Alpha doesn’t fit ‘Presbyterian ethos’ but there’s no ‘major’ conflict says report

Why did Alpha turn him towards God? It explained, in a way that got his attention, the basics of Christian faith. “It was very social, it was very informal, it was very non-churchy, it was not in the sanctuary,” Goodwin said. There was dinner, music, “a bit of humor, and there were no ministers in evidence. And” — to a guy who had big questions about the resurrection of Jesus — “they said no question is un-askable.”

Some Presbyterians think Alpha is exactly what a struggling mainline denomination needs: a tool for evangelism that excites people about Christianity. It was made internationally famous by Nicky Gumbel of Holy Trinity Brompton, an Anglican congregation in London that found itself transformed when young, unchurched people started showing up by the hundreds once they heard from their friends about Alpha. Over the last decade or so, it’s grown like crazy and the “bring your questions and a friend” model is now is being used by churches in more than 120 countries, by Catholics and Episcopalians and Baptists and Pentecostals and Presbyterians, to name a few (and there are Alpha programs for prisons and students and those serving in the military as well).

Alpha, in short form, is this: a 10-week introduction to Christianity, covering topics such as “Who is Jesus? (and why did Jesus die?)” and “Why should I pray and how should I do it?” and “Is it possible to be a Christian and not be in the church?” Most of the time, the participants gather for dinner (informal, no proselytizing), then watch a video of about 45 minutes in which Gumbel explains an aspect of Christian faith, then break into small groups to talk — discussions in which questions are encouraged and skepticism is not out-of-bounds.

“I’ve had nothing but an incredible experience with Alpha,” said Susie Thacker, who helps lead the Alpha program at Orchard Park church in Carmel, Indiana, near Indianapolis.

“They bill it as an introduction to the Christian faith, and it definitely is that,” Thacker said. “But we’ve found that it works for every person, no matter where they are on their walk, it works for them. We’ve seen some of the pillars of our church, older folks who’ve been Christians all their lives, sitting there at the weekly meetings, and you could hear them say, ‘I didn’t know that!’”

And this time around, about a third of the participants in Alpha at Orchard Park aren’t from the church — many are friends or co-workers or family members of someone who’s already taken an Alpha class, and who, the next time around, were excited enough to invite someone else.

Last year, Alaska Presbytery sent an overture to the 215th General Assembly asking that the PC(USA) explore the idea of endorsing the program for use by local Presbyterian congregations.

The PC(USA) has been losing up to 40,000 members a year, and “we need to be reaching people for Christ,” said Steve Olmstead, pastor of Chapel By the Lake in Juneau and the overture advocate from Alaska Presbytery. “If the church was serious about this issue, we’d be supporting Alpha and we’d be looking at other things as well,” Olmstead said. “There’s no such thing as a perfect evangelism outreach tool. The gospel is the only thing that’s perfect, and that’s from God, not from any program.” But Alpha, he said, is a program that is clearly introducing people to Jesus Christ and helping churches to grow.

As Olmstead put it on the floor of the General Assembly last summer: “This is a program that God is using and we would do well to get on board.”

But some commissioners raised questions about Alpha — asking whether the view of Christianity Alpha presents adequately represents the Reformed tradition, especially in how it treats healing and the idea of being filled with the Spirit. One minister said that trying to modify Alpha to respond to Presbyterian concerns “is to put a paint job on a non-Reformed theology.” The Assembly asked the denomination’s Congregational Ministries Division to consider those questions, and to report back to this year’s Assembly in Richmond.

That report, from the Office of Theology and Worship, points out that Alpha already has some degree of blessing from the denomination: the PC(USA)’s Office of Evangelism has already published, in cooperation with other Reformed denominations, the booklet “Alpha: From a Reformed Perspective,” which explains how congregations can use the program while also holding to Reformed teachings.

“I think the biggest reason some people don’t like Alpha is that Alpha clearly grows out of British evangelical sensibilities” — the British charismatic renewal, said Charles Wiley of Theology and Worship. The video presentations that tend to make Presbyterians most uncomfortable are those on the Holy Spirit and on healing. In the segment on healing, for example, Gumbel tells stories — of the Japanese woman who asked him to pray about her back pain, and who “said it was completely healed the minute you prayed for it,” of his own experience of being prayed for and how “I felt this incredible power. It was like 10,000 volts. It was like the power of God going through my body,” so strong he fell over and “they carried me out through the French windows.”

That dramatic way of thinking about healing — or of being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues — isn’t what’s found in most Presbyterian congregations, Wiley acknowledged (although many Presbyterians are involved in prayer chains where they pray daily for people to be cured of cancer, heart disease, alcoholism and the like — they may believe fervently that prayer can lead to healing, but in a decently-and-in-order sort of way).

The Office of Theology and Worship reviewed the Alpha materials, both written and visual, and determined that “in our judgment the materials do not conflict in any major way with the broad stream of the Reformed tradition,” the report to this year’s Assembly states. “The materials focus clearly on the person of Jesus Christ and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. While the sacraments are not central to the (Alpha) course, the presentation of baptism was adequate.”

