Stephen Hunt's analysis of the Alpha program's charismatic evangelism strategy

Saturated Evangelism

Analysis of Stephen Hunt's "The Alpha Program: Charismatic Evangelism for the Contemporary Age"

In "The Alpha Program: Charismatic Evangelism for the Contemporary Age," Stephen Hunt reveals that the British Christianity succeeded in its quest of evangelism through a rather simple program that was shorn of pressure and rigidity for the newcomer. The main basis of this program called "Alpha" was designed as a very simple and easy way for newcomers as well as those followers seeking to revitalize their concepts of Biblical Evangelism. Alpha was specifically designed to attract the attention of the modern world.

The program asked many simple questions to the new comers to engage them into a discussion and arouse curiosity. Simple questions of the form, "Who is Jesus? How do other people perceive Jesus? What do you expect to ask Jesus given you encounter Him?" were some of the opening questions Alpha sought to elicit answers from the guests and first timers to the Church. Alpha sought to weave local cultural ethos and only a mundane version of Charismatic evangelism. It toned down the rhetoric associated with the norm of repentance, salvation and the concept of heaven and hell that was associated with the Decade of Evangelism that had received tepid response.

The course is so designed that the newcomers are not required to enroll or register, nor are they pressurized to commit to religion at any point of time during the course. The Church that runs the course waits for their response without following them up seeking their reflections. Those who have lingering doubts are encouraged to enroll into a course called "Searching Issues."

The "Alpha" is a well designed church -- growth oriented strategy along the lines of mass consumption through proper branding similar to what is evident in the commercial sector. This evangelical pursuit has a defined brand image and works on differentiation. The standardization of the product is attained by sending HTB (Holy Trinity, Brompton) trainers to local churches that wish to run this program. The instructors from the HTB also visit local churches on request. The Churches that seek to follow "Alpha" can avail of many different kinds of literature in written as well as videos forms- a distinct break from the past. In this way the HTB can reach the remotest of churches in localities where only a few parishioners enroll. Thus, the effect of Alpha aims to work its way upwards from the grass-root level.

Alpha lays emphasis on the way to conduct things- in a non-traditional way. In order to ensure that the Churches following its course and methodology understand the principles correctly, HTB has been meticulous. It supplies its associated churches with videos like How to Run the Alpha Course, Telling Others:

The Alpha Initiative in addition also guides the member churches through video recordings of the courses run by itself. The Churches are advised to do things in a certain way while following Alpha as depicted through the various media brought out by HTB. Indeed a model "alpha" session has been created in which the content, manner and duration of sessions is clearly underlined. Nicky Gumbel illustrates the point by likening running "alpha" without directions to driving a car without learning how to.

The "Alpha" method has a wide appeal and ensuing success. It has got a veritable mixture of contemporary mass appeal through the media that it uses along with its diluted accent on traditional methodologies and stricter ways of the traditional church on one hand and at the same time carries along with it the percepts of repentance, obedience, punishment to hell and ideas like salvation (albeit toned down). The high-profile nature of "Alpha" has divided the believers into two along the lines of what Charismatic movement did in the 1960's and 70's. The conservatives and the traditionalists (Anglo-Catholics, Protestant evangelicals, and the Roman Catholics are apprehensive of its ecumenical stance) have pointed out the impropriety of this form evangelism citing different theological percepts and strictures. Certain liberalists have also taken exception to the "Alpha" for being partly conservative in its approach. However, those of the congregation already following the Charismatic path of the '60s and '70's have taken to "Alpha" with a welcoming stance.

Research carried out on the acceptance of the program has revealed that while more than 4000 of the 24000 churches in the nation (The UK) has enrolled for it, many of the respondents in the survey (41%) knew someone personally who had learned at the program. 12% were aware of Alpha though it symbol and 16% knew it to be a Christian course. The middle class have very well received the program as it reached out to people who could not make it to the Church owing to professional compulsions. Alpha reached out to people of all nationalities and cultures and people from all regions took lessons or later enrolled for Christianity through alpha - A survey reveals 86.2% white guests, black 6.2%, Asian 2.2%, and 5.2% "other" ethnic categories.

