Published on: 04/08/2025
We were keen to join together with other churches
We decided in 2024 to do a joint Alpha course across S17 and we joined together with other churches. We’ve been meeting to pray and eat together, and we decided we would join together in offering an Alpha course across the area. We’ve seen the fruit of that now with around 25 people signing up, plus around 12-15 helpers, so there’s about 40 people who are meeting together to discuss faith and think about what following Jesus means.
We’ve had people from a range of churches, mainly lay people, lead the course. They’ve acted as group leaders for the discussions, and we’ve got Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans and Free Church people – all together.
We’re trying to come together as one, and then afterwards find if people want to go on and find a church that is the right fit for them, and work together in that too.
We’ve had a wonderful response from people
People have been so open and we’ve got what I’d call a couple of almost secular evangelists; people who themselves are still on that journey of exploring what faith means, but they’ve been inviting their friends.
At the start of this course we started off with around about 18, and then week by week there have been more people showing up until reaching about 25-30 on the current course. I think that’s testament to the work of the Spirit, but also to the love and care that’s been shown by those who’ve been involved in the course. One person said to us, “we can see how much you love each other”, and it seems to be that that’s really drawing people in to explore.
You never know how many people will turn up to a new course
In the past I’ve been involved in courses where we’ve really scraped the barrel in terms of numbers, but sometimes they’ve been great courses with smaller numbers. I think part of the background to this is that during the pandemic, a group of local Christians from different churches got together and they prayed every single day for about two years at 7PM at night. This feels like a result of that.
Sometimes with things like these good news stories you look and you can feel a bit intimidated or discouraged. I’ve certainly been there where I’ve I’ve put something on. I remember a while back at a previous church I put on a welcome day and I invited people from all around the parish; one person came with their dog on that day. So, it can be quite discouraging! But then for all sorts of different reasons you can have moments where everything just seems to come together and this growing sense of movement of what God’s doing here.
There’ll be more opportunities for courses to learn more about Jesus
The participants will go on and do something like a Beta course or potentially look at becoming a home group going forward. We’ll have fresh courses next year and I encourage any local churches to offer some kind of course, be it Alpha or something else.
Alpha’s great, but there are other things out there as well, particularly those who perhaps are a bit further back in terms of exploring their faith. Get people from other churches involved and anyone who’s got a passion for this and just invite. It’s the key thing, isn’t it? Just to say, ‘come and see’. Offer that invitation and see where it leads.
