Alpha Life 2016 by Alpha

The

Adventure Issue

What does it take to live a life of adventure? Adventure can mean a lot of things. It could be cliff jumping in Hawaii, taking a risk on love, or quitting your job without a plan for what’s next – but essentially it’s trying something unusual, something that excites you, something you haven’t done before, without any guarantee of how it’ll end up. It’s about living to the full, not shying away from uncertainty or doubt. There’s courage to be found in exploring outside your comfort zone, being open to saying ‘I don’t know’ and in choosing to challenge your status quo. This issue is about people on a journey; people asking the big questions of life and exploring faith – with no idea where it’ll lead. For some, it has involved crossing Greenland (p.16) or jumping out of a helicopter (p.14), but more often than not it simply involves being open to the unknown. Maybe Bear Grylls said it best, ‘Finding a simple faith, that’s been my greatest adventure.’

Editor Phil James Art Director Luke Tonge Illustrators Hannah Peck Matt Withers Contributors Rachel Lees Hui Shan Khoo Lau Sze Hong Elijah Dobner James Nixon Emma Kirk Alex Watts Hanniel Fernandez Kyle Jaster Beth Surgenor-Aldridge Photographers Ignacio Murua Li Wai Nap Shannon Leith Dux Carvajal Alex Douglas Kyle Jaster Sharon Boothroyd Josh Knepper Hamish Brown Alistair Simpson Jordan Short Elijah Dobner Daniel Pettit Cover image Hamish Brown Printing Windsor Contact Alpha International, Brompton Road, London, SW7 1JA Alpha.org ÂŠ Alpha International 2016

We believe that everyone should have the chance to explore the Christian faith, ask questions and share their point of view; wherever they are in the world. This magazine is about people doing just that. Find out more about Alpha and how to get involved at Alpha.org

06 — Written in Ink 14 — On the Edge 16 — Out in the Cold 20 — In the Spotlight 28 — Hardfought Peace 34 — A Line in the Sand 42 — Polaroid Perspective 44 — My Greatest Adventure 48 — Sempre di Moda 52 — Field of Play 56 — The Reverse Bucket List 62 — In the Dark 70 — Behind the Scenes 76 — With Compassion 82 — In the Garden 86 — Join the Adventure

Written in Ink alex watts Photography ignacio murua Words

In the heart of Córdoba, Argentina, in a small but slick tattoo studio, Alex Watts sits with Joel and Vane to hear their intertwined stories. Sitting in Faith Tattoo, the studio where the young couple design and draw week in, week out, you begin to understand why they are in such high demand as artists and why Faith Tattoo is never lacking customers. Joel and Vane started Faith Tattoo three years ago and its modern, state of the art look slotted right in with the contemporary feel that the downtown, student-filled neighbourhood of Nueva Córdoba (New Córdoba) exudes.

a Sunday as judgment day. His parents were never around and they didn’t have what you would call a strong relationship. ‘My dad lived quite far away and when I did see him, instead of wanting to spend time with me, he would just take me to church every day, but this just pushed me further and further away from church and, of course, him.’ At sixteen, Joel started to date a girl whose mother was a practicing witch and who performed astral projection among other things. ‘I began to internalise these paranormal experiences and I started to experiment with really strange things, falling further and further into this world of the occult by pure curiosity.’

I sat down with Joel and Vane on a sunny autumn day, perched over the bright red pool table that sits in the centre of the studio. Before Joel begins telling his story, he asks me if I am ready to hear all that he is about to say, adding that I might be surprised by the very dark anti-Christian background he came At the same time, he started to get involved from before he tried Alpha. with Class-A drugs, and was regularly using, Joel was born into a Christian family, but but however much he disguised it on the describes his family as one that didn’t take outside, internally he felt he had begun to faith seriously and he often saw church on destroy himself, little by little.

‘For me it wasn’t about learning or doing the wrong thing but about experiencing new sensations and I soon got involved in a type of sect, a group of Satanists, and I went along to their meetings four or five times.’ ‘Inside Satanism, they sell it well – as if it is something individual and personally necessary. It had something that drew me in. I was living this life that made me feel good, a life that not everyone understood but where I felt comforted and more and more interested.’ All this happened before Joel’s twenty-first birthday and he remembers that he began to realise that these experiences with black magic, witchcraft and illegal drugs had become increasingly serious – often with hallucinations that had led numerous doctors to think he was becoming mentally ill.

Joel started to go to church, longing for release from what he calls his mental and spiritual problems. Vane and her family took him to a church week away. ‘I was at my limit,’ he explains, ‘as if life didn’t make sense anymore with all the madness I was living out. But, that day I said to God, “If you exist, I need you to help me because my life doesn’t make sense anymore.” In that moment, something strange happened as they prayed for me – an experience that you could say was truly freeing, and I honestly felt a big weight fall off me. I sensed a clarity regarding everything that I had observed and been a part for so many years, in that world of witchcraft and black magic.’

Soon after, Joel and Vane got married but it was far from easy. ‘I knew that there was something that had helped me but it wasn’t something that I completely understood. For me, in that moment when they prayed for me, It was a time of real desperation in Joel’s life. it was more like a giant, spiritual aspirin had It was also then that he met Vane. calmed my headache. The doubt remained inside and I was looking for the next step, Vane had grown up in a Christian family for something more.’ in a town named Rio Ceballos, not too far from the city of Córdoba. She told me how He describes how he still felt Christianity she had never abandoned her faith despite was incapable of providing an answer to all always following a structured, religious path. of his problems. ‘I had always been curious to discover new things but I still saw church Joel described how strange it was to see an as something weird. I thought, Why would ‘active faith’ within Vane’s family, to see them I go to a church being who I am, and what going to church and giving thanks for food; I looked like? I knew that God had done things he had never seen or experienced. something for me but I didn’t know why, ‘After everything I had been through I was what or even how to react to it.’ Then a still really far from believing that Christianity friend, Juan, a guy that Joel had met doing had a solution for me but I decided to give it his years involved in the nightlife scene of a try, I wanted to see what it was and how it Córdoba, invited the couple to Alpha. Joel worked.’ told me they saw so many changes in Juan’s life from how he had been like before, they Joel left the groups he was involved in and thought, why not? gave up the drugs but still felt a hollowness inside that wasn’t satisfied, despite investi- In 2014, Joel went along with Juan to an gating this ‘Christianity thing’. Similarly, Alpha at Aviva in Córdoba – self-defined as Vane felt like she always had lacked ‘A church for people who wouldn’t usually something, ‘I couldn’t find any sense in life go to church.’ and from the age of thirteen I was on an existential journey in an attempt to fill the Alpha provided him with a space to ask emptiness. I knew that this emptiness I felt questions, to explore the response to the was the absence of God but I never got round emptiness that had haunted him from the to understanding why I was a ‘Christian’.’ very start. ‘It was an amazing experience; one that felt tailor made for me and my search.

I needed answers and through Alpha I got those answers. I saw the objective wasn’t religion but a personal journey offering me more than I had ever experienced. Each session became a process of unblocking and disentangling parts of my relationship with God.’

For Vane, Alpha broke down any images of the harsh, forceful God that she had grown up with. ‘There isn’t a specific moment that I can tell you that he entered my life, I think he was probably always there, I just didn’t notice. I was finally able to leave behind all my guilt.’

Joel describes the last day of Alpha as if he had been whacked with a baseball bat, ‘I realised everything I had lived through and experimented with had been in the wrong direction. I asked myself, Why had I been through this? Why had I bothered?’

‘It was an amazing how God processed us individually,’ explains Joel, ‘and now he is using us together. We recovered our marriage and we can now embark on this adventure together. He has become the fuel of our life.’

To experience a leap of faith so quickly, there was simply no going back. Life was turned completely upside down and Joel found a purpose, a reason for living. Something had filled the gaps. ‘That day, I experienced peace, I understood how forgiveness and grace work and my life has never gone back to being the same. It was such a reassuring experience.’

‘We are so different as people, like day and night you could say, but I believe God is universal and he works for everyone. God brought us back together.’

Vane agrees: ‘Even though, as a couple we come from a crazy past with extreme internal battles, we were married in a church, we made the promises before God and I believe that carried us through many of the hard times.’ Their studio is named Faith for that Vane didn’t go to Alpha with Joel but, as part reason, ‘Because we needed faith and faith is of Aviva, she was invited to try it out. She had all we had.’ heard about it before and had been curious, but her reticence had been stronger than any Joel is now twenty-seven, a professional confidence she was able to muster up to go. tattoo artist and together with Vane they own ‘Last year, I finally decided to go, mainly a tattoo studio, a studio that gives them the because my friends were going to be hosting opportunity to meet people, to tell their story the small groups. I initially thought, I am to people who have similar experiences to from a Christian home, a religious school everything they have been through. with practicing parents, they aren’t going to tell me anything that I don’t know but let’s ‘When I can, with care and sensitivity, I simply tell them my story and that there go, let’s give it a try.’ really is a way out. The only thing you need ‘I’m really shy, so going into a big group of is a desire and to recognise you can’t do it on people on Alpha was really scary,’ explains your own. Vane did Alpha shortly after me Vane, ‘but I felt comfortable when I entered and now as a married couple, we want to go and, in addition to having an amazing time on an adventure side by side with God. with wonderful people and eating great food, ‘I’m not proud of my story and it’s still hard I learnt things that I didn’t know before.’ to repeat all the details, but I have realised However, what she describes as the most and learned that it’s my story and I can use it important thing was the beginning of a to help people who are now in the situation completely different kind of relationship that I found myself in.’ with God from anything she had ever experienced before.