The only worrying factor was that most of the guests belonged to the age group of 30-40, in spite of the fact that Alpha is Charismatic in its orientation.

Alpha has grown worldwide and is making its impact known in all sectors of society. The research done here is based on the survey carried out in the UK. More research is needed to appropriate its reach in the other parts of the world where it has spread its wings and is firmly entrenched as an evangelist program. Alpha has mass appeal and the Church needs more evangelists. Thus Alpha will now be seen as a measure of success of different evangelist methodologies in future. In contemporary times, the need of evangelism are met by "Alpha" course as it chooses a path that toes a middle line between the traditionalist and staunch conservationists on one hand and the very liberal Charismatic on the other.

Analysis of Robert Seiple's, "From Bible Bombardment to Incarnational Evangelism: A Reflection on Christian Witness and Persecution"

In his treatise, Robert Seiple has highlighted the desperation shown by evangelists in Saudi Arabia. The incident goes thus: Filipino evangelists volunteer to usher Christianity in the Muslim nation. They smuggle a score of thousand copies of Bible into the unsuspecting courtyards of the homes which also hit some of the residents and soon enough the masquerading preachers are arrested and sent off to jail.

This incident allows us to view the situation through two entirely different perspectives- one, that there are nations where secularism and freedom of choosing one's faith and religion is non-existent. Secondly, missionary zeal should follow the three major principles of Motivation, message and methodology to be successful in its evangelic pursuit. Too many preachers are motivated to believe that God expects us to imbue Biblical orthodoxy in whatever way possible.

That however, Seiple argues is a naive inference of the commandments. Quite on the contrary, God expects us to follow the incarnational, ministerial path he has depicted through his life. We honor him by following the prescribed methodology of true Christianity while being true to the message and in our motivation.

With the end of the Cold War, and the rapid liberalization wave that engulfs the globe, there is an urgent need to spread the "word." He should be accepted as a savior and Lord and thereby people will atone for their sins. However, desperate attempts such as those related above towards international proselytism could rebound and hurt Christianity more than bring benefits. Such methods cannot last for long and cannot be built up upon. They may, on the contrary prove harmful to the cause of evangelism.

The evangelists will have to plow the land, sow the seeds, water it, wait for the growth, nourish and nurture the crop for it to blossom and spread the message. God has shown that way to us. He lived amongst us, took care of the poor and disabled, allowed them repentance, and thus showed the road to salvation.

A Chinese follower has put it very simply. He says that if you want to spread the 'word' here, live here, learn the local language and culture- in short reincarnate yourself just like Jesus did by living a human life through all its trials and tribulations. Christianity needs time growing up to. It is a process, not a product. Do not hasten, have patience, lead by example through your deeds.

Analysis of Sergei Golovin's "worldview: the missing dimension of evangelism in post-communist society"

In the article, "worldview: the missing dimension of evangelism in post-communist society" by Sergei Golovin, an aspect of evangelism that is often construed as the most impressive way for evangelism is exposed for its ineffectuality. The specific instance is the opening up of the Soviet Union for cultural and religious ingressions on its soil. Many missionaries and congregations who made huge expenses to reach the masses seized the opportunity. The spiritually starved citizens took to Christianity profoundly, too. The Church believed that it had reaped the harvest. However, less than a decade later, the attendance to Churches fell below what had existed before the liberalization. The Church had failed as never before.

That is a cause of introspection and deliberation for the core of Christianity across the many congregations. A revisit to the Biblical practice is ordained. The scriptures do not allow for the kind of evangelism as exists today in the east European regions: they are the four Spiritual calls, those of opening one's heart to accept Jesus, the call of the altar, the invitation to the decision of Jesus and the repentance. The practices in these Western communities have developed over time and adhere to the cultural ethos existent during the intervening period. Any evangelism practice has to be in consonance with the cultural roots that the locals follow. Without such consideration all activities pertaining to religion are deemed to fail. The evangelists will have to study the cultural roots of the society where they wish to make their presence felt. The word will have to respond to those basic beliefs that people of local regions believe in and practice.

