ALPHA Group

Shawn

Anyone familiar with this? Any personal experiances? I am interested in going.

diamondblue1974

In the UK this is a christian bible study program which according to a colleague at work is very informative and enlightening; apparently it encourages independent research! how novel would that be?

lurk

hye shawn

some friends i had in the local church told me a bit about it.there comments wern't very positive im afraid though im sure there are lots of ppl who feel differantly and like it.

BTW this info is second hand from a friend who had friedns who went on an ALPHA course.

my friends friends got involved with the ALPHA group when their church went from C of E to evangelical.they were a little freaked out by it and did there best to avoid going back.

The new vicar at their church was very much that way inclined ,with his arrival come the new way of thinking such as holding your arms in the air so the holy spirit could travel down one arm and up the other!!!! he also so like to do a bit of mediumship, for example in the church service he would do stuff like announcing that he was feeling someone in the congregation was going on holiday and how could feel how nervous they were. some ppl left cause of hat they saw as breaking certain bible guide lines.he introduced the night dance sessions where music would be played extremely loud and ppl would dance for jesus type of thing (there was a name for this type of night but i cant remeber what ti was but ti was being done in other evangelical churchs too)

amongst the new things he brought with him were the ALPHA courses. people were sought out and pressure was put on them to attend the courses ,in the end some went along with it but came back from the course totally freaked out and went in a sort of secret groups that talked about how they didnt like it and were worried by the behaviour of the people there, they didn't feel able to say so to the vicar.they told me that people woud get hysterical ,Children were throwing them selves about on the floor apparently being cleansed. My contacts ,not old fuddie duddies but a few young ppl as well as easy going mature people, left the church that summer unable to stomach it.

I had already left the church and was into the WTS by this time and becoame even more convinced that i was right to leave .The vicar would not even look at me or acknowledge me once he knew,Apparently later the new vicar became unpopular due to his rude and some times very harsh treatment of some members of the church and moved on to make over another Cof E congregation.

i think you take a risk with all christian groups of getting bogged down in mans version what it means to be christian.go carefully shawn and remeber theres only one person between you and god and thats jesus.good luck with it all and please would love to know how it works out .i really do hope its more positive than ive been able to say from second had info.

lurk

Pleasuredome

apparently it encourages independent research!

from what i've heard, that maybe true enough, as long as the conclusions you come to fall inline with their beliefs.

Gordy

We ran ALPHA at our church (Pentecostal) last year. Its a very simple study of basic Christian beliefs. No one is forced to believe what it says.

A short talk is given on that nights subject, then you split into groups and discuss it. They provide a manual which is just basically scriptures to look at and discuss.

No one is "forced" to accept the teachings of what ever church is running the course, it could be held in a Cof E, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, etc. I found that someone would raise a question, and you would end up discussing that instead, for most of the time.

The only ones round our area who would not run it was the Catholic church, because it makes no mention of Mary.

In fact we had a guy who was training to be a RC priest come to ours. From what he learnt on the course he left the RC and now attends a Baptist church.

We had about 80 attend, of which 20 accepted Christ at the end, only about 6 continued to come to our church, others went to churches closer to there homes.

DanTheMan

No one is "forced" to accept the teachings of what ever church is running the course

Well, that word "forced" is really tricky. While I'm sure nobody holds a gun to your head or anything, let's not overlook the subtle dynamics of group pressure that are undoubtedly present in the situation.

bebu

I've been looking into this group carefully. It is a format for allowing non-Christians of every stripe to ask questions and discuss issues regarding God, Christianity, etc. It is fairly pliable, so that any denomination--even Catholics--use it. You come to eat a dinner (free), and spend an hour yakking (no religious topics allowed). Then a presentation of a topic (Who is Jesus?, eg.) . Then the group discusses open-ended questions, which a moderator is NOT to use as a place for "preaching". They won't call you up and bug you if you decide not to attend again. That is the format... but if a church disregards the format and its attitude of allowing questions... then it is not following what the creators of this thing intended.

I guess another difference will be WHERE you go, if you attend a group. That is, if you go to a Catholic group, you'll get a Catholic spin (obviously). I bet going to a pentecostal church could be interesting... !

bebu

Brummie

In my opinion Alpha is a man made structure. The cast of characters who created it were very much into things such as "toronto blessing" and Pensicola. Alpha provides a "Holy Spirit" weekend which was the introduction of Toronto B into many quieter churches.

Toronto split many churches and many people saw a destructive side to it, others considered laughing hysterically to be a "gift!" or a "blessing". Seeing the wierd manifestations made my stomach churn and caused me a lot of headaches, eventually I left the churches, the whole thing was very destructive for many people. If your church runs alpha, lets hope it isnt taken in by the "Holy Spirit " weekend. No one needs to travel anywhere to recieve holy spirit. Its good if a church can take alpha and use the good bits and reject the rest..

I found questioning the Alpha course brought scorn from some churches who seemed to think it was Gods gift to the earth...

the_classicist

From what I've heard, Alpha can differ greatly. In BC, where it is used mainly by Catholics and Anglicans, there is no charismatic stuff as far as I know. From what I can see, they mainly learn stuff and eat.

bebu

Alpha provides a "Holy Spirit" weekend which was the introduction of Toronto B into many quieter churches.

What is this? I've never heard of Toronto B before. You got any links?

Thanks!

Beverly

ALPHA Group

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