Grassroots Christianity on Video

By Joe Woodard, Calgary Herald
February 2001

Worlds away from pulpit-pounders, Nicky Gumbel's back-to-basics Alpha Course fuels a surprising, broad-based renewal movement

Jesus Christ, who changed the world more than anyone else in history, is remembered more for his death than his life. Why did he die?

Alpha Course host Nicky Gumbel looks out on the 240 people gathered in the basement dining room of Calgary's First Alliance Church -- from a 10-foot video screen. His audience has just shared a dinner of chicken casserole, salad and cake. Now they're relaxed, attentive, sipping tea and coffee as they watch the British evangelist.

"What do the following people have in common -- Madonna, Bono, the Pope . . . ?" Gumbel asks from the video, looking and sounding much like comedian Peter Cook.

"They all wear crosses," he answers.

Gumbel then observes most people no longer appreciate how strange it is to wear a cross.

"After all, the cross was a particularly cruel and horrible form of execution," he says in his quiet English tones.

"If I were to come into this hall wearing, say, this natty gallows" -- with a shy grin, Gumbel picks up a large cardboard gibbet, complete with dangling noose, and drapes it over his neck -- "we might find this a little strange, perhaps even macabre."

Gumbel muses about "electric chair jewelry," and his audience, in both the video and the Calgary church, breaks into laughter. But he then goes on to observe that "the cross lies at the heart of the Christian faith."

This is the Alpha Course, a grass-roots movement, which like the noisier, more emotional, American-based Promise Keepers, provides some of the clearest evidence of a grassroots Christian revival.

Gumbel continues his low-key presentation: fully half the Gospel of Mark and a third of the other Gospels focus on the death of Jesus Christ as the "central scene" of the Good News, he says. And the apostle Paul tells the Corinthians he will preach only "Jesus Christ and him crucified."

Gumbel is obviously setting up his audience for the crucial question.

"Jesus Christ, who changed the world more than anyone else in history, is remembered more for his death than his life," he says. "Why did he die?"

No manipulation is an important part of the Alpha ethos. There's no pressure to convert or even accept what the course presents. If somebody comes for one or two evenings, and then they don't come back, we don't phone them or run after them.

This is the third video in the 10-week, 15-session interdenominational course, subtitled A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith. In this session, Why Did Jesus Die? the participants (many who've never been in church) learn (many for the first time) the "s" word -- "sin." But they learn it in a calm and very convincing way.

"There's no pressure and no manipulation in Alpha," says Anglican pastor Andy Lees; he and his wife Chester are Alpha's Calgary co-ordinators.

"No manipulation is an important part of the Alpha ethos. There's no pressure to convert or even accept what the course presents. If somebody comes for one or two evenings, and then they don't come back, we don't phone them or run after them."

The Alpha Program was begun by a number of pastors at London's Holy Trinity Brompton Church 20 years ago. Then in 1992, new pastor Nicky Gumbel, a former lawyer and Oxford theology student, realized the potential that lay in a basic course in Christian doctrine.

Gumbel worked Alpha up into its current form, with 15 videos, an 80-page workbook, supplemental pamphlets and a suggested reading list, all keyed to the video sessions. He also instituted Alpha Conferences, where pastors and interested lay leaders are trained in how to present the program in their own settings.

After eight years, the course is now being run out of 17,000 churches in 121 countries, and it's been attended by over two million people worldwide.

Alpha came to Canada just three years ago. Yet it has already spread to well over 1,350 Canadian churches--from independent evangelical and Pentecostal to Catholic -- and 150,000 to 200,000 Canadians have already taken the course. Roughly 100,000 participants are expected this year.

Pollster George Gallup addressed a conference of 1,200 pastors and lay leaders in Philadelphia last year, announcing, "Alpha answers questions that everyone wants to know, but is afraid to ask."

In Calgary, 43 churches offer Alpha, from Mercy Christian Fellowship and the Salvation Army to St. James Anglican and St. Pius X Catholic. Anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 Calgarians are already Alpha alumni.

"Alpha really is just a basic introduction to Christianity -- that's why it's called Alpha," said Canadian director Sally Start of Vancouver.

"But I've had pastors say they've seen more people come to faith from Alpha, than all their other ministries combined. I'd guess that 25 to 30 per cent of the people who take it are either completely unchurched or had some sort of toxic experience of the church earlier in their lives."

And though precise figures are hard to come by, as many as two-thirds of the unchurched will freely convert during a course.

"And the people who're already attending a church say that Alpha deepens their commitment and helps them get clear on the basic tenets of their faith," Start adds.

Though the Alpha Course is run in prisons, board rooms, schools and homes, the usual setting is a church hall. Attendance varies wildly, from eight in a private home to First Alliance's 240. But on average, 25 people will attend each course, and churches will offer it two to three times a year.

Every session begins with dinner, followed by that night's 50-minute video from Gumbel, followed by a table discussion, led by someone who's already been through the course. The three sessions on the Holy Spirit are generally run as a weekend retreat, either Friday night and all day Saturday in the church, or Saturday and Sunday someplace out of town.

"Why does Alpha work?" mused Calgary director Lees. "The aim isn't to force people to commit their lives to Christ. It starts with people making friends, and the aim is to make them comfortable in a Christian community.

"Then there's the rolling effect, course after course. The first few times, the participants are people who are already in the church, but then they begin to invite their friends to the celebratory suppers at the end of each course, and about half of those people apply to take the next course.

Alpha is also militantly non-denominational in its presentation of Basic Christianity.

"It's 'come and see' evangelism. The doctrine is offered and not forced."

Alpha is also militantly non-denominational in its presentation of "basic Christianity" -- what organizer Start calls "common doctrine of a most uncommon kind."

Last year's Alpha Conference in Vancouver attracted 1,400 pastors and lay leaders, half of that number Catholic, half Protestant. And the same interdenominational co-operation is happening in places such as Denmark, Sweden, Zimbabwe and Australia.

"Alpha is truly ecumenical, and it belongs in churches," said Lees. "But we tell the churches, you can add your denominational influences to the discussion, after the course is done. Alpha insists that the the churches present Alpha as is."

In fact, Alpha fails, when it fails, for three basic reasons, Lees said. First, churches assign "knowledgeable" rather then "friendly" people as their discussion leaders. Second, churches "add stuff" peculiar to their denomination. And third, churches "remove stuff" they feel may be over-emphasized in the basic Christian doctrine presented.

The course works as a whole, says First Alliance small group pastor Tim Wiseman, because Nicky Gumbel's video presentation has "an amazing way of anticipating the questions of non-churchgoers" and dealing with those questions in a non-threatening way. "Very few churchmen know how to talk to non-churched people," Wiseman said.

"But Nicky's style of teaching is so low-key and non-confrontational, it's more like a dinner conversation. And it's non-institutional.

"In a biblically illiterate society, people can hear what he says, think it over, and even if they decide they don't believe it, they go away with a deeper understanding of what Christianity is all about. It's a large part of our cultural foundation, so that's a good thing, too."

The answer is that [Jesus] loves us.

In the end, Alpha comes down to the questions Alpha uncovers within its participants, and the persuasiveness of the evidence it musters to answer those questions.

So why did Jesus die?

Nicky Gumbel looks out from the giant video screen, the least assuming, least self-centred mega-celebrity of the decade, and says simply, "the answer, in a nutshell, is that He loves us." And over the next 40 minutes, he explains why Jesus' love involved His death.