Student Alpha

I am spending August preparing for the next year ahead. When I look at my calendar up until July 2011 I feel a mixture of huge excitement and panic! I have trips planned to the USA four times, Africa, Malaysia, Korea, India twice, Hong Kong, Singapore, Norway, Germany and also we have everyone coming here to the Alpha Headquarters in June from all across the globe for Alpha International week. There will be about 1500-2000 people coming from over 100 nations to spend a week together, it will be such fun but that is why I need the whole month of August to plan!!

I feel it is such a privilege to be part of what God is doing through Alpha and all its related ministries. When I started working with Nicky Gumbel in 1994, no one had any idea what God was planning. I remember Nicky mentioning in the summer of ’94 at our church holiday that he thought God had said it was possible to reach 5000 courses. At the time that seemed impossible as there were only 200 running in the UK. Now there are over 45,000 courses running in 169 countries. Over 15 million people like myself have done the course and we believe it is possible now to reach 100 million over the next ten years. Then we really will begin to make a difference.

I have a particular interest in the student world. I had been brought up going to church as a child but when I left home to go to college, it was then that I decided that I wanted nothing more to do with church or Christianity. That was when my life began to take on a new direction. Those at University are the future leaders of our countries whether in government, education, banking or medicine and what a positive impact they could make if they heard about Jesus during their student days. Thank goodness I did Alpha eventually but too late not to make many mistakes that I now really regret.

Just to give you a little taste of what Alpha is doing, we made this video at the recent Europe,Middle East and Africa Conference click here.