The Alpha Course

In 1981 Charles Marnham, a clergyman at the evangelical church, Holy Trinity Brompton, in London devised a course that was designed to present the basic principals of the Christian faith to new Christians in a relaxed and informed setting. He called it the Alpha Course.

 

Alpha logo

By the mid 1990s a curate, Nicky Gumbel, who had taken over the running of the Alpha Course at Holy Trinity Brompton, was recognizing the possibility of using it as a tool for evangelism by modifying the course to make it attractive to non-churchgoers. (He had noticed the number of non-churchgoers who are attending.) Soon other churches, noting its success, were asking Holy Trinity Brompton if they may use Alpha for their own contacts.

By the end of 1994 there were 750 Alpha courses running and by the mid-2000s it use had spread all over the world.

Over 24 million people have now tried Alpha in over 100 countries, and it has been translated into over 100 different languages. Alpha now runs in every part of the global church, including the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and all mainline Protestant denominations.