The Amen Course

Caught in a debilitating depression, Karen Cowick of Huntington Beach had lost her spiritual compass. Practicing her faith had become a mechanical, meaningless exercise.

“I went to church but didn’t believe there was a God in my life,” said Cowick, a school crossing guard and a single mother.

But last fall Cowick stumbled across a program that is blossoming in Orange County and around the world. Called the Alpha course, it is a series of structured classes on the basics of faith that Christian churches can use to expand and re-energize their congregations.

“The first night I went to the course, I was in a fog,” said Cowick, who attended at His Place Christian Fellowship in Huntington Beach. “But I kept going every Thursday night. My faith got stronger, and I believe in God again.”

The 10-week course has a proselytizing purpose: to get wavering Christians into church pews on a regular basis and to persuade agnostics to nibble on Christian theology.

The backbone of the class is a 30-minute video that features lectures by the Rev. Nicky Gumbel of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church of Brompton in London, where Alpha was conceived in the early 1970s as a Bible study class for newly converted Christians.

Then a group leader takes participants through a series of free-form discussions based on topics in a manual. Each is a question: Who is Jesus? Why and how do I pray? How can I resist evil?

Beyond helping participants to answer those questions, Alpha is designed to let them form bonds with each other--and with the sponsoring church.

The leaders are encouraged to listen, rather than talk, and to elicit the opinions of participants.

The benefit comes at a price, of course: Official materials, including videos and manuals, cost from $250 to more than $1,000, depending on what elements a church selects, said Alistair Hanna, executive director of Alpha North America, the organization that coordinates the course.

The materials come from David C. Cook Ministries in Colorado Springs, Colo., a company that is the exclusive publisher of the Alpha curriculum. A spokesman for the ministries said it has sold 170,000 Alpha manuals and more than 4,000 sets of videos in the last two years.

The interdenominational Alpha curriculum has taken hold in a wide range of churches, from Episcopal to Methodist to Catholic. Nevertheless, it’s considered too conservative for some because the Alpha material frowns on divorce, abortion, homosexuality and premarital sex.

But its proponents claim the emphasis isn’t on issues, but on Christianity.

“We target all denominations,” Hanna said. “The only agenda Alpha is trying to push is an agenda where people come into a personal relationship with their creator.”

Skeptics bristle not only at Alpha’s conservative tenets, but also at what they call the skimpiness of its theological exploration of Christianity.

“The Christian tradition is full of paradox and contradiction,” said James P. Wind, president of Alban Institute in Bethesda, Md., an independent organization that tracks trends in nationwide churches.

“How is Alpha dealing with that, with the full reality of Christianity?” he asked.

Although it is more than two decades old, Alpha gained real momentum a few years ago after Gumbel retooled the course materials, rewrote the manual and made a sweeping effort to lure participants in England.

His efforts were successful: An estimated 1.5 million people worldwide have taken the course, which is now offered in 75 countries.

The enthusiasm for Alpha wafted over from England to the U.S. almost four years ago. Since then, organizers say, more than 2,000 churches have offered the course in this country and it’s garnered endorsements from religious leaders--including the Rev. Robert H. Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

It’s taken root in Southern California--fertile ground for Christian trends--with more than 200 participating churches.

Sue Davies-Scourfield went through the program 13 years ago at Holy Trinity in London. She has taught the course five times at the Laguna Presbyterian Church “I came face-to-face with God in a powerful way,” said Davies-Scourfield, who immigrated from Britain. “I was relieved because I felt like I was giving in after battling God for years.”

She said that had she not embraced the Christian precepts of Alpha, she would be pursuing money and materialism. Instead, she said, she’s raking in spiritual dividends from introducing people to Alpha courses and to Jesus Christ.

A new class she’s leading at Laguna Presbyterian Church, for example, will watch tapes of Gumbel’s lectures, pore over study guides and muse over heavy ontological questions: “Who is God?” or “What happens when we die?” or “Why does God allow suffering?”

The small-group format is a crucial element of the program, according to organizers.

“The group dynamics make or break an Alpha course for people,” said Davies-Scourfield. “Sometimes you lose some people or they decide they don’t want to come anymore. That’s very sad, but that’s part of the deal, that people can come and go as they please.”

Peter Batchelder, regional advisor for Alpha courses and director for continuing education at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, agreed that building relationships is the key.

“Long before people are confronted with the Gospel, they get a sense of belonging, and then start to believe what they hear through the people in the group,” he said.

Some people do drop out, but the hope is that Alpha will woo wayward Christians back into the fold.

Cowick, for one, has found new strength in her ties to her church through the Alpha course.

“The people at the church are very loving toward me,” she said. “It’s a place I can go where people acknowledge me and make sure I’m OK.”