The most important observation to be borne in mind by evangelists is that only verse makes a reference to the "knocking on the door" act- that too, on the door of Church and not on the door of non-believers or others' hearts. The Church should realize the essence of the Gospel. The success of evangelism of the era prior to the twentieth century is misleading in the contemporary times on two counts- one, that the crusaders approached areas where Christianity already prevailed and second group who were yet to be converted. It is forgotten conveniently that the second group was not atheist. Thus, mislead, the evangelists apply the percept and conviction of repentance equally to all they approach, and inevitably fail. Thus, their mission has turned into a technology and the spiritual content is missing.

The study of the Russian region (Actually Ukrainian) gave up the following salient points on their view about Christianity in general and the Concept of God.

The Ukrainians believe in a supernatural force that is not necessarily the same as Jesus of the Bible or Christianity. Their culture believes in miracles and supernatural powers. They do not believe that the Institution of Church has any relevance to truth or that it has any semblance of effect on the daily lives of people. The Christians, who are only believers and not necessarily Churchgoers, do not see any divinity in a human being. They do not conform to the ideas of abortion or suicide in the same way as the Orthodoxy does. At the most 50% believe that there may be afterlife and hardly 20% are believers of reincarnation or resurrection. Ukrainian believers (read Christians) are prone to blind faith and accept beliefs that cannot be substantiated.

Having thus understood the Post Communism context, the 'process' rather than a quick-fix therapy is the proper way forward for evangelism to succeed in the East European region. No instant change of mind-set should be expected or sought. The acceptance will follow a process of forgiveness through justification, cleansing, and then repentance.

The main causes of failure understood from the regional and cultural viewpoint is that the Leadership program failed in Ukraine, the post-communism area of thrust for evangelists owing to the difference in perception of the coining of the term "leader," which has very different meanings for the local population and those who follow the Bible. The second important point of contention for acceptance was that the Ukrainian people chose to seek secularism, as they knew no other system as a society for many centuries. The local converts used commercial methods of spreading the Gospel, as they were not inclined to spirituality or were asked to forsake feelings of spiritualism forcefully through decades of communist rule.

Thus in the context of Ukrainian people the evangelists have to take into account the worldview persuasion. The campaigns carried out evangelists are looking for instant results, which requires of them to compromise on many of the basics of Christianity like Communion without Confession, baptism without church discipline, preaching forgiveness without repentance, and grace without the cross. Such measures cannot be long lasting and have been proven to fail.

Analysis of Thomas, and Dave's, "Results of a Collaborative Research Project in Gathering Evangelism Stories."

In Results of a Collaborative Research Project in Gathering Evangelism Stories, Thomas, and Dave reveal that during the spring 2002, the authority of the 'National Network of Youth Ministries' approached and indicated their willingness to know which factors of evangelism are most customarily prevailing among the modern adolescent's conversion stories. The chosen members had deliberated on how the professors as well as students would reach this integrated national youth evangelism research. Recommendations from the 2003 AYME conference led to a methodological pilot study being conducted. Eventually, methodological alterations for the interviews were made. Following the submission of the results of methodological pilot study at the 2004 AYME conference, as many as fourteen professors from twelve different colleges/seminaries demonstrated their willingness to take part in a research study.

Study on transition to cults has denoted that the physical as well as psychological detachment from the normal situations and relationships along with the deeper interactions with group members is playing a key role in the transitions. Cults noticed that camps and retreats are vital in their recruitment attempts as the social stigma adhered to the membership and the probable opposition from peers and family members of the possible converts.

Instructions on sampling included five unique steps being given to the professors for ensuring a dependable process. First step was to select and map the public high school district(s) in the locality of the researching college/seminary. The results of this step -- a mode of convenience sampling -- must have led to a map with discrete boundaries having drawn on it. The next step in the sampling directed the involved researchers to recognize and catalog all the church as well as other ministry organizations located within the boundaries of selected high school districts. Cautious and extensive attachment to the instructions was thought to be a kind of saturation sampling for this research study. Third step in the sampling process was devised as a sort of referral sampling. In this particular step, church and the ministry authority were to be approached to see whether they are aware if any 16 to 20-year-olds who had started to pursue Jesus Christ during the recent years, say 2003.