Vane has Psalm 23 tattooed on her arm in Latin. What for many years seemed mere artwork has now taken on a whole new significance not only for her but also for her clients. ‘Our work is honestly one of a kind because it gives you the opportunity to meet and get close to people, getting to know them in way that others might never get to do. For us, that’s the name of the game. To take the name of Jesus to the furthest corners of the map, in the darkest places. That’s what we do in Faith Tattoo; we get to live out that undertaking.’ ‘We get lots of people coming in who are left speechless when they find out that we are Christians because we know the preconceptions that people can have; that the tattoo artist is seen as dark and mystical. However, everything we have put together we have done it for God and with him.’ Joel and Vane are in high demand for their designs, often designing, crafting and drawing from early morning to late at night, six days a week, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. ‘Even though today I’m a person who works a lot of hours, I do it all with the aim of crafting excellence. Drawing is one of the only things I can do well, you could call it a gift, not mine, but a gift from God. From where I have come, it is amazing that I have everything I do now and that I can work doing what I love.’ ‘The thought that God is using us is unbelievable, there is nothing in this world that compares with seeing someone meet God for the first time. To be part of that, even at a distance is so worthwhile. We get the opportunity, somehow or other, to meet people who would never go to church, never even hear about God and we get to share our lives with them.’ Before I left Joe and Vane to take the little bus back through the winding lanes to my little village in the Córdoban hills, I asked them how Jesus had ultimately changed their life. They answered without hesitation: ‘We have an extraordinary peace and love. These two things just didn’t exist before. It blows our minds; it explodes our hearts. When you get to experience this love, there is no way you can’t share it and it really is the centre of our lives now.’ Vane looks at me and smiles, ‘God has given us our lives back.’

On the Edge

kyle jaster Interview beth surgenor-aldridge Photography

Paul ‘Mungo’ Mungeam is no stranger to taking risks. He’s been a cameraman for over twenty years and his career has taken him all around the globe – from travelling the world by land and sea with Charley Boorman, to performing extreme stunts with Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild. We caught up with Mungo to discuss his career, adventures and what his Christian faith means to him: Early in my career I found that I suited adventure and adventure suited me. I’ve always been a risk-taker. The idea of living life on the edge was what got me out of bed in the morning. But with adventure – like adrenaline – your benchmark for what really scares you changes. Now I spend my whole time hanging out of helicopters with Bear. It doesn’t scare me in the slightest but I still enjoy it. My levels of extreme have to go way beyond and in the end it just gets stupid because you’re being very dangerous. But then the older you get, the less brave you become because you realise you have more to lose. I always used to be disposable in my eyes, and that played to favour in my career. I was a cameraman with years of experience and I was able to go away at the drop of a hat for three weeks or even three months. Now I’m older. I’m married with a kid and have responsibilities. Suddenly your life changes. Fatherhood is a whole different adventure!

I originally fell in love with Cambodia and South-East Asia. Cambodia was the first place I filmed a TV documentary in my own right. I loved it. I was a bit out of my depth, but I rose to the challenge. We were the first non-news crew to film there since the fall of Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea, so we had a lot of access to areas that you couldn’t usually go to because they wanted it to be filmed and the story to be told.

When I was in Rwanda I visited a church that was the infamous site of a massacre during the Genocide of 1994. I stood there quietly and I said to God, ‘What was all this about?’ – I was looking for answers.

I didn’t feel like he gave me any answers but I felt he stood with me, looked at it and was equally as sad. And that was the answer I needed. It wasn’t a case of him going, ‘Well, it was Other than that experience, it’s really difficult to name one this or that...’ and making sense of it. It was a sense that he place in particular that stands out from my travels – the understood the pain, and he felt that pain too. Arctic is so different to desert, the jungle is so different to mountains. You can’t really compare them. So, you learn different things – but that’s the big adventure. It’s life, it’s trying to weigh it all up. The conclusion I’ve come During my career I’ve been on a massive rollercoaster ride to is that I’m not a religious man but I have got a lot of faith. with my faith. Sometimes I’ve had a massive amount of faith, My God is the God that I see and feel and love when I’m out sometimes I’ve wanted to give it all up. But you do find your the back of the surf pinching myself because there’s a twenway through – eventually you do find God in it. ty-foot wave about to crash down. Or I’m up a mountain and the blizzard comes in and I feel really out of my depth. That’s my God. He’s massive – he’s awesome and can’t be put in a box. For me, working alongside Christians is incredibly rare. To be with somebody like Bear, who is in an incredibly influential position whether in the media or among TV crews – he’s just so open about it his faith, I’ve found it really challenging and incredibly encouraging.

“I stood there quietly and I said to God, ‘What was all this about?’” Quite often when we are standing at the start of the shoot, helicopter propellers roaring, waiting for the OK to jump aboard from the pilot, Bear will pray. He’ll say, ‘Lord keep us safe, give us a good time and ultimately it’s all about you.’ Then I’ll say ‘Amen’ and we are off and away. We work with a sound guy called Jimmy who isn’t a Christian and one time we were so caught up in what we were doing that Bear didn’t pray. Jimmy’s reaction was, ‘Hang on a minute! Bear hasn’t prayed! We’ve got to pray before we start.’ So the influence is massive. I think that’s how you can make the biggest impression, really; being the best friend you can be, being there for people, be Jesus to them. It’s about being in the community. People won’t come to us; we need to go to them. If someone comes to Alpha looking to find out more about faith, then you’re halfway there because they are asking questions. The rest of it is being out there and simply being a friend.

Out

the

Cold

alistair simpson with james nixon Photography alistair simpson Illustration hannah peck Words

In the frozen, hostile depths of Antarctica, doctor and explorer Alistair Simpson decided to run Alpha in perhaps the most unlikely, most unwelcoming setting on Earth. Being fortunate enough to grow up in Scotland, I was surrounded by an abundance of landscapes in which I could explore and climb. It started with more leisurely hill walks as a boy with my dad and then, as I grew older, the hills grew larger, alongside the increasing interest in scaling something more demanding. At university, a friend of mine set up a charity called Altitude, which I became a part of. This charity played an intrinsic role in developing my passion for the outdoors and exposing me to bigger expeditions, one of which was being invited to go to La Paz Department in Bolivia, in 2001, for two weeks to work at a research lab nestled in the mountainside of Chacaltaya. Chacaltaya is an unusual mountain for two reasons â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with an altitude of 5,421 meters, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s higher than any summit found in Europe, but what is even more rare is that, in spite of its height, it is accessible by road, which is virtually unheard of.

Around three years later, at the age of twentyfive, having just graduated as a doctor, I went on to complete a crossing of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the second largest body of ice in the world. It was there that I faced some of my greatest challenges as an explorer. Just myself and one other were entirely alone on this vast, barren expanse of white. In that kind of environment, you know that if something goes wrong the expedition is over. There were some difficult moments; the binding on one of my skis broke and we had to find a way to bind it together ourselves, needing to ski on it for nineteen more days. Our primary GPS also fell down a crevasse, leaving us with just one that didn’t have our routes mapped out – but we made it in the end. After Greenland, my childhood dream came true when I was deployed to Antarctica for sixteen months as part of the British Antarctic Survey medical team. It surpassed all the expectations I'd had as a young boy. It was quite simply a utopian existence, incomparable to anything I have experienced. There has been research looking at the physiological and psychological responses to life in Antarctica as a means of understanding how people would respond to a mission to Mars. The isolation from the rest of the world and the hostile environment in Antarctica is comparable with travelling on a small shuttle out to the depths of space. In Antarctica you feel shielded from all the corrupt or irritating parts of normal life – no crime, bills, mobile phones always ringing. You’re in a bubble. We were a really closed community of people living in this incredible environment. You felt like you had a large playground all to yourself. We could cross-country ski, you’d just take a radio and head out – being able to ski at night during twenty-four-hour sunlight was an amazing experience. I think God has blessed me with the opportunities to have done the various exciting things I’ve done. There’s no question in my mind that God shaped the creation of the world we’re in and I feel incredibly blessed to be able to experience the world

God has created. I don’t know where the idea came from to run Alpha at the research base in Antarctica, perhaps it was out of gratitude for God bringing me to this awesome place. My faith had grown since I’d first tried Alpha a couple of years before. At that time a good friend of mine was part of a church in Edinburgh and he asked if I would try Alpha I don’t think I’d heard of it before. It was a small course but just revolutionary to me. To sit down and hear Nicky Gumbel speak about the basics of the Christian faith, which I don’t think I had ever heard it explained as clearly, in spite of growing up in Sunday school; having the fundamentals spelt out: this is who Jesus is, this is what Bible’s about, was just incredible. Then, on the weekend away, I made a commitment to my faith for the first time. Fast-forward two years and there I was running Alpha for a small group of people in one of the most desolate places on Earth. For the first talk, about half of the base came. People probably thought, ‘What’s the crazy doctor doing now?’ Three people started coming regularly: a French chef, a meteorologist and a biologist. The two scientists were interested in finding out more from an atheist point of view – they wanted to know why I believed. It was good for the discussion. The chef was interested in spirituality, he wanted to learn more. I was able to start conversations and get them asking questions. During my time in Antarctica, I managed to make everyone aware of my faith, through Alpha, and there were conversations I had with people who didn’t even come that were really encouraging. Wherever the idea came from to run Alpha at the research base, I’m pleased I decided to do it. I was aware I was going to be in close contact with a small number of people for a long time. If ever there was an opportunity to share my faith with people, this was it. I thought, It worked for me, it might work for other people too. I shared meals with them, worked alongside them and spent my leisure time with them; it was definitely a unique environment.

