The church and change Evangelism 2 -Alpha

A large group of us went to an Alpha training course in Birmingham in 1994..I believe it was one of the first  held outside London.I remember Nicky Gumbel telling the shark joke which is one I have tediously repeated ever since!
Alpha's charismatic emphasis was never hidden and the training was excellent.In fact I found it a very powerful spiritual experience
In view of that it may seem strange that instead of running The Alpha Course we ran a course we had written ourselves called "Just Looking" in a local hotel in Ross on Wye. Less charismatic than the Alpha course  we still attracted good numbers and a number of people came to faith and were baptised.
Subsequently over many years  we have run Alpha courses in both the churches I have pastored and again we have seen people come to faith and be baptised .

In my experience what works about Alpha or indeed" Just Looking" is not the teaching as such but   the ability to talk about faith in a relaxed atmosphere with food ,where people can ask any question they like and know it will be taken seriously,
Above  all  this Alpha gives the opportunity  for relationships to  develop with people and through those relationships the love and message of Jesus can be shared. Alpha creates a space for people to talk about faith ,something that's not always easy to find in secular Britain in 2011
In my experience follow up works best where a group that have done the course together stay together in a small group
There are challenges but we certainly intend to keep using the course in the future
As I have stated above the thing that makes Alpha invaluable is the chance to build relationships with people who are not Christians. It really is all about relationships!I


The great danger for Baptist Churches with a membership structure Is that church becomes about the members rather than the gospel and people talk about the rights of members and the ultimate authority of the church meeting.It is possible for church to become little more than a cosy club rather than the people of God on mission!


The lessons we have learned from Alpha have helped us avoid that danger and have  been applied in recent years to the whole of  our church life. We have tried to share the life of individuals and the life of the local community ,to build relationships ,to put down deep roots locally, to be authentic,to recognise The Lordship of Christ .Alpha was, I  think, an important stepping stone on this road.
Then along came Reggie McNeal and Alan Hirsch who for me  at least demonstrate what missional church could be all about.. More about that next time..

membership!

some thoughts on memebrship on John Smiths blog

"This is a challenging section of Stuart Murray-Williams book on being church in a post Christian culture: Church after Christendom. And especially on the theme we are thinking a lot about at GBC, what is “the church” in a multi-congregational/cell structure?

In [emerging] churches where belonging, believing and behaving are in flux, is there any room for a category of ‘members’? Is there any difference between ‘belonging’ and ‘membership’?



As Steven Croft notes, ‘member’ derives from membrum ‘which means “a limb or part of the body”…a very strong and close way of belonging.’ But ‘member’ today sounds institutional and many find this terminology unhelpful. In a post-commitment culture, membership (however defined) is problematic, not only for churches, but for many organisations. Post-Christendom churches will need categories and terminology that are culturally attuned – but also counter-cultural.



The single category of membership (differentiating members from non-members) is unwieldy, static and exclusive in centred-set churches, where more nuanced, dynamic and inclusive concepts are operative.



Post-Christendom churches may need various categories of belonging:

• Flexible and relational, rather than institutional, categories.
• Categories that encourage expressions of commitment consistent with changing beliefs and behaviour.
• Inclusive rather than exclusive categories that refer to core values rather than boundaries.
• Categories coherent with our identity as pilgrims who respond haltingly but hopefully to Jesus’ call to follow him.



John Drane’s proposal was mentioned in Post-Christendom: a ‘stakeholder model, in which there could and would be a place for diverse groups of people, who might be at different stages in their journey of faith, but who would be bound together by their commitment to one another and to the reality of the spiritual search, rather than by inherited definitions of institutional membership.’



But [emerging] churches need custodians of their story and values. Inclusivity and open-ended belonging without core maintenance is unsustainable and dangerous, as membership-averse emerging churches are discovering. Other emerging churches are reconfiguring monastic patterns that establish a core community and allow for various stages of commitment to their core values.



Nigel Wright, affirming diverse forms of belonging, warns that a church is ‘unlikely to endure unless at its core there are those who commit themselves on a covenantal basis’. He proposes an open ‘community membership’ and a ‘core membership’ open to those who accept its demands.