by Morgan Reed

In this so-aptly-named “Covidtide” season, meeting new people is difficult. It seems to predominantly occur through neighborhood friendships or online discovery, which is difficult to target geographically. All the third spaces (e.g. pubs, coffee shops, etc.) just aren’t there in the way they were a year ago, so at the Franconia-Springfield Mission, we have been trying to figure out how we can meet new people so that we might see the Gospel transform lives in the Franconia, Springfield, and Kingstowne regions. We don’t have the silver bullet, but we are trying things and evaluating. In this season we are trying the Alpha Course Online and I thought it might be helpful to reflect on what it is like to run this course as a new church plant.

In January we began our first Alpha Course Online (it will run through mid-March). This also gave us the opportunity to partner with St. John’s Lutheran Church in Franconia for shared Gospel partnership in our region. As anyone who has run Alpha knows, there is a lot of work on the front-end to make it happen: planning the course, recruiting and training leaders, creating signups, advertising, planning a retreat, and sending a load of emails to everyone each week. I wanted to share some of the blessings and challenges of this course as your church plans an Alpha Online:

Challenges:

• It truly is a great deal of administrative work to train people, get people registered, and keep them informed.

• If people in your church have not been having gospel conversations with neighbors and “teeing up” an ask to Alpha, it will take a few extra weeks/months to prepare a church for these conversations.

• Not everyone has the same familiarity with or ability to access Zoom. We have a few people who have to join the Zoom call by being on speaker phone with someone else on the Zoom call.

Blessings:

• At the beginning, we decided to budget for Uber Eats gift cards for every household that signed up. This was a way to encourage people to support local restaurants in their area.

• Other churches wanted to participate. Shepherd’s Heart Anglican has joined in this Alpha Course and the three churches together have experienced the joy of shared ministry.

• Seekers are learning about Jesus in community. We have had at least one person that has serious questions about the Christian faith. This person has been an absolute blessing and although they live a few hours away, they plan on coming to the retreat because they feel a part of this group.

• It is a lot cheaper to do Alpha Online. There is no caterer, no rental costs, etc. This makes Alpha easier to do for the first time when your church has a humble budget (like a church plant).

• Our launch team is learning how to be gracious in conversations, listen more than speak, and field peoples’ questions with a spirit of charity. These are valuable building blocks for our church’s DNA as we grow.

As you plan your Alpha Course, begin at least 3 months ahead of when you want to run the course. This will allow you to create marketing, plan the course and recruit volunteers. Shorten the course since it is online. We are doing 90 minutes and that seems to be the maximum amount of time people can be on a Zoom call. We have been watching the videos that Alpha produced. For volunteers, along with recruiting discussion leaders and the emcees, recruit people to rotate the following positions: Small group coordinator (the person who breaks people into their Zoom Breakout Rooms), tech help (for those who may be having a hard time getting onto the call), and at least one welcome person (so that people who arrive late can be greeted by someone). These were the roles unique to doing an online format. We used Planning Center Online, an online church database software to house our volunteer schedules, media files, and order of the evening, but you may have another system that works for you.

Because everything is online, you really do not know who will come, or from how far away; however, even if someone signed up from Anchorage, Alaska, I would be excited to see how the Gospel might transform someone’s life in another geographic location through this virtual course. The seeker who signed up for our course actually lives close to another ACNA parish a few hours away where a friend of mine is an Associate Rector. I am excited to see how this virtual community might turn into real life transformation and I am delighted that we got to be part of this person’s journey of faith. Doing Alpha Online has been a blessing to our church and I look forward to the ways that it will provide language for evangelism in our church plant.

The Rev. Morgan Reed has been called to plant a church of “common people in common prayer for uncommon transformation” in Franconia, Springfield, and Kingstowne, Virginia.