In the Spotlight hanniel fernandez Photography dux carvajal Words & interview

In amongst the skyscrapers of Makati City, Hanniel Fernandez talks with Bryan Revilla, son of Bong Revilla and Lani Mercado-Revilla, both actors-turned-politicians in their native Philippines, about coping with fame and living with faith. We meet at a private rooftop music bar on a building walled in between the cool skyscrapers of the business district and the radical colors of the red light district. This is on the edge of the postcard version of Makati City. Below, jeepney horns are screaming for passengers while angry motorists scream back at the jeepneys. We’re here to shoot Bryan for the article and do the interview. He texts me asking what he should wear. I tell him to wear normal clothes, and, as a joke, no makeup. His mum, who knew better, being a veteran in show business and politics, sends her personal makeup artist. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll just give him a natural look,’ the artist reassures me. I didn’t even know you needed makeup to look natural. But what do I know? The closest I ever got to celebrity was when my crossword puzzle was voted ‘best puzzle’ in my primary school magazine. I think it had a readership of about twenty-seven. Bryan is a little more versed in things of celebrity. His parents met as actors. Both have been in movies and television for over thirty years. His father has won several acting awards, and his grandfather has been a celebrated figure in the industry for over fifty years. It’s no surprise that he feels comfortable with makeup (though he draws the line at lip gloss). We start our conversation...

“I was looking for freedom — so I got into car drifting, and a bunch of other adrenaline packed activities.” 22

What was it like growing up in a showbiz family? Well, I wouldn’t say it was normal, because for some people it’s not normal. The attention was there. Everything I did was magnified compared to other kids. It was pretty tough, but it had its advantages. I get access, connections to different people. Disadvantage: everything I did was noticed. If I got into trouble, the next thing I knew it would be in the news, which did happen a couple of times when I was growing up. It was tough because my personal life was being talked about. I’ve always been a private person; I don’t like people knowing what I do.

What do you think about kids today who just want to be famous? There’s nothing wrong with being famous if you use your talents the right way. But be careful what you wish for; there’s more to it than fame. Show business is a tough business. It’s cut-throat. One issue, one bad review and it could be the end of your career.

You dabbled in acting but you didn’t pursue it full time. Why is that? It just wasn’t for me. I enjoyed it but I wanted to do other things. I wanted to finish college and go into business; become really rich. I opened a few businesses in events, retail. It was good. But, then again, some businesses fail. In early 2000, Bryan’s parents parlayed their show business career into politics, a trail blazed by Bryan’s grandfather who was voted into the senate in 1992. Bryan’s father won a senate seat in 2004, in a country of 100 million people.

Your mother, father, grandfather, even younger brother are in politics. How come you never went into politics yourself? I thought about it. I do help a lot with my family’s political career. But me being there for my parents and being able to serve is enough for me. I would always look to escape. I was looking for freedom—so I got into car drifting, and a bunch of other adrenaline packed activities. That was my way of escaping. And that was life for you, it seemed quite comfortable: you had your businesses, you had your friends, your hobbies, but kept away from public scrutiny. Yeah, exactly. It was pretty cool to be in the spotlight but I never really was happy, especially when my private/personal life was being talked about. I had to make it a point that I still had my sense of freedom and privacy. I was able to ninja myself out of the media spotlight for some time. But now it’s a different story since my dad was detained. Bryan’s father was caught in the centre of a political controversy, which resulted in his detention in June 2014. One day everything was fine; you were dealing with the normalcy of having parents who are public figures. And then suddenly, your father is put in the center of a media storm.

What was that period of your life like? It was tough. It was crazy. It was brutal. On social media and the news, man, I’ve never seen so much hate. I’ve never felt so much hate. I’ve never felt so alone. Even though my family and I were there for each other, I still felt alone not knowing what could happen in the next few days, weeks, months...

How did you cope? We had a family meeting. My aunt, my uncles, siblings, cousins. I had an aunty, she’s a Christian. I took her aside and I said, ‘I think God is telling us something here. I think we should focus on him and we have to make sure we make him the centre of our lives starting today.’ I don’t know why I said that, but I said it. And after I said that we started having Bible studies, every week. That was really amazing. In that time of darkness, God found a way to show that light.

It was a moment of truth for you? It was a moment of truth. During that time, you didn’t even know who to run to. What was the logical thing to do? Go for the highest power. Go to God.

What were your thoughts on God before this? Just put it this way: I wanted to do life on my terms. As much as possible I didn’t want him telling me what to do: ‘That’s right, that’s wrong.’ I grew up in a Christian school so I knew who he was, but I was just afraid to change.

But it seemed God became a necessity? Yeah. We started with Bible studies at home. Then, the first time I attended a new church, I loved it, I felt at home. The next thing I know, my family and I book a trip to the Holy Land. And I was like, wow. And then some of my dad’s friends ran Alpha for him at the detention center. We talked about faith and spirituality. I liked it. It was non-invasive. It just felt great talking about these things. Since then my life has been really crazy. You know, God has just taken me on a wild journey. If you were to ask me if I would do it again, I guess not coz it was pretty tough [he laughs]. But man, the sleepless nights, watching the news, it was really heartbreaking.

Your dad’s been in detention for two years now. You’ve had to fill in for some of his roles. What’s that been like? This whole thing just really made a man out of me. A lot of things changed in my life. I was comfortable with my life, I enjoyed it. But change is good. Growth is good. Growth is something that we can never be ready for but it’s a great thing because it does change you.

You’re more involved in your city, where your mum will step in as Mayor I think it was Os Guinness, he said: God puts you in a position where it’s not coincidence; you need to do something about it. And just going through that I was like: oh man, it’s true, like, whatever happened, it’s not coincidence; it was just all according to God’s plan. Yes it may hurt, but you gotta do something about it, you just gotta keep moving forward. You know, it just came to me that, yeah, my family’s in this position, but rather than seeing this as weakness I will use this as an advantage. Because not everyone will go through this kind of adversity. And that adversity brought the best out of me. Things that I never knew I had in me just happened, like wow, things I didn’t think I’d be able to do. Now I’m in a position where I can actually do something; I can actually help people out.

How are you doing that? Whatever God has done to me, I want to share with other kids. In my community, everyone loves sports. Sport is a language almost every kid can relate to. I want to tell the kids in my community that they’re not stuck where they are. God has a plan for us. We have to help each other. And sports is a language they understand. We’ve started doing a few skateboarding, BMX, basketball and volleyball events to keep kids out of trouble, create a friendly environment, let them play, compete, good clean fun and at the same time give them that sense of hope. And we invite them to Alpha. You know, it doesn’t stop here.

What would be the biggest lesson you’ve learnt in the past five years? A pastor once told me: If you want to change, you have to let go of what you value in exchange for something more valuable. There are certain things I clung to growing up. Things that I thought were really valuable. Things that made me secure. But certain things had to happen to make me realise there’s more to life than what I was holding on to. And that allowed me to let go and exchange it for something better.

And what was that? Salvation. God. No matter what happens now in my life, I know that God’s with me. I’m not alone anymore.

Is life sweet now? No! [He chuckles]. Life is still hard. Challenges will always be there. Trials will always be there. But if you don’t have something to cling on to, something that will strengthen you – in my case, I don’t know what would have happened. I probably would have been stuck in my old ways or worse. I’m happy and forever grateful that God has found me and given me a new life. Life is so much better now knowing the fact that I don’t walk alone anymore. _ Everyone clings on to things for security, identity, something of value that we think will bring satisfaction. But growing up is a constant series of letting go of old values for new ones. We’d all like to be able to choose how and when to let go, but it seems a luxury for some. Sometimes life snatches away what you hold dear. For Bryan it was his privacy, his sense of freedom, his security in his father. But in exchange, he found a faith in God. Perhaps because of it, Bryan has this sense of buoyancy. You wouldn’t know the pressures exerted on him and his family by the way he speaks. He smiles through our conversation with sincerity in his eyes and child-like optimism in his voice. For him it really is as simple as letting go and clinging on to God. After our interview, he takes a call about some project in his city. It seemed serious. He says he’ll call back, shrugs his shoulders and goes off to get his pictures taken. Down below at the junction it remains loud, dizzying, chaotic. It reminds me of the life that Bryan describes: a life lived in the public eye, the glamour of show business, and the intrigue of politics. What do you cling on to in this world? I guess when everything in it fails you, few options remain. Maybe this is partly what Jesus meant when he said blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. For Bryan, losing what he valued meant gaining clarity, resilience and hope. And in a chaotic world, such things indeed sound heavenly.

Hardfought Peace rachel lees Photography tom price Words

Rachel Lees from Christian Aid meets Paride, a Catholic Bishop pursuing peace in South Sudan with faith, passion, and more than a few star jumps.

