Course helps believers, doubters find answers

Lin Hopkins had been an atheist for 15 years when she reluctantly agreed to attend an Alpha Course at the Atlanta Vineyard Church in Peachtree Corners. By the end of the course several months later, the 30-year-old’s belief system had been turned upside down. And now she runs the Alpha Course at the Atlanta Vineyard.

Churches across Gwinnett and in 150 countries around the world are embracing Alpha as an evangelism tool and as a means of revitalizing congregations that have lost their spiritual fervor.

“It’s a safe forum to have your questions answered,” said Hopkins, who is halfway through a course that includes a Buddhist, a Jehovah’s Witness, and a number of atheists and agnostics.

Dale Welch, who coordinated the Alpha Course for McKendree United Methodist in Lawrenceville for the last four years, has watched some 250 people from all denominations and belief systems come through the program at his church, one of the first of more than a dozen congregations in Gwinnett to offer Alpha.

“People have a lot of questions,” he said. “You get people who have no belief, or people who have questions, or people who’ve been attending church all their lives but don’t really know what they believe. By the end they feel they’re starting their journey. They’ve gotten answers they never even realized.”

Begun in the late 1970s at Holy Trinity Brompton, an Anglican Church in London, Alpha is now offered by more than 28,000 programs in 45 languages worldwide, according to its international Web site.

Courses typically run for 12 weeks with participants meeting once a week in the evening for dinner, followed by a talk on some aspect of the Christian faith. Most churches don’t charge for the course but may accept donations for the meal and a workbook. After the lecture — either watched on video or given live — the class divides into small groups for discussions.

“That’s where the fun starts,” said Welch. “They start bonding; they start trusting each other. They don’t feel like anything is too stupid to ask.”

Most courses include a weekend retreat that adds to the bonding, and participants often stay together for further small group study when the course ends, said Welch.

When Alpha began, its focus was on new Christians, but in 1990 Holy Trinity Brompton’s Nicky Gumbel began leading the course and broadened its reach to those outside the church. His videotaped lectures explore such questions as “Why did Jesus die?” “Why and how do I pray?” and “How does God guide us?”

Arina Meeuwsen, coordinator and lay leader of Alpha at Peachtree Corners Presbyterian, first heard about the course on a visit to Holland. When she returned from her trip, she signed up for a course at an Episcopal church in Marietta.

“It’s almost one of those things where you come to the end, and you have to say, ‘This God really makes sense,’ ” she said.

Even longtime church members find they learn from Alpha, say coordinators.

Meeuwsen recalls a 70-year-old man who had been in the church his whole life, but hadn’t understood the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life.

It’s the kind of situation that can be the greatest challenge to Alpha discussion leaders, said Hopkins, of the Atlanta Vineyard Church. “It’s really a temptation to start teaching or preaching,” she said, but Alpha’s literature stresses the importance of leaders being “simply another member of the group who is helping to make the discussion happen.”

“The primary thing,” said Hopkins, “is that you’re not there to answer the question so much as to ask the right questions so that people can discover their own answers.”

And they do, said Robert Neal, the new Alpha director at McKendree United Methodist.

“It’s been gratifying to watch people blossom,” he said. “Many have stepped up and become leaders in the church.”

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