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.

My question is the other way round: Not what can they learn from me but What is the challenge of Alpha to the emergent conversation?

We use Alpha (still and with some of the brightest students in the UK) though the first time I ever really stopped and thought about the material for teaching it I was (and remain) amazed how like simple evnagelical bible-teaching it was. And then the DVDs -very plummy accents, West London culture (perhaps you heard the one about how many members of HTB it takes to change a light bulb…) and still bascially a grainy video of posh bloke talking to a pretty(,!) docile congregation. There’s no effective follow-up material (contrast Emmaus) and it largely works to get semi-Churched (Anglicans) back in the active fold (with many many impressive exceptions).

Perhaps one thing that commends it to people is one that a postmodern analysis can’t assign to it: simple truth allied to real experience of God. Sorry but I just can’t get past that. Being in reaction against the idea that these things (anything) can be that simple, both of these things can blind us to their attractiveness. In post modern talk such things are understood as ‘simplistic’, ‘certitude’ and ‘shallow subjectivism’ etc., we don’t want to be dismissive but we just can’t help feeling superior to those we have left behind or grown up from. This the zeitgeist I am wading around in: start with sociological categories and move toward theology and ally this to a narrative about modernity and postmodernity in culture being the same and inevitable journey as the one from personal naivety to maturity. Of course there is no such thing as inevitability in the progress of history (other than that a faithful adn just God will bring it all to his good and promised end). In the wake of 9/11 America is seething with New Calvinism rampant. If the emerging Church scene is to grow to maturity it will have to stop being a small disillusioned group of reactive intellectuals dressing up in the thin clothing of a missional agenda and demonstrate an ability to be truly transformative movement for a mass of people. And there’s the rub - anything mass is understood as essentially an inevitably coersive and thus inherently undesireable. Simplitically, this is the challenge of mass popular relgious movement in our global village and thus the challenge of Alpha to the emergent church: stop sniping, do something that works on an international scale and then we’ll listen.

But more deeply Alpha issues another challenge: the question of truth. Know what key truths (avoiding denominational controversy and faddishness) about the life of faith you think really matter and bang on about them for all you’re worth. Alpha is so propositional that it does my head in but it’s not pretending that it is anything other than a start, you can eat and discuss to your heart’s content and the basic ideas are so simple they are really unobjectionable for those who are not the scarred, sophisticated or disillusioned of many long church battles but the people off the street who know nowt of Jesus or Christian faith other that that it is boring, irrelevant or untrue.