He certainly had a presence. The usually dull meeting room, in which Bishop Paride was sharing his story with me, became unusually bright as he filled it with a compelling energy. It’s an energy that I wouldn’t usually expect from an eighty-ishyear-old man; I say eighty-ish because in South Sudan, where Paride is from, people often don’t know their true age. Paride has one of those warm faces where his eyes smile when his mouth does, softened even further by his white beard. I couldn’t help but like him and after spending an afternoon together, I couldn’t help but also be in awe of him. I learned that Paride is a rare man in South Sudan. His ripe old age means that he can recall a phenomenon in South Sudan that few others can: peace. South Sudan – our world’s youngest nation – has truly suffered. With decades of brutal civil war to its name, many of its people have never felt the reality of peace. There was a brief period where violence ceased under an agreement initiated in 2005, which Paride helped broker. It was the same agreement that began a process that led to South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011. But in December of 2013, violent conflict erupted again. Up to now, the war has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. I sat in that room with Paride, transfixed by the stories he told of his home. One thing in particular grabbed my attention. I learned that his unique presence, which had me hooked, was down to one practice in particular: his daily ritual. A ritual he has performed for nearly twenty years and without fail.

It starts early in the morning, every morning. If you catch him at the right moment, you’ll find Paride exercising with the energy of a man a quarter of his age – push-ups, star jumps, 100 lengths in the pool – an unbreakable routine. Paride explained to me that as he completes this ritual he whispers quietly to himself, ‘love, joy, peace, patience, compassion, sympathy, kindness, truth, gentleness, self-control, humility, poverty, forgiveness, mercy, friendship, trust, unity, purity, faith, hope.’ And then, ‘I love you, I miss you, thank you, I forgive, we forget together, I am wrong, I am sorry.’ Over and over he repeats this collection of words. The crucial part is that as these words are spoken, Paride examines himself asking, ‘Am I keeping these? Are they really in me?’ He went on, ‘I have to see in which of these twenty I am weak and during the coming day I reflect on them.’ Every day starts this way. Every day. It’s important to him because it’s this practice, along with his faith in God, that has allowed him to be personally transformed. He explained, ‘When you are traumatised you cannot help other people. You have to make yourself the healing of the healers. That’s why I do these exercises every morning. With it I feel healthy. It gets you out of stress, gets your heart to relax. You can live even with inevitable problems, become calm in situations that you cannot solve. You can correct where you can, and where you can’t – you are able to live with it. We who work with traumatised people inhale their trauma, and we have to get rid of this.’ For Paride, the redemption of his country and the trauma his people have experienced will come when people experience a change within themselves. That’s why he considers his ritual and his faith vital – through them he has been transformed, and it’s tangible. He’s gone beyond just the personal transformation: from highlevel meetings on the international stage to national peace talks to the creation of a small community that represents what peace can look like. That’s what Kuron peace village is. It’s his biggest passion and one of his greatest legacies. >

elizabeth ajith We say, ‘Okay, human beings can make mistakes but if you have faith in God, God has the ultimate power and he can change whatever you think is bad into something you never believed could happen, and that is why we just put our faith in God.’ And when we meet and pray, we will ask God to touch heart of our nation’s leaders and to look at the suffering of our people, because they are not suffering; they are not affected by this. They have the headache but they don’t feel the suffering. Unfortunately, things are wrong but we are still optimistic that as long as we have faith in God, God will change things.

bona bal nyang My name means ‘adventure’ in English. Even after the peace and the independence, very little development has been done in South Sudan. The roads are bad, there are no schools, no hospitals – it is as bad as it was before the war. It is beautiful, but what is beauty when there is no development? We pray, we pray, we pray. We are hopeful. The best thing that God has given us is hope. Without hope the heart will break – so we are hoping. We are a people that God has given resilience and hopefully, peace will come. God willing, peace will come. Man-made disaster has an end, it is God-made things which do not end, so we are hopeful.

There are pockets of churches and groups running Alpha across South Sudan – in Kajo Keji, Juba and Aweil – exploring faith with those looking for hope and peace in the midst of ongoing hardship and conflict.

> It’s ‘a place where God lives’. More technically, I learned that it is a model for how a community made-up of different clans, tribes and nationalities, which have typically related to one another through violence, can live alongside one another without fear. People share resources, land and skills for the good of the whole. Kuron was a radical vision for Paride, a leap of faith, and one that over time has equated to a change for the better in that land. It’s an ‘island of peace in a sea of conflict’. Settlers are asked to leave their past at the door, not ignoring the importance of dealing with it but not letting it destroy their future. And then the peace comes. The challenges to keep the village going are considerable. Recently, it began working with Christian Aid but it remains in desperate need of funds to continue. Paride’s daily ritual and faith in God resulted in a personal transformation in him that allows him to live with trauma and work to restore it. That’s why he is an advocate for transformation within each person. He sees it as an inevitable prelude to witnessing change in entire communities and eventually, his country. It’s a journey, a slow grower, but one that Paride is wholeheartedly behind in order that South Sudan is able to write a new story for itself; one without conflict as its headline. A sentiment felt by not only those in South Sudan, but the South Sudanese that live across the world who have fled their homes in search of peace over the last twenty years. The profiles on these pages are a glimpse into the perspectives of those South Sudanese who have known trauma and have a hope for peace for the home they have fled. _ These snapshots were collected at an event hosted by Christian Aid in London, where the South Sudanese diaspora community in the UK, along with Bishop Paride, got together to share their vision of hope for their home. Read more stories from Christian Aid at: christianaidcollective.org

Elijah Dobner travelled from London to Cairo to experience the bustling, busy and historic streets of Egypt and to meet citizens exploring their identity.

A line in the sand... Words & Photography

elijah dobner

Driving through Cairo in the small hours of the night is a strange experience. The mists of the Nile cover the city in a haze, the heat is a palpable presence even in the pre-dawn stillness. History weighs heavily on the city, commemorated in various displays of public art etched into walls and frozen in statues rising ghostly in the yellow luminescence of streetlights. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a unique mix of the memories of ancient Egyptian civilisation cohabiting with modernity. The city smells of the river, of vegetation, and of petrol. People mingle on the streets, food vendors and stores try to entice passers-by, the traffic may be less congested than by day but is constant and relentless even at this late hour. The Cairo metropolitan area is home to over 20 million people, and the country itself is the most populous Arabic nation in the world. What many people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realise, however, is that it is also home to the largest Christian community in the Middle East. My team and I came to Egypt to learn a bit more about that community, to meet church leaders, visit congregations and find out more about how Alpha contributes to the lives of local people. Religious identity is central to how Egyptians see themselves in a way that Westerners often find difficult to understand. To mention a small example, when an Egyptian child is born, the religion of the parents is registered on their ID card. The religious affiliation cannot be changed. From the point of view of the state, there is no such thing as changing your worldview. You are what you are born into.

This is one of the first things I learned when I met Peter a couple of days later. Peter, a good natured twenty-something from the ancient Mediterranean seaside town of Alexandria, was born into a Christian family, his background printed into his ID and psyche permanently but, as he tells me, it didn’t translate into a living faith. ‘I used to go to church but never felt anything,’ he tells me. It didn’t prevent him from pondering the meaning of life however. ‘I had so many questions about God that I didn’t have answers to. When they announced that Alpha will be running at my church, I decided to go along. It made such a difference.’ Peter, like many other young cultural Christians in this part of the world, didn’t see Christianity as a relationship. It was a label that defined the circles you move in and the kinds of food and drink you’re allowed to have. ‘Through Alpha, I learnt how to read the Bible, who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. I started having an actual relationship with God.’ Talking to Peter reminded me how important these conversations are for all of us, not just Egyptians, and how rare the opportunities are to have them. For people like Peter, casually sipping his soft drink under a lush tree in the courtyard with a smile on his face, the opportunity to question and explore together in a loving, safe environment led to his ‘Christian’ label taking the short journey from his passport to his heart. I feel this all the more as we wander about in the harbour later on. Alexandria is a bustling mess; old imperial mansions and high rises battling for space, the streets teeming with people casually weaving between cars and ornamental carriages, chatting with friends or on their phones. It’s easy to see that the town was once much more prosperous. A lot of buildings are in disrepair, although, in classic Egyptian fashion, even the ruins are bursting at the seams with life. As cats chase each other on the seafront and the setting sun turns the harbour to an unreal shade of pink, I think about how most of these men and women wandering about the palm tree lined avenues may never have an opportunity to ask honest questions about why they believe what they believe in the way Peter could. Identity can make and break us. It influences how we interact with our environment in a deeper way than most of us suspect. Back in Cairo, in the shady courtyard of a downtown church a stone’s throw from the Nile, I had the opportunity to chat about this with Hani, a young man hailing from upper Egypt, a less developed part of this huge country. Hani spent half his day on a train to talk to me. He looks a little worse for wear when we meet, I suspect he had to get up before dawn to make it to Cairo by noon. Tiredness notwithstanding, he’s bursting with enthusiasm as he starts talking.

