Alpha Canada's Invitation to the Nation!

This fall, Canadian churches from coast to coast are inviting their communities to dinner! Churches will be displaying matching banners and election-style lawn signs and will host dinners in a variety of locations, including church halls, community centers, university campuses, restaurants, ice rinks, pubs and private homes. For the National web site on this work, please see An Invitation to the Nation.

Personal invitations will be supported by a nation-wide campaign of billboard, transit and mall advertising. There are 345 billboards, 430 bus shelters, radio, T.V. and newspaper ads in every major city across Canada. 43 billboards and 80 bus banners in Ottawa alone! All promoting the Alpha Course.

An excellent video presentation describing the Initiative was sent to 159 churches in Eastern Ontario. The list of churches to which videos went is posted on the Yahoo Group site. Alpha Advisors have spare copies of the video which are available for loan. This is the ideal way to introduce the Initiative to both existing and potential Alpha congregations. We urge you to enroll your church in the Initiative as described in the folder accompanying the video, and at An Invitation to the Nation. The Initiative kit which includes your banner can be ordered on-line at Cook Communications. Miller McConnell Signs, 2615 Lancaster Rd, 523-7446, will be pleased overprint your banner with specific course information if needed.

Register your course

So you have decided to run an Alpha course. Here are three things to do as soon as possible:

• Register your course on this site and at Alpha Canada.
• Book your weekend venue.
• Plan your food arrangements. You may like to take advantage of Canadian beef direct from the farm - call Leanne & Harry at 283-3195, and say this is for Alpha. Enjoy attractive prices while helping the Canadian beef industry.

Youth Alpha and Alpha on Campus Course Leaders feel free to contact Youth Pastor Gordon Bagshaw of St. John The Divine for information or assistance. He can be reached at 274-3593 or the Eastern Region Hotline number. We encourage you to run youth Alpha in your church this fall. After all, youth are our future!

Order Alpha Banners

You are seeing billboards, bus ads, and banners all over the region. If your church hasn't yet ordered an Initiative Kit including a banner and lawn signs there is still time to do so. How to do this - and how to do most other aspects of the initiative can be read on our web site and its links. Banners can be overprinted with additional information, such as "Local courses: alpha.ncf.ca Hotline: 1-866-92-Alpha. To find out where courses will be running in September, visit the courses page.

Lawnsigns are beginning to spring up across the city. We may be able to provide a few spare signs to individuals who cannot get them elsewhere (call the hotline). At the heart of Alpha is the God-given burden to tell others about Jesus, and inviting people to dinner - using lawn signs, banners and personal invitation is the way we start the process.

Please update your new course info so we can reflect 2003 courses on this site. We prefer to have approximate dates for the future than dates in the past!