Researchers were provided with guidance and directions for helping them protect the names from the ministry leaders so that the young individuals could be approached for having talks on realization about their newfound belief. Fourth step of the sampling process requested sponsoring professors to find out whether there were sufficient possible interviews secured for the magnitude as well as the resources of the student group that has been deployed. Final step in the process was to discuss with every interested and qualified research referral, in-line with the script that had open-minded questions being followed by a couple of forced-choice questions.

A fixed percentage of religious young people turned to be the teenage converts who were viewing all or most of their earlier ages as a non-Christian. Few of these converts were brought up in families with great levels of religious connection. Other teenagers pray to get Christ at some point prior to the age of ten. Here, two cases are apparent: Teenage transitions of the people with more of religious childhood days are less congregated around certain contributing factors when compared with teenage transitions of the people with non-religious kinds of childhood. Christian young communities that generate teenage transitions might tend to impact few of these transitions to de-value religious experiences of their childhoods and to consider themselves as not real Christian before their adolescent transition experiences.

Study on religious transitions can be dated back to 100s of years and has created a huge literature. Leaders in this field noted that the teenage appeared to be a prime time for transitions. However, since 1960s, relatively less research only has been conducted on teenage Christian transitions. Rather, most of the research has concentrated towards producing and evaluating prototypes of transition by making use of data collected from small samples of recruits to the religious cults. More frequently, Christian transitions suffer one or more of the following constraints: Utility of older adolescents/young adults for generalizing of all adolescents, convenience sampling method, failing to test the important relationships among factors, information collected years after the conversion time, or an explicit concentration towards personality than the environmental characteristics.

Analysis of Ideas for Evangelism, by David Cloud

In an analysis of Ideas for Evangelism, David Cloud begins and states that an efficient and successful evangelistic church outshine starts with holy priests who lift the challenge of teaching, encouraging, and directing the gathering to accomplish this crucial role before God. Therefore, the main key to evangelism in the gathering lies in the hands of church leaders. It is vital that the priests to be holy men who are passionate about evangelism and the world expeditions. Also, they need to promote this passion to the gathering, and they need to bring this often in other people who could help stirring up this passion. This must be the natural propensity for Christians, via the ordinary job and cares of lives along with the natural propensity towards spiritual religious slothfulness for turning inward and for losing the passion to win the unprotected to the Christ.

The aim of a church in all the ventures is to be loyal to God's Word. The priests must not only guide the church in evangelism through their example but also by teaching and challenging the mankind. Priests could do only a little part of the evangelism. Their main job is to preach the gathering so that they could do the work of evangelism (Ephesians 4:11-13). It's God's wish for each and every believer to be an evangelist at some level. The priests must start and conduct a preaching program that completely and repetitively trains the gathering to work for finding the lost. This doesn't require being the same material utilized again and again. The priests must always be on the lookout for new materials to be utilized in this job. Another aspect towards successful evangelism in the church is to motivate and utilize the missionaries. There is a department grant of evangelism that is not provided to all the Christians (Eph. 4:11). Although, all the Christians are responsible for spreading the Gospel (Mark 16:15) and all the preachers must do the job of an evangelist (2 Tim. 4:5), not all the Christians are evangelists.

One among the most significant things that could be done by a priest for promoting evangelism through his gathering is to praise and highlight the works of gospel. There are numerous ways to accomplish this: Stating it more frequently during the messages, conducting consistent training sessions, introducing special speakers, necessarily involving the church workers in evangelism. Another key aspect of evangelistic training sessions would be the mastering of Scripture. The better the members learn the scriptures, the more efficiently they could see the Christ.

The God's people are required to be taught on how to manage all kinds of situations that could arise in evangelism, how to handle different cults, fake religions, how to deal with excuses which are made by unprotected, how to protect the Bible and gospel as opposed to the usual challenges that are made.

Well-planned evangelism technique would allow the departments to contact more and more people. Evangelistic departments must have a regular course to help motivating and guiding the members to recall the practical paragraphs of Scriptures. This could be incorporated into all the teaching ministries of the church. The Sunday school programs could recall the Scriptures. The evangelistic programs could involve a 'Scripture memory plan' while the 'Discipleship' programs could involve 'Scripture recollection'. The complete church ministry could recall the Scripture altogether at the time of services.