Peter 37

‘My whole life story revolved around a lie I was lead to believe from an early age,’ he begins. ‘I was the result of an unplanned pregnancy and I always felt like my existence was a mistake. I felt rejected, so I reacted by shutting everyone out.’ Hani reminds me that sometimes we get so fixated on the narrative of our loss and grief that we ignore all evidence to the contrary. ‘I resisted everything that could pull me out of this mind-set. I kept going around in circles, thirsty for love and acceptance. I tried to build myself up by becoming a drug dealer and gaining respect on the street in the hopes of finally belonging somewhere.’ Hani suspects that nothing would have changed if tragedy hadn’t have hit. ‘In 2011, I was diagnosed with cancer. This was the final straw, the thing that sealed my conviction that God just doesn’t care. To my shock, I was miraculously healed, which just didn’t fit in with my view of the world. I started to have questions.’ The questions eventually lead Hani to try Alpha. ‘I was shocked by the amount of love and acceptance I experienced at the sessions. I suddenly felt free to say whatever I wanted without fear. You can’t imagine the difference it made in me.’ Hani’s idea of himself and God was turned upside down, ‘Everything started to change as the way I thought about God was readjusted.’ The same day I met with Hani, I got to visit a local Alpha running in Heliopolis, a Cairo neighbourhood of large apartment buildings and wider than average streets. Sitting there with a bunch of students and trendy young professionals in an old Greek Catholic church, watching them eat, discuss and pray together, I am struck by how different the world these men and women inhabit is from mine, yet how similar the whole Alpha experience is to how it would be where I live. Out there, on the streets of this ancient city, they are a minority, differentiated by their garb, dietary staples and names; part of culture, yet also watching it from the outside, identified and shoehorned into the slot wider society has chosen for them without consultation. Then they walk into a place like this Alpha and they get to ask and wonder about who they actually are and why they are here. It may be a strange angle to point out if one comes from a pluralist society like the UK or the US, but there is a freedom in Alpha that may not seem like an essential need for those of us who take it for granted, but the more I see it run in places that are firmly embedded in tradition and history, the more wonderful it seems to me that such a place for exploring identity and the big questions of life exists for young people like these young Egyptians in their skinny jeans and trendy T-shirts.

Hani

People often think that Middle Eastern Christianity is weak or next to non-existent. True, following Jesus can be immensely challenging in this part of the world. But seeing the energy of Egyptian congregations makes me realise that there is a lot of hope here too; hope expressed in reaching out even when it’s risky, and in loving those who persecute them. It’s hard to miss when you walk into an evangelical church directly off Tahrir Square that is bursting at the seams with thousands of visitors, even on a random Wednesday night, or when you see ten thousand Coptic Christians worshipping together in a natural rock formation in Mokattam, one of the garbage towns surrounding Cairo. Mokattam, in a way, is the embodiment of the struggles and hope of the church in this part of the world. It is more or less a slum populated by people who subsist on the rubbish thrown away by residents of Cairo. It’s also 90 per cent Christian, a settlement built on the edge of a great metropolis that prefers to pretend it’s not really there. And yet, once you pass through the rising streets, where men drive donkey carts and beat-up old cars full of the day’s ‘catch’, where old women sort through endless hills of plastic bottles and pigs root through the organic refuse on the flat roofs of houses, you find something thoroughly unexpected. Beyond the bustle and the noise, a gate looms, hemmed by rough reddish-yellow houses – the gate of a church complex. Once you pass through, you’re in a different world. The highest point of Mokattam is a system of Coptic cave churches. Everything is kept studiously clean, verses and scenes from the Bible are cut into the rock walls of the mountainside. It doesn’t take long to realise that for the people calling Mokattam home, this place of caverns and rock outcroppings is probably the most beautiful thing in their life, a place to treasure, celebrate and cherish like nothing else. It is the green shoots of the church sprouting forth from the ruins. There is still a long journey ahead of the Egyptian Church as they soldier on, encountering the soft and occasionally hard face of religious persecution, but they know they have a story worth sharing and, through Alpha, they have a tool they can use to help connect those inside and outside the church to that story, to the deepest questions they face. This much is obvious when one listens to the stories, or meets people like Peter and Hani: I see no room for despair here, but plenty of room for hope.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is the green shoots of the church sprouting forth from the ruins.â&#x20AC;? 41

Polaroid Perspective Photography

sharon boothroyd

Photographic artist Sharon Boothroyd took to the streets of Spitalfields in East London to capture passers-by and perspectives in an instant.

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1. What’s the purpose of life? 2. What’s the meaning of life? 3. Who is Jesus? 4. Who or what is God? 5. What’s the meaning of life? 6. Who is God?

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My Greatest Adventure Words phil

james Photography hamish brown & alex douglas

For the first time ever we are launching an invitation for the world to explore faith â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the heart of this global campaign is adventurer Bear Grylls. Over the past few years Bear Grylls has become the embodiment of adventure and survival in the public imagination. A former reservist in the SAS, Bear has climbed Everest, navigated the Northwest Passage and paramotored over the Himalayas. An expert in outdoor survival, Bear is now best known for his TV shows, which have a combined global audience of 1.5 billion. In 2015, his show Man vs. Wild was the number one ranked reality show in the US and in his latest series Running Wild with Bear Grylls, he travels out to the wilderness on a two-day expedition with a variety of public figures, including Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet and President of the United States, Barack Obama.

As well as being an adventurer, writer and television presenter, Bear is a former guest on Alpha and is sharing his story with the world as part of our global invitation to explore faith. Whether it’s from the streets of the Philippines or the sidewalks of New York, it’s great to be reminded that everyone’s journey is different and everyone’s story is unique. Here at Alpha we get the privilege of hearing stories from all around the globe – just a few of which are featured here in this magazine. From Vane in Argentina (p.6) to Charles in Kenya (p.76) there’s no shortage of tales of hope, faith and exploration that we stumble across. Bear’s is one of millions of different stories of exploration – of asking life’s biggest questions without knowing what will be found. Despite a life characterised by risk, danger and the unknown, it is this exploration that he describes as his ‘greatest adventure’.

“The truth is the first step is always the hardest, that’s the one that takes the most courage.” Head to Alpha.org to watch Bear’s story in full.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;What does it take to live a life of adventure?â&#x20AC;?

Artist and former producer in the Italian fashion industry: Gaetano Cammarata on life in the fast-lane, his hopes for the Catholic Church and how he found his own personal faith.

Sempre di Moda

phil james Photography alex douglas Interview

How did you get into fashion? I was born in Sicily but moved to Milan to study at the Academy of Arts in the heart of the city. After I left, I started to sell my paintings to various galleries. But one night, while I was in a pub, a friend of mine said, ‘Do you want to come and help me out with a photo shoot tomorrow?’ and that’s how I began my career as a stylist. It was very funny. Two years later, I was working on a photo shoot with a great photographer for a big fashion company and the producer got sick. The photographer asked me: ‘Do you want to replace him?’ That’s how I became a producer for photo shoots in the fashion industry. The year after, I became a partner and artists’ representative at a large agency, West Artists Management, based in Milan. It was great fun; we’ve created campaigns for La Perla, Campari, Rolex and with Armani, Versace… It was a great opportunity for me and there were parties with celebrities and loads of travel.

What’s it like working in that kind of industry? It’s a fascinating world full of glamour. I met some great people. Sometimes we tend to demonise fashion; instead I saw that it is a world full of capable, exceptional and skilled individuals. I met people from all over the world with different point of views from mine. This was an incredible challenge. There are very talented people, full of fantasy. You don’t get bored, that’s for sure!

Were you raised in a religious home?

In recent years the culture has become more secular – with fewer people involved with the church. But generally I see that Alpha is really attractive in the culture of the city. The priests and pastors love the idea of being able to share faith in a simple and clear way. They are happy to see the churches full of new people and the environment is always enthusiastic.

I don’t come from a religious family. Faith was rather traditional; something that had to be done. My parents were divorced, but one day my mother discovered faith and shared it with my father and that’s when they decided to get back together again. I was fourteen and I said myself, ‘What’s going on?’ I decided to explore up-close what had changed in their Tell us about your first Alpha lives and so I decided to go to church. Since We couldn’t believe it when we saw so many then nothing has been the same. people show up – there were 160 guests; we were excited. We held it in a magnificent What’s been your experience venue; an ancient museum built in 1500, all of faith since that moment? beautifully painted with frescos. According The path hasn’t always been straightforward. to tradition, it was the place where the At eighteen, I loved a girl who later died. I apostle Barnabas had baptised the first said: ‘God where are you?’ I fought with him Christians of northern Europe. It was a place for many years but he has never departed full of tradition and significance. from me. It was a challenge in my life but I couldn’t do life without God.

Despite everything, I couldn’t stop talking about God with the people around me. Even when I worked in fashion or in my works of art, I always share the beauty of God. I can’t separate my life from faith – it’s so exciting!

Tell us about your city. What’s Milan like? I love Milan; it’s a city full of resources – it is the Italian capital for design, fashion and finance. Here you can visit all the fashion houses, participate in the most exclusive parties, eat great Italian food and then see incredible museums. Milan was largely destroyed the Second World War but you can lift your eyes and be enchanted by the beauty of this city.

“You can lift your eyes and be enchanted by the beauty of this city.” 50

Where is Alpha running in Italy? Initially there were only a handful of courses – most in Milan. But now it runs from the north to the south, including Rome. Italy is a beautiful country and has many differences between regions – with a huge range of cultures. In the south, where there are hot temperatures, you can do an Alpha with a breathtaking view of the sea with an ice cream; in the north you can run it with the best pizza or over good lasagna.

Tell us about the first ever Alpha in Sicily The Sicilian are extraordinary people; they have warmth in their hearts. When we first explored running Alpha in Sicily, 120 people from all over the island turned up to find out more. Now there’s an Alpha run especially for youth in the centre of Sicily, in a city in the middle of yellow wheat fields. It also runs in a prison in Palermo – can you imagine – in one of the largest prisons in Europe where the Mafia is still the undisputed leader!

How has the environment in the Catholic Church changed in the last few years?

Sure, Pope Francis has brought a breath of fresh air but how can we forget the depth of Pope Benedict or the warmth of Pope John Paul II. Here, I see a church that moves and I see a people with a new awareness. In these last fifty years, the Catholic Church To proclaim Jesus is a priority and through has been working hard to bring people to Alpha we can do this with generosity, authena consciousness of a new evangelisation. ticity and in a modern way. We can’t keep a great gift to ourselves. The previous Popes have written profound and exceptional documents about the Christian message in the modern world and this has created a new consciousness in Catholics.

