Alpha course
program of Christian evangelism
The Alpha course is an evangelistic course that seeks to introduce the basics of the Christian faith through a series of talks and discussions. It is described by its organisers as "an opportunity to explore the meaning of life". Alpha courses are run in churches, homes, workplaces, prisons, universities and a wide variety of other locations. The course began in Britain and is run around the world by various Christian denominations.
History
Alpha originated in 1977 with the work of Charles Marnham, a curate at Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), a parish of the Church of England in London. It started as a course for church members regarding the basics of beliefs commonly held by many believers in Christ, but then began to be used as an introduction for those interested in the faith. John Irvine, Marnham's successor curate at HTB, took over the running of the course in 1981 and developed the 10-week format that continues to this day. In 1985 Nicky Lee took on the course, and in 1990 Nicky Gumbel, then also curate at Holy Trinity, took over the running of the course at the invitation of Sandy Millar (vicar at that time) and oversaw its revision and expansion.
Alpha grew rapidly in Britain in the 1990s, from just four courses in 1991 to 2,500 in 1995. It reached a peak in 1998, when 10,500 courses were run.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q679199. The Library of Congress control number is sh2004010592. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1981, 1985 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alpha course” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.