Student Alpha

Nine years ago the IFES-movement in the Netherlands started to use Student Alpha as their main evengelism tool.

IFES (International Fellowship of Evanmgelical Students) is a worldwide organisation that support Christian students and Christian Unions on campuses. They are the umbrella organisation of UCCF in the UK.

Student Alpha’s main man in Holland is Edwin Hamelink, who works for IFES, loves Jesus and knows everything there is to know about Student Alpha.

Student Alpha, working in partnership with IFES in the Netherlands has grown to 50 courses running in 30 different places, including churches and halls, McDonalds, fraternity houses and night clubs.

Edwin says: “Every year 500 students hear of the good news of Jesus Christ. More than half of this group continues exploring and living the faith by taking part in (seeker) biblestudy-groups, becoming members of christian student unions, churches and other disciple-groups.”

For students attending the course it is an amazing opportunity to ask all their questions about God, religion and life whilst having lots of fun and enjoying a good (free!) meal. After attending a course in Groningen a student and former atheist became a believer and wrote this:

“What I like about Student Alpha is that you can have good conversations with other students about faith in a very relaxed, informal setting. I was not forced to do or find anything and it was very nice that there were a lot of non-believers that had the same ideas as I’ve had.”

And for students that are running the course it really is an adventure with God. They learn to trust God and also they have the privilege to see their friends coming to know Jesus.