Alpha Course Resources

I’ve had the opportunity to lead the Alpha Course several times. This course was originally developed as a discipleship program at Holy Trinity Brompton in the Church of England, but it was later found that it served very well as an evangelism program, also. I’ve used it for both purposes. I can, also, attest that it filled in many gaps in my understanding of the faith when I first took it and led it prior to becoming a pastor.

It’s been led in many different denominations and in countries all over the world. Materials are available in many different languages. I remember while serving the church in Zambia accidentally stumbling upon their office in Lusaka!

If you’re new to Alpha, I strongly encourage you to use the program as it’s setup. They provide training videos, and all the materials for the program (including books and videos) are available online for free. To access all the resources, you’ll need to setup a program. Once you’ve created your Alpha through their website, you can access the videos, books, etc…

Having led the course several times, I’ve developed a few resources that might be useful to some. This includes a set of introductory slides in Apple’s Keynote format and converted into Powerpoint format. I, also, have a sample sign-up sheet for participants.

To begin our time together, our team has prayed together, and I developed cards to lead that prayer. Depending on how you setup your program, some or all elements may apply. Additional prayers are invited, but we like to make sure to cover a few items in particular. I’ve printed this on green card stock in the past so that they last and so they’re easy to find among the other papers. You could consider laminating them as well.

I highly recommend the weekend retreat part of the program as it does well at developing community. In some cases, our small groups in Alpha have been a seed for Bible study small groups beyond Alpha. I have had a couple cases where the weekend retreat wasn’t possible, and we’ve just completed those sessions in weekly meetings. When doing that, however, there are not questions or guides for all sessions. I’ve completed questions and/or guides for sessions 8 and 10 to accommodate. Session 10 invites prayer that each individual would be filled with the Holy Spirit. In a discipleship setting and with a single leader, we’ve split into groups of two to do this with partners praying for one another.

• Session 8 Questions
• Session 10 Guide to Prayer in Groups of Two

For Session 6, I’ve found it helpful to hand out a guide to Bible translations and Bible resources. My hope is that this will make it a bit easier to find appropriate resources and encourage Bible study.

• Session 6 Bible Study Resources