Student Alpha

Miriam Swaffield, third year student from G2, part of St. Michael Le Belfrey Church in York gives us the low down on the amazing Student Alpha course they ran this term! Read on, be inspired and come and join us at Conference Week 2011 to hear more stories like this one and to find out how you could run an Alpha course too...

That’s how I’d describe our first attempt at a church-wide Student Alpha. Turns out it’s a very different ball-game putting on an Alpha course in the city centre of York, rather than in someone’s front room.

We didn’t really have a plan you know…

I mean, we had a team, we had a venue, some good speakers lined up … but we had no idea what this would look like in practice. So, we just hit the ground running, and let me encourage you: out of a team of about fifteen, only four of us had ever actually done Student Alpha before. God doesn’t wait until we think we are good enough, experienced enough, planned enough. Sometimes he just says “Go for it and watch me take this further than you can imagine.” What did ‘further than you can imagine’ look like for us?

Well, for starters we had a small group (that increasingly became a rather big group) of international students. This is new to our church. We consciously wanted to make ourselves far more accessible to International students this year, and God went the extra mile and brought them in, in droves. And as a result we’re having a joint baptism service with the local Chinese church, where seven Chinese students are being baptised and counting.

Turns out, the gospel is still true, Jesus still saves, and God is still strong when we are weak.

Secondly, I can’t fail to mention ‘Homeless Alpha’… a curve ball to say the least, but somehow every week, we ended up having one small group comprised of guys living on the streets of York. It became standard for a student to walk into Student Alpha with a homeless person they’d just met and invited in. Week after week they returned, joining in more and more until they were helping clear up, praying with the team, and even leading a rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ on our final week.

There was nothing in ‘our plan’ about catering for the homeless. There was nothing in the Leaders Training about welcoming the outcasts, the addicts and the unwashed. But I wouldn’t have wanted Student Alpha any other way. We would have been the poorer without Jason, Adam, Jacko, Paul and Jo. And guests and team alike I believe will never look at a homeless person the same way again.

There are almost too many testimonies to tell you about to be honest; we saw healing in action, people come to know Jesus and we nearly broke a pricey projector when one of our speakers threw a Bible across the room in an over-enthusiastic ‘giving out of the Word’… And we’ve learnt.

Will we run another big Student Alpha this time next year? Yes. Have we learnt from our mistakes, our weaknesses and our times of faith and not by sight? Yes. Did God use our big vision and passions to share the gospel as effectively as possible to our generation, even though it seemed messy to those of us attempting to lead? Yes.

This goes bigger than us. Life is messy. Beautifully so. Take a risk. Don’t wait until you are perfect, until you think you’re ready to run Student Alpha. Go for it, and let our perfect God do immeasurably more than you can imagine.

If you would like to train your team to run Student Alpha or would like to meet the Student Alpha team, join us at the Alpha Conference on June 6 & 7. Click here to book.

For more info about Student Alpha email us now studentalpha@alpha.org