“I see a church that moves and I see a people with a new awareness.”

Field of Play lau sze hong Photography li wai nap Words

Lau Sze Hong talks about his experience of exploring faith with his rugby teammates in central Hong Kong. I became a Christian on the rugby pitch and I got baptised in the ice bath bucket on rugby pitch, so naturally I wanted to share my journey with the guys closest to me. When I decided to share my faith, I had pretty low expectations of whether my teammates would be interested. I thought they wouldn’t want to be involved with – or even talk about – faith. But thank God they wanted to find out more! Our club is a community rugby club. We don’t have a full-time staff at the moment but we’re aiming to be a semi-professional team. Right now, players are mostly young professionals and students who play for the love of the game.

“I think it’s a good idea to let more people know what the Christian faith is all about.” – Nam

Yes, rugby is kind of a macho sport but we have a strong sense of family here. People relate to each other closely and the culture is one of complete honesty – on and off the pitch. Here in Hong Kong we’ve got a project we call ‘Alpha Anywhere’ – all the materials are available on the go, so you can just set up an iPad and you’re ready to start, wherever you are, which makes it really easy to initiate conversations about faith with your friends. Running Alpha with video on the go makes it really easy to connect with those around you, and you don’t have to prepare a lot before getting together. We all meet in a café before training – somewhere that feels pretty neutral. People in Hong Kong can feel sensitive talking about big issues around life and faith. Meeting in a café really helps people to lower their guard and feel comfortable opening up. I worried a lot of before running Alpha with the rugby team. What if they don’t like it and leave right away? What if they don’t wanna share anything? What if they feel offended. Thankfully, they got so into the discussions that they wanted even more time to talk. We’re still right in the middle of our course – the topics are challenging and there’s plenty to talk about. I’ve started meeting every week or two with one guy in particular, who wanted to find out even more, so we grab a coffee and talk it all through. It’s started great conversations and we’re so excited to continue them.

List Bucket phil james Illustration matt withers Interview

Reverse The

Richard Maxson did everything he never wanted to... What was your childhood like? I was raised in a Christian home with my two younger brothers, mum and dad in Long Beach in California. I remember accepting Jesus around the age of six – I don’t know why that thought hit me at that point since I was just helping my mum paint the house at the time. Being home-schooled I was pretty sheltered, so I had to lie if I wanted to be able to do what all the other kids did. My convictions shrunk while my bitterness towards my parents grew. I was always drawn to the more trouble making and rebellious groups. I used to go to this church youth group, but it was just to have friends and chase girls. I never doubted the existence of God, but I wanted to live my life my way. I started to treat my brothers pretty terribly, unless I wanted something from them. By the time I was done with high-school I was pretty much out of their lives; not to hurt them, it was just because I only cared about myself. I was almost never there for my youngest brother Ben and didn’t show much interest in getting to know him at all.

What did life look like before you tried Alpha? Before I tried Alpha I was working as a waiter and drinking and partying every night. From the age of twenty-one to twenty-five my life was pretty much a blackout. I never drank causally; I always drank to rage. I wasn’t angry or anything, I just loved to get out of control and do whatever I wanted. I hurt a lot of people in the process, especially my family. I rarely saw them, even though they were only fifteen minutes away, and when I did I was grumpy and hung-over – just waiting to leave so I could get high or drunk.

On a spiritual level I still believed in God, but if you asked me how I considered myself, it was: ‘Crappy Christian.’ I knew who God was and what Jesus did for me but I didn’t follow or engage with the reality of it at all. I got to the point where I didn’t want to ask for forgiveness because I knew I was going to do the same thing again the next day and didn’t want to be a hypocrite. So I buried any conviction and got to a place where I felt like I’d forfeited my salvation. My lowest point was completing what I called a ‘reverse bucket list’; it was all the things I said I would never do. Things like, take a stranger home from a bar, do cocaine, drive drunk, cheat on someone... I figured if I managed to avoid doing those things, I was doing okay. I actually ticked off the last thing on my reverse bucket list right after session four of Alpha. That’s when I really realised that if I lived with myself in control, I got everything I didn’t want in life.

What made you open to looking back into faith? I started to come back to church because a girl I liked wanted to go. I had been to RockHarbor before a few years prior – so I thought I could stomach it long enough to get in good with her. The more I went the more I started to feel something inside me changing. I began to feel pretty guilty for the way I was living and God was knocking on my door.

I was working at a restaurant and some friends that I hadn’t seen in years came in, and I waited on them. As they left they gave me an invitation to Alpha. I didn’t think much of it and went on with my evening. A few weeks later as I was at RockHarbor, I felt the need to get involved in something so I said to myself that whatever comes up on the screen next I’ll do. Of course, it was Alpha. So the next Tuesday I showed up and saw the couple that invited me. They were shocked – they thought I came because of their invite, so I let them believe it! I’m sure it played a part, since they also ended up being my group hosts. I came to Alpha expecting to stump people with all the hard questions I knew they couldn’t answer, but I never got around to asking any of them – they didn’t seem to actually matter to me in the end.

At this stage did you believe in a God or have a distinct worldview of your own? I did believe in God and knew I wasn’t living the way I should, but I wasn’t going to stop. My worldview, if you can call it that, was: ‘I hope I get this together before I die or I’m screwed.’

How did the first few weeks go? The first few weeks of Alpha were really hard. After the first night, my girlfriend and I broke up . We both kept coming back, in different groups thankfully, but it still sucked to see her. I was also trying to still party and go to church and do Alpha, so I was being ripped apart inside. The things I used to think were fun, now made me feel pretty terrible. I had a lot of ups and downs and started to lose control of my emotions. Alpha was great! It was the only steady and safe thing in my life even though I was super wary of it. I didn’t trust the church or Christians because of hypocritical ones I had encountered. I was very quiet but since my group host knew me well, I wasn’t as safe as a regular guest – in a good way. She would ask me direct questions and make me talk, which worked really well for me. The group members would always encourage me when I was negative about myself and that was pretty different from what I was used to. The people were real and open and I could respect that. They led in vulnerability, which made it very easy to open up. They didn’t expect anything of me that they wouldn’t also do, and they didn’t pretend to be perfect. The talks brought up subjects I hadn’t thought about much and got my mind working on the basics of what I believed and thought about God, religion, and Jesus. For me, Alpha was life changing because I got to see Jesus in motion. On the day away I came to a realisation that I will always be loved by God – and that I will never be, and was never, alone. My faith was established and set on fire that day and it will never be extinguished.

What impact did that have on your life? My life changed dramatically after my experience. I started to read the Bible on my own and I found myself praying all the time and just being overwhelmed by God everywhere I went. I came back as a helper on Alpha and got to know the lead team more, which was amazing. As a helper, finally I

was doing things for others and not just myself. Alpha showed me how to love and care for others and, as I did, it started to leak into my life. My family saw the change in me, and that sent a shockwave through our lives. Because the change was so dramatic in my life, my youngest brother, who I’d neglected the most, started to come to Alpha and we began to start a new relationship; I got a second chance at being a big brother. After time went by, my family and friends were looking to me for prayer and advice – this blew my mind because, before all this, all I could tell someone was where to find the best happy hour. I’ve had many friends come and try Alpha because of what they saw happen to me. Even the people I hurt the most now trust and respect me. I get phone calls, when people hit rock bottom, asking, ‘How did you get out?’ And I get to bring them into my journey and share my faith. Alpha is one of the most effective tools I have to do that.

How did your experience of trying Alpha inform how you now run it? There is no way I would have been able to listen to people and be real with them without seeing it done first on Alpha. I needed to know how to wait and trust God, to be quiet and let others talk, to affirm people no matter where they are coming from or what they did the night before. I couldn’t be an effective host without knowing how it feels to be in their shoes. Empathising comes easy because most of the guests had similar pasts or stories to mine.

Your weekend away is up in the mountains; why has that been a good place for you guys to run it? Well, the mountains are beautiful and just being in that landscape kind of shows you the amazingness of God – also the cell service is terrible, which helps to not be distracted! The venue we use has all sorts of outdoor activities: zip-lining, hiking, agility course, giant three-man swing, games rooms, Frisbee golf, a lake, mini-golf, coffee shops, streams, bridges, places to hide away and be alone.

And finally – how has your faith impacted your day-to-day life? I’m a hairdresser and I never planned on being one. I began cutting my own hair to save some money and people liked it and asked if I would do theirs as well. Before I knew what had happened, people passed my name around and I began to establish a clientele. After a year or so I decided I should go to cosmetology school and make this my career. In school they have a few rules about hair dressing: never talk about religion or politics! But I talk to every single person that sits in my chair about Jesus. Sometimes political views come up as well, but what I have learned through Alpha has made me a good listener. Some clients have come to Alpha after our first conversation and others take a lot longer to build a relationship with. My goal is to share God’s love with every client I have without jamming anything down their throat. I mostly just answer their questions truthfully when they ask me what I did this weekend or week and it always has something to do with God, so then we begin to talk about church and Alpha. I don’t really charge enough or maybe even what I am worth but I never want someone not to be able to get a good haircut or colour because they can’t afford it. My goal is to make every person who sits in my chair feel loved, heard, and beautiful. I am a hairdresser because of Jesus and I pray he sends me people he wants to affect through me.

