How long does a typical Student Alpha course run for?

Student Alpha runs for seven weeks, whereas the Alpha course is 10 or 11 weeks in length.

Why is Student Alpha only seven weeks long? Have you cut out some of the talks?

It’s seven weeks long so that it fits into a university term, which in the UK tends to be about 10 weeks. We haven’t cut any of the talks out as they are all really important. Instead we have ‘squeezed’ the talks down by merging some of them together. For example: What about the Church and Telling Others on Student Alpha is actually two separate talks on the Alpha course.

Do I need to be good at giving talks to run Student Alpha?

No. The end. (You can run Student Alpha without giving a talk at all. All the Student Alpha talks are available in video format to download and watch from the resources page.  You can just download them, find somewhere to put your laptop so all your mates can watch, click play and relax. Easy peasy!)

When will the Student Alpha DVD be released for sale?

We currently do not have a date for the DVD release but are hoping it will be released for sale by the end of 2011.  We will keep you all updated via the website, twitter and facebook.

Can we charge a fee for people to come on Student Alpha?

It’s very important to us that people are not charged for coming on the course. Evangelist Billy Graham said it’s really important that people can hear the gospel free of charge. If you prefer, you could always ask for a donation towards food, but don’t make it compulsory.

Is it possible to run Student Alpha without the weekend or day?

No, unfortunately not – it just wouldn’t be Alpha. We’ve found that the weekend or day with teaching on the Holy Spirit is one of the most crucial parts of the course. When the Methodist Church did a survey of all the churches that were running Alpha, they found that there were a handful of churches where Alpha was not working that well, and there were also a handful of churches that had cut out the weekend or the day on the Holy Spirit. They were the same churches.

Do we have to have sung worship each week on Student Alpha?

No, not necessarily. We will leave it up to you whether you think it would work or not, depending on your course. For example, if it’s just you and two mates in your kitchen, leading worship with a guitar might be a bit awkward. There are other ways of including a 'worship' element – like watching a youtube video of some worship or putting on a worship CD. You might also like to put on some non-worship Christian music whilst you’re eating supper together.