad about our ability to retain the children who are born into our churches. In the area where I lived when I first became Episcopalian, many of us were former Evangelicals, and that's my background. In the area where I live now, many Episcopalians are former Roman Catholics.

Our group contained two former Evangelicals (the priest and myself), one cradle Episcopalian, and three former Catholics.

Negative:

The chief negative for me was the apologetic arguments made by Rev. Gumbel in the early videos. Many of them were flawed arguments -- famous flawed arguments that have been discussed at length, and that I wrestled with in my teens and twenties -- and, for me, that distracted from the positives of his message. I kept wanting to argue with him, to talk about the flaws, though I kept my mouth shut for the sake of the other group members. It's better for people to accept Christ for flawed reasons than not to accept him at all. I think.

Slight negatives that turned into positives:

1) Our priest skipped a couple of videos that went farther into charismatic country than our parish is comfortable with. Last week's video did, however, mention charismatic gifts. In our group discussion, it turned into some really interesting conversation. Several of our members had no idea what speaking in tongues was about, and we talked about the charismatic movement and its history for a while.

2) Rev. Gumbel almost-but-not-quite made a very conservative statement about marriage toward the end of last week's video. This led us to a great discussion afterwards. It turned out that several of us are strongly supportive of LGBTQ Christians, and I think our discussion may lead us to take some positive actions in the future of our parish.

Positives:

1) Making a commitment to Christ: I think it is good and important for every Christian to make an explicit, conscious commitment to Christ, even if (as may be the case with people who grew up in the church) it's a decision to continue to follow a path that one has already been following for years. It's important to acknowledge that we have sinned, and that through Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection our sins are forgiven, and that we are now choosing to live in the way that Jesus taught.

The former Catholics and the cradle Episcopalian had never heard the elements of the faith presented to them in those terms, that one should make a commitment to follow Christ in this way. That's really a big omission, if the Catholic and Episcopal churches of their childhood never got around to saying that. (It's there in the liturgy, we say it every Sunday, but maybe it's easy to let the words fly by without even listening to them.) I assume, by the way, that this has something to do with our problem retaining our children in the Episcopal church; if our children hear an explicit salvation message from the Baptists that they never heard from us, well, thank you Baptists, but we Episcopalians have messed up.

So I think several of our group members heard what I think of as the basic salvation message for the first time in our Alpha group this fall. That is good and important.

2) The small group: I very much enjoyed getting to talk about elements of the Christian faith with a small group of people, in a setting where we were able to take time to listen to each other and think about new ideas, without the feeling that we have to rush off to lunch or coffee hour. This is the aspect of the program that I hope we can continue into the future, in some form.


Our Alpha group is going to talk about what we liked and disliked about our 10-week experience in our upcoming, last meeting. I'll probably have more thoughts after that meeting.
 
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Shane R

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ACNA is very much sold on Alpha as an essential element of church planting. The interesting thing about that is that they prepared a rather lengthy catechism (Anglican Church in North America) that I get the impression is not being widely used. I will concede that the Prayer Book catechism is inadequate.

I don't like and don't use Alpha. I use Luther's Small catechism and a reading of one or more of the Gospels (usually Mark since it is brief and fast paced) to perform the same function. But, primarily, I am more interested in teaching an inquirer to pray than teaching all of these little nuggets of dogmatic truth that typify most catechisms.
 
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Naomi4Christ

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ACNA is very much sold on Alpha as an essential element of church planting. The interesting thing about that is that they prepared a rather lengthy catechism (Anglican Church in North America) that I get the impression is not being widely used. I will concede that the Prayer Book catechism is inadequate.

I don't like and don't use Alpha. I use Luther's Small catechism and a reading of one or more of the Gospels (usually Mark since it is brief and fast paced) to perform the same function. But, primarily, I am more interested in teaching an inquirer to pray than teaching all of these little nuggets of dogmatic truth that typify most catechisms.

This completely misses the point of Alpha.

Alpha is about friendships, relationships, asking questions, and discipleship

It’s not about telling people what to believe. We really don’t do that in the Church of England.
 
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Paidiske

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Hmm. There might be an issue with the way different cultures receive it, then; because I definitely have the impression - after leading it multiple times, so not from a place of unfamiliarity - that Alpha is about telling people what to believe.
 
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Shane R

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I realize that the function of Alpha and the Catechism do not completely overlap. Alpha is an inquirers course whereas most of the catechisms out there assume the student has some familiarity with the culture of church. The realization that one cannot assume familiarity with the Bible or the church in the present culture has set in and so groups, like ACNA, have done some heavy catechism revision to fill in some of these gaps of knowledge.
 
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Naomi4Christ

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Hmm. There might be an issue with the way different cultures receive it, then; because I definitely have the impression - after leading it multiple times, so not from a place of unfamiliarity - that Alpha is about telling people what to believe.
No! It is pre-catechetical and based on discipleship.

Who tells people what to believe?
 
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Paidiske

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No! It is pre-catechetical and based on discipleship.

Who tells people what to believe?

Well, those video presentations are pretty heavy on telling people what to believe. I mean, sure, you're encouraged to explore the ideas in your small groups afterwards, but that's after a very solid dose of the gospel according to Gumbel.
 
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Naomi4Christ

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Well, those video presentations are pretty heavy on telling people what to believe. I mean, sure, you're encouraged to explore the ideas in your small groups afterwards, but that's after a very solid dose of the gospel according to Gumbel.
People must be less obedient over here.

Just because the great Nicky Gumbel says something, there is no expectation for the listener to “believe” him.

Much of the small group discussion will be about how much you agree with what was said in the talk, whether any of his personal anecdotes resonate, your barriers to belief, and struggles with being in two worlds.
 
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Paidiske

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I don't, for one minute, believe that the Alpha materials were put together with a "well-we-don't-really-mind-if-people-agree" mindset. They're intended as a proclamation of the gospel, with the hope that people will accept what is being said (after appropriate time to digest it), and with the belief that disagreement on any major point is a problem for the inquirer.
 
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