I agree with this summary of the strengths of the Alpha Course, which we have ourselves used. The course has been reviewed and evaluated extensively - just type ‘alpha course evaluation’ or something similar in your search engine. There is also a book on the subject, but I lent my copy to someone and can’t remember the title or author.

A reflection of the on-going evaluation of Alpha can be seen in the numerous courses now on offer appealing to various niche sections of the market, which recognise that conversion to Christianity is more of a process than a crisis, and people prefer a more intimate gathering which provides interaction and has a social base than a big meeting and a speaker. But none of these has overtaken Alpha in general appeal.

I’m not aware of any post-modern or post-evangelical serious criticism of the course. In fact the style of the course in many ways lends itself to a post-modern ethos. It’s also astonishing that Alpha itself continues with the same format and content that it started with - despite extensive evaluation suggesting it needs change - even within its evangelical theological format.

We moved from the Alpha Course to the Y Course, because we felt that Alpha assumed far too much Christian knowledge of its participants, and catapaulted participants from ‘proofs’ of Christ’s existence through reliability of the gospels (week 1), to why he died on the cross (week 2), and then into issues of Christian discipleship which assume the participant has already made a positive decision about being a follower of Christ.

However we found that the Y Course, though having a much better step-by-step structure and apologetic logic, and drawing on the Alpha Course style, also had its weaknesses, which pointed up the strengths of the content of Alpha - such as the simplicity of each section of the Alpha course.

Another criticism would be that in Alpha and Y, and many of the copy-cat variants, it is assumed that a group of people will be happy to listen to someone talking uninterruptedly for 20-45 mins. We therefore moved on to a presentation involving NOOMA dvds - which tend to be less speaker-focused, but these raised a fresh set of issues!

The real issue for us has been the initial receptivity of the group receiving the presentation. Most of our sessions have been something approaching a weekly riot, yet some have become not only adherents of the church as a result, but committed followers of Christ - which is the overarching goal. We do seem to attract a highly eclectic clientele however; which has made me long for quiet, polite, thoughtful professional upper middle class people who discuss things sensibly and respectfully. Maybe such people don’t really exist.

This isn’t coming to the heart of the issue however, which is: how should the Christian faith be presented to interested (or co-erced) enquirers in a post-modern culture? Is there a postmodern version of things which would work any more successfully in today’s culture than Alpha? And what needs to be changed in the way of theological emphasis or format? For though the shortcomings of Alpha are easily identified, it is proving less easy to provide satisfying alternatives of whatever theological persuasion.