In the dark

alex watts Photography ignacio murua Words

José Henriquez Gonzalez is one of the thirty-three survivors of the Chilean mining disaster of 2010 – an accident that made headlines around the world and changed the lives of its victims forever. Chatting to José you are transported to the San José copper-gold mine near Copiapó in Chile, which, on the afternoon of Thursday 5 August 2010, catastrophically caved-in. Buried far underground for sixty-nine days, over 2000 feet deep, three miles from the mine’s entrance were thirty-three miners, including José, who were left battling severe thirst and hunger, physical and mental fatigue – ultimately, with little hope they would be found, less of survival. This story has become part of the history of Chile for over five years now, but a few months ago I found myself on a thirtytwo-hour bus ride to hear first-hand José’s personal account, which describes an almost unbelievable adventure of terror, perseverance and how prayer defined and transformed his experience. It seems hard to believe he might not have been with us today to tell his tale. A couple of days before the trip I was asked if I would like to travel from Córdoba Argentina, where I’m currently based, to Chile as a translator for the new Alpha Film Series to help interview a miner who had been part of the Copiapó accident. Before I knew it, having accepted the invitation, I found myself boarding a bus to the Chilean capital with my friend Ignacio, the team’s photographer. We were off on an adventure to work with a film-crew and a miner we had never met, in a place we’d never been. Santiago, the capital of Chile, is a thriving city. With its huge, snow-covered mountains encircling its Eastern border, it makes for one of the most impressive places I’ve yet seen in Latin America. After a day or two acclimatising to this unique place, we met the film crew and jumped in a little minibus on our way to José’s hometown, Talca. Talca is around a three-hour drive from the capital, which leads you past endless vineyards and mountains.

The Gonzalez family, by which I mean aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, live in a collection of houses clustered on the outskirts of Northern Talca. Upon arriving, my first impression of José was his enormous smile and the genuine warmth with which he invited all seven of us strangers into his home. Passing through the house you see a multitude of pickaxes, helmets, plaques and medals, a collection that any museum would be proud of. After initial introductions and some delicious fruitcake and máte, a traditional South American hot drink, he began to explain how this hadn’t been his first mining accident in his career but that the 2010 incident was different; it united continents in prayer and changed the direction of his life forever. The former drillmaster described to us what happened when his family first heard news of the catastrophe. His granddaughter was watching the television in the living room after school, flicking through channels, when she saw what was happening in the mine eight hours away from the Chilean capital Santiago. His wife, Blanca, quickly turned off the TV, grabbed her granddaughter’s hand and knelt down on the floor of their front room, knowing the only option they had in that moment was prayer. The way in which faith and prayer seemed so inherent and central to this family was made further evident as José explained how he had been working in the mines for thirty-three years prior to the incident and how every day before entering the mines he would ask God to be with him. On 5 August 2010, it was no different. He talked to us patiently and thoughtfully, clasping his large, rough hands on the table in front of him, not wanting to miss out any details as if it was the first time he was sharing his story.

“... His granddaughter was watching the television in the living room after school, flicking through channels, when she saw what was happening in the mine ...”

He began to tell us about the serious mental and spiritual battle that understandably took place not only in the group but also in his heart. He held back tears as he described how he never lost hope in the refuge at a depth of 2,260 feet, and how, as a group, regardless of their faith or religion, they came to the logical conclusion that unless God performed a miracle, there was no way out. The hope José had spoken about for years in the light seemed so relevant in the dark shadow of the mine. The ever-smiling man explained how he organised daily prayers and attempted to keep up morale amongst the men any way he could. Twice a day they would gather in a circle and pray, a space where each one of the miners could share their thoughts and where they began to ask God for a miracle. The men had only three day’s worth of tinned supplies with them when the collapse occurred. Through careful and disciplined planning, they managed to ration the food to sixteen days. On the seventeenth day, not a moment too late, the miracle they had been praying for began to unfold. José explained how the men became aware of machinery overhead and knew that help was on the way. One of the rescue team’s probes successfully reached the miners, who were able to attach a note declaring, ‘All thirty-three of us are well inside the shelter,’ a note that José, in fact, has framed and mounted on his wall. It took a further fifty-two days in total before the miners would see sunlight again, but in that time, through paloma supply tubes, they were sent notes, food, equipment, fresh water and home comforts. What the thirty-three men weren’t aware of was the community and attention evolving above ground in what became known as Camp Hope. Schools were created for the miners’ children and families camped and ate together not wanting to leave their loved ones: whether sons, husbands, fathers, grandparents or dear friends.

Eventually, on the sixty-ninth day, 13 October 2010, the final man of the thirty-three, Luis Urzua, was winched through the escape shaft to safety at ground level. The unbelievable, exhaustive ordeal was finally concluded. What struck me most was the way that José continually thanked God throughout our conversation – in almost every statement and sentence. He was enthusiastic to share with me his experience of God’s love and mercy as well as recounting how he had come to terms with the fact that everything that happened was God’s will – including that twenty-two of the men came to faith in the dark of the mine. At sixty-years-old José is now retired; he left the mining business behind but has never forgotten the experience of what happened. Truthfully, he hardly has time to go back to work with his busy speaking schedule, which has taken him around the world for the last five years.

“... and as you really can see, prayer works ...”

He doesn’t travel alone but alongside his friend, pastor and translator Reverend Alfred Cooper. Alfred, former chaplain to the Chilean president, told us how prayer wasn’t just a central part of life in the mine but also above ground in the presidential palace where they gathered to pray with the president as soon as they heard the news that the San José mine had caved-in. We discovered during our time in Chile how much of an impact the miners have had on their country. They may not be known individually, but as a group they are as famous as their national football team. This is clearly a population that was affected by the miners’ struggle and by their escape in the face of tragedy. I’ll end this with one simple yet powerful statement José said that has stuck with me ever since: ‘When we felt we had lost everything, I could say that we hadn’t lost prayer and as you really can see, prayer works.’

Behind the Scenes hui shan khoo Photography alex douglas, ignacio murua & josh knepper Words & Interview

A sneak peek behind the scenes of the production of the global Alpha Film Series. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a pretty big year. We launched a repackaged, reimagined version of Alpha filmed all around the globe â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the mountains of Vancouver to the hills of Jerusalem, from the palaces of Austria to the heart of Chile. The Alpha Film Series is a new way to engage with the basics of the Christian faith. Nicky Gumbel, along with presenters Toby Flint and Gemma Hunt, bring the traditional Alpha material in a new, global, interactive set of fifteen episodes, featuring interviews from world-renowned scientists such as Francis Collins to cultural figures such as hip hop artist and spoken word poet, Propaganda.

The Vision

We caught up with Executive Producer Al Gordon on the vision behind the Alpha Film Series and what comes next.

Why did you set about making the Alpha Film Series? We wanted to take Alpha completely apart and rebuild it for the next generation. Essentially, we took Alpha and decided to present it in fifteen, thirty-minute episodes. It was filmed all around the world in a contemporary style – it’s kind of a documentary for the soul. It offers more than you would get if you were just watching somebody deliver a talk. For example, on prayer, we spoke to José Henriquez Gonzalez, the Chilean miner who survived the Copiapó accident of 2010. The world watched as the note came up from the mine that read, ‘All thirty-three of us are well inside the shelter.’ We’ve never done anything like this before. These films give people the most up-to-date and contemporary way of helping their friends and communities find out more about faith. So we’re giving it away for free, on Alpha.org.

Why did you decide on a film series as the format? How people communicate has changed radically in the past two decades. Most people consume huge amounts of content all the time, and much of it is screen based, short format and instantly relatable. We wanted to communicate the unchanging good news about Jesus in a fresh and engaging way that speaks the language of this generation.

What’s your hope for how it’ll be used and the impact it’ll have around the globe? Our hope is that young people all across the world will use this to be able to invite their communities to come and to explore the meaning of life. The cool thing is that the series is going to be available to 90 per cent of the world in their language. That’s an awesome thought: most of the world one click away from exploring the meaning of life.

Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been in the process of making the series from start to finish, tell us about that experience There have been loads of memorable moments during the project, such as filming pioneer of Alpha Nicky Gumbel in a courtroom, recording ex-offender Shane Taylorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s testimony in a prison, and connecting with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong, just to name a few. But one of the key moments for me was when we filmed in the Judean desert between Jericho and Jerusalem. We hiked up into the hills and came across shepherds and flocks of sheep. Nothing much has changed in 2000 years, and yet this is right where the story of the birth of Jesus unfolded, and we got to film there! It was a truly extraordinary experience.

Nicky Gumbel, Gemma Hunt and Toby Flint are the three presenters of the Alpha Film Series. We catch up with new faces Gemma and Toby to find out more about the project:

When did you first come across Alpha? T. I moved to London after university and my new church was running Alpha. I’d always found telling friends about my faith a bit awkward but I decided I’d give it a shot and invited one friend, Nick, who came, bringing along his girlfriend, his mum and another friend too! Seeing the huge impact on each of their lives, I realised what a great way Alpha was to introduce people to faith. G. I first did Alpha when I was a teenager at my church and many years later did it again as an adult.

How did you get involved with the Alpha Film Series? G. If I’m honest, this isn’t the normal type of job I’d go for, my background is in children’s TV, but I felt God was calling me to do this, and it’s been amazing. T. I head up Alpha at HTB Church in London, and was involved in the early stages of planning the project. When it came to the filming, it was somehow left to me to fill the spot next to Gemma!

