Attendance had been averaging about 14 people per Alpha class, but suddenly the numbers began to rise — to 35 and then to 50 a class. “We got a couple who understood communications and public relations,” Zimmerman said, and who began to advertise the Alpha classes through elevator ads and other techniques that began to reach the about 30,000 people, many of them young, unchurched professionals, who live in apartments and condominiums in downtown Vancouver.
The congregation put up a banner outside the church, giving a phone number for Alpha registration, created a Web site, advertised around the condos. John Goodwin, who became a Christian through the Alpha program and now is one of its leaders at the Vancouver church, said the congregation was asked, “Do you know anybody who isn’t a Christian?” — they were challenged to bring their relatives and friends.
An elderly Chinese man, an atheist, showed up saying his Christian daughter in Hong Kong sent him an e-mail telling him about Alpha. Buddhists came to take the class, and Muslims — some of whom became Christians. Zimmerman baptized a woman from Shangai, whose parents were professors and atheists. “She said, ‘I come from an atheist land and an atheist country and an atheist university,'” Zimmerman said. “And I baptized her. That’s the kind of impact this has.”
After taking the class, some people stayed at First Baptist, a multicultural downtown congregation, Goodwin said. Some looked elsewhere. Some came from elsewhere — a Roman Catholic cathedral in Vancouver sent people to First Baptist for Alpha classes.
“We want them to connect to a church,” Goodwin said. “And if our style is not for them, then we’ll work hard to find something that is. We don’t care what denomination it is.”
Zimmerman, who retired after teaching applied theology at Regent College in Vancouver and also worked as a pastor, now is a member of the Alpha Canada board and has seen the way churches around the world are embracing Alpha. “We have an allergy in the PC(USA) against conversion,” he said. “We just kind of think people grew up in the church and are confirmed and we’ll hold them. Well, we’re losing them in droves. We’ve got to get over this allergy to evangelism and we have to quit worrying. This (Alpha) has a charismatic tinge on it, so I take the charismatic tinge out of it — it’s no big deal.”
What’s important to recognize, Zimmerman said, that Alpha “has made a profound impact on the world.”