The report states that “Alpha’s approach to the Holy Spirit does not fit what most think of as the Presbyterian ethos,” and that many Presbyterian churches don’t use the segment on the Holy Spirit as given — they’ll substitute their own presentation, or at the very least will offer comments on how Presbyterians don’t see things exactly as Gumbel does.

The Office of Theology and Worship also referred Presbyterians trying to figure out what to do with Alpha’s teachings on healing and the Holy Spirit to a resource developed as a response to the charismatic movement of the 1970s — a publication called, “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit with Special Reference to `The Baptism of the Holy Spirit,’ ” which is available online at the Theology and Worship Web site (www.pcusa.org/theologyandworship) and which the report describes as still giving “wise counsel.”

While there are no hard-and-fast numbers on how many PC(USA) churches are using Alpha, it’s clearly more than just a few — overall about 5,000 churches in the United States are running Alpha courses, and about 1 million people in the U.S. and Canada have participated in one, according to Alpha’s North American Web site. Many of the PC(USA) churches that use Alpha consider themselves evangelical, but there are some “middle of the road” congregations using it too, Wiley said (and some have tried it, decided it wasn’t for them, and quit.)

Not everyone’s enthusiastic about Alpha. But one of the biggest arguments in favor of it, Wiley said, is there aren’t many good alternatives that congregations can easily pick up and use to teach the curious the basics of Christianity, and “we’re living in an age when more and more people are coming to the church having not been part of it before.”

Keith Vandegrift is associate pastor for missions at First church, Boulder, Colo., a college town with a strong New Age and secular influence — a town where there is lots of skepticism about organized religion.

“Alpha has given us some language to talk to our community (about Christianity) where pretty much every other evangelistic technique doesn’t work here,” Vandegrift said. “We have a lot of non-Christians around here and Christian language doesn’t work.”

Wiley said he also understands Gumbel’s appeal.

“He does present the gospel message simply and clearly. Secondly, he’s a Brit — Americans like hearing Brits talk,” Wiley said. And Gumbel — gangly, 40-something, athletic, casually-dressed, a lawyer-turned-minister — peppers his explanation of Christianity with stories about his wife, Pippa, about his anything-but-devout youth and his own journey of faith, making it clear there was a time when he was as suspicious of churches as some listening today probably are.

The Church of England has declined so significantly that some say, “Even God must be wanting to leave the Church of England,” Gumbel says on one of the tapes, to considerable laughter. When he was a young man, he thought church “was so boring,” Gumbel said cheerfully. And “I also thought it was untrue,” he said of the basic Christian message. Gumbel said his goals then were to have “a lot of girlfriends” and to make a lot of money, and he didn’t understand how something that had happened 2,000 years ago had anything to do with that.

“I think his background, the fact that he was kind of an atheist, an antagonist to the gospel, for some people really lends some credibility,” Olmstead said.

And Gumbel invites people to consider Christianity — doubts and all.

“It’s not a sermon, it’s an exploration,” Goodwin said. “The whole point is to bring people down the road.” They may not become Christians now, he said, but there’s no way to tell what seeds may be planted for later.

For Presbyterians who aren’t sure how to evangelize — who don’t know what to say or do — Alpha can be valuable too. “We’ve had to overcome a lot of fear,” Vandegrift said — and to show people there are ways to evangelize short of standing up and giving a testimony. Some say, “If all we have to do is cook or clean tables or run a video-machine, that’s good,” that’s something they know they can do.

The program also has led to some new partnerships. First church, Boulder, has about 2,400 members — it’s big enough to have had about 100 volunteers working in Alpha over the last few years. But it’s also teamed up with some small Presbyterian congregations in the area that wanted to offer Alpha but didn’t have the numbers to do it on their own, and has also shared materials and resources with Lutherans and Episcopalians in Boulder.

That’s what Alpha does, supporters say: it tells people about basic Christian beliefs and it builds connections.

The participants have a chance to really make friends — at the dinners, sharing a table and conversation, they go beyond a handshake, something that doesn’t always happen when someone just visits a church. There’s usually a weekend Alpha retreat — more intense time together. And in the small groups — where they meet with the same group over several months — people develop trust and questions are encouraged. “They brought everything up,” said Zimmerman, the pastor from Washington. “Can you trust the Bible? Who is Jesus, and why did He have to die? What am I supposed to do with my life? Just one issue after another.”

Some of those who take the class are brand-new to Christianity. Many others have been involved with the church for years, and find they still have questions they really want to ask.

Jim King, a sales representative, has been a member of First church, Libertyville, Ill., outside Chicago, for more than 30 years — he’s a deacon and chair of the mission committee. When he first heard of Alpha, “I jumped on it,” King said. “It’s like Religion 101. It really does go back through the basis of faith” — he’s taken the class and now is one of the leaders.

In the small groups, “you have an opportunity to open up and discuss personal issues … but it stays in that group,” King said. “It’s sacred. It’s confidential.”

One woman, who’d lost her husband, told of how in her grief, she walked away from the church. “Why would you do this to me?” she asked God. Another woman, who’d studied theology, “was questioning her faith totally,” King said.

A ‘beta’ version of Alpha