The Presenters

Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna

G. It’s Alpha like you’ve never seen it before. It takes the same incredible content that’s been put together over the years, but the delivery is so much more effective for a younger, global audience. T. The result is powerful. It’s compelling to hear from such a range of inspiring individuals. Shane Taylor, for example – previously one of Britain’s most dangerous people and prisoners – tells his story of how his life was completely transformed by Jesus on Alpha. We also had the privilege of hearing from world-leading experts and Christian leaders, with Oxford Professors John Lennox and Alister McGrath, for example, discussing the questions of science, textual criticism and faith.

How did you find the filming process? T. The more I read my lines and the more I said them on film, the more I realised: This is true! This is amazing. This is life-changing. I was talking to myself as much as I was to those who will be watching this. G. I was picking apart what I was saying, I wanted to fully understand every word. It was like our own three-month Alpha.

What was your highlight? T. We filmed in so many places, but my personal highlight was Jerusalem – from filming on an arid but beautifully wild hilltop where Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, to walking the same streets in the old city that Jesus himself would have walked 2,000 years ago. Wherever we went, it felt like we were breathing the same air as those in years gone by, reliving their stories. It was a real privilege.

Head to alpha.org / watch to see the first episode – and log in or register at alpha.org / run to download the whole of Alpha Film Series, all for free.

How would you describe the series?

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With Compassion Words & Photography

kyle jaster

Kyle Jaster writes about his experience of travelling to the north-east coast of Kenya and seeing the value of compassion played-out in the life of Charles Travelling in on the road from Malindi to Barani, I could see women sat at the roadside, chipping away at rocks in the heat of the sun. These women work to fill buckets full of fine gravel and in doing so typically earn the equivalent of about £1 a day.

This tends to be representative of most adult laborers in the town. Those who are able to find work earn on average the equivalent of just £15 per month. Unemployment is a serious challenge in Barani and is contributing to high levels of malnutrition, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS.

KE-623 is a project located in Barani, a small village of 50,000 residents set two kilometers west of Malindi, on the north-east coast of Kenya. The project is run by Compassion and operates through ACK St Andrew’s Barani Child Development Centre in the heart of a community where deep-seated and desperate poverty is prevalent. As we drove up to St Andrew’s School, masses of young children in their school uniforms ran up alongside our vehicle. We were taken into a small office space where we were greeted by the principle, the chaplain and project director, and a number of others including Charles, who was quietly sat in the corner. At the age of fourteen, Charles has an extraordinary story to tell of the impact that being sponsored by Compassion has had on his life – but, as I spent more of the day with him, it was his depth of character that struck me and captured my attention. Charles lives, by African standards, a short twenty-minute walk away from the child development center in a small home with his mum, aunt, and five siblings. With his father no longer around, caring for Charles and his siblings had become increasingly challenging for Charles’ mum. Seeing the need of this family, Charles was accepted into the Compassion program. Through sponsorship Charles has had the opportunity to receive health care, mosquito nets, Bible teaching, life skills training, counselling and tuition for school. And through special one-time gifts from Charles’ sponsor, his family has also been able to build their home with the support they have received from Compassion.

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With this opportunity, Charles has excelled. Now head boy of his school, Charles’ impact has spread beyond his own peers and community having been invited to speak and present at different events and engagements throughout the country. But it was in the little, day-to-day things that I feel I really got to see the ongoing impact that sponsorship had on Charles’ life.

After meeting Charles at his school we went back to his house to meet his mum and the rest of his family. As he showed me around his family home, I discovered a bit more of the character and faith that lay beneath the surfaced accomplishments. He showed me the bedroom that he shares with his younger brother – it was a small, dim room with one tiny window and no electricity. There was one bed that took up most of the space and a small mat on the floor that was clearly being used as a makeshift bed. I asked Charles about it and he explained that it gets quite hot at night with the two of them in the same bed so Charles often sleeps on the mat on the floor so that his little brother can get a good night’s sleep. I asked Charles and his brother to sit side-by-side on the bed so that I could film them interacting with one another for a film I was making with Compassion. I wanted it to look natural so I encouraged them to think about what they would normally do if it was just the two of them.

oppor tunity – “It was a small, dim room with one tiny window and no electricity.” 79

leader Charles responded by saying, ‘Well, my brother doesn’t have the same opportunities that I do to learn so I often teach him the things that I’m learning about in school. We also pray together and read the Bible. So maybe we could just do that?’ He then got out his Bible and prayed with his little brother. Over the last couple of years, Alpha and Compassion have created a partnership that allows youth to do Alpha as part of their Compassion programme. So far, more than 25,000 sponsored children have had the opportunity to try Alpha. Charles was one of the first to try Alpha and he said, ‘Before I was sponsored by Compassion I was a timid boy. I understood very little of the potential I had hidden deep inside. But I thank God I was among the first people in our project to try Alpha. Alpha asks some of the most important questions in a young person’s life. From the first topics it helped me to understand who God is. Through Alpha, I have gained confidence. I have become a leader and have the confidence to teach.’

To finish off the day, we returned back to the school where some of the other boys were playing soccer on the school field. Charles’ natural disposition was still quiet and reserved but there was also a clear sense of confidence in him. I was curious about what the dynamic would be like between him and the other kids, especially knowing that he was head boy. Seeing the other boys playing soccer I asked him if he wanted to join in. Charles assuredly approached the other boys and was met by what seemed like a deep sense of respect as they listened to him. They stopped what they were doing, Charles took the lead rearranging them into teams and they kicked off the game. I feel that Compassion’s slogan is an appropriate summary for this story – ‘Releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name’ – because I believe that Charles’ life is marked by both his and his family’s continued journey out of poverty through the help of Compassion. But it’s also clear that the faith he has found and is sharing with his family has a significant role to play in the success of that journey out of poverty, not to mention the impact he is having on the community around him. Find out more about the work of Compassion and how to get involved at: compassionuk.org

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“I have become a leader and have the confidence to teach.”

In the Garden alex rouanzoin darren rouanzoin Interview phil james Photography shannon leith & jordan short Words

We talked to the team at Garden Church, California, about the city of Long Beach, the complexities of kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work in a cigar lounge and Alpha at The Brass Lamp.

jon rosene

What’s the culture like out in Long Beach? Long Beach is a unique place. It’s the sixth largest city in the California, about half a million people live here. We are the second most diverse city in the US. Long Beach has been going through a significant revitalisation over the last ten years and we’ve been able to witness the growth and transformation. One of the things I love our about Long Beach is the pride residents have for our city. There’s a unique identity found in belonging here and a sense of deep love for this community is found among its people.

Tell us about Garden Church – what’s the journey been like so far? We launched our church in October of 2009. We started with just a handful of people in the basement of an old church building and moved into a night club/cigar lounge in the middle of downtown Long Beach. I would describe our journey as miraculous in many ways. Alex and I were in our early twenties when we moved to the city and started Garden Church with no idea what we were doing. Everything we did we had to figure it out on the go. I had only preached three times before I was leading a church and I had been to one elder meeting before I had to lead an elder team – we were young, inexperienced, unprepared and uncertain about what it would take to lead a church in an urban context. But, by the grace of God, through prayer, lots of learning from mistakes and failure, God consistently showed up and led us in the right direction. When we started out, we were setting-up and tearing-down in a bar. The kids and youth met in the cigar lounge – we literally had industrial air purifiers running in the kids’ groups because of how bad the space smelled like smoke. You can’t make that kind of story up. Over the last seven years, we’ve met at an old church, a cigar lounge/bar/night club, a Seventh Day Adventist Church and a middle school.

What’s the makeup of your church? Our congregation has become increasingly diverse. It is beginning to reflect more and more of the diverse city we live in. We are predominantly young families and college students. But as we have grown we are growing in all directions. We have Spanish translation live at both services for people who speak Spanish as their primary language and that’s been really fun to watch how our community is beginning to connect with another type of demographic in our city. I’ve heard it said, ‘The millennial generation is leaving the church’, but at the garden almost our entire staff is made up of millennials – I say, ‘We aren’t leaving the church, we’re leading the church!’

What are the challenges of connecting with the community around you? Our biggest challenge is learning how to be a multicultural and multiethnic church. As we continue to reach the community around where we gather, both on Sundays and throughout the week in the city, we encounter lots of diversity. For us to reach the city we have to learn and adapt our methods and forms in order to embrace and empower our community. I love the diversity but like any relationship, sacrifice is required. That means giving up preferences in order to reach our community.

How did your first Alpha go? You know the phrase, ‘Fake it ‘til you make it?’ Well, that was us for our first Alpha! We knew we just had to jump in regardless of how prepared or ready we felt we were. The incredible part is that it went great.

We’re only on our second course, but we have a number of people who had grown up in church, left and are now coming back – a lot of people who are lonely and wanting to be part of a community again. We found that if we made it more of a place that people could hang out and feel at ease, the better.

Tell me about meeting at The Brass Lamp? In Southern California, people are caught off guard when they walk into a bar/restaurant and find a group of people drinking wine or beer and having meaningful conversations about life – it feels like something to be a part of. Multiple times after the live talks, people that were sitting in the restaurant for other purposes joined a group to discuss the topic. I remember doing a talk on ‘Who is Jesus?’ and watched groups of people stop their meals, turn their chairs and engage in the discussion. It was exciting. Having to speak to a crowd as well as people that were coming for Alpha was hard but worth it.

What kinds of questions are guests coming with? A lot of the questions have to do with past judgment they have experienced from the church. And also, many of the questions have to do with the purpose of life – trying to find meaning.