The Alpha Invitation

by Gerard Long

God has given us a new and very exciting tool to help us present the Gospel in our communities. We piloted the Alpha Invitation in Lake County in the fall 07 and we saw some outstanding fruit including 150% increase in course attendees to 454 and a 233% increase in courses to 30.

A full explanation of the Alpha Invitation can be found at http://www.alphaconnected.org/invitation.aspx but I would like to highlight a few points.

· The Alpha Invitation involves Christians working together in unity (John 17:21-23, Ps133) with a vision to see their communities transformed through the Gospel

· The beauty of our Invitation model is that it can be tailored to meet local needs:
            Ø Area - small (under 500K), medium (500K – 2M) and large (over 2M)
            Ø Rural or urban
            Ø Major advertising (e.g. Billboards, cinemas etc) to minor advertising (car magnets, yard signs, posters, etc)
            Ø A few churches engaged (say under 10) to many churches involved (say over 100).

· The real power of the Invitation is that it stirs faith in the local church. It helps to mobilize the saints. To breath fresh vision into local pastors. It gets things moving. The fact that local churches are going to work together to help transform the community has a powerful impact on local Christians. And it takes minimal organization, basically:
     1. Vision casting to a group of local churches.
     2. A commitment to be involved.
     3. Attending briefing session for the Invitation and training for Alpha (the Chicago national Alpha conference would be ideal to train new Alpha teams)
     4. Encouraging local prayer
     5. Ordering the advertising material on line via the Alpha web site
     6. Running the Alpha course.

There is no reason why the fantastic fruit we witnessed in Lake County, IL can’t be replicated in communities across America. Just imagine, thousands more people being saved and coming into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is worth going for and I would like to encourage you to be bold and courageous and to start planning to run an Invitation in your community.

‘Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.'

Eph 3:20,21

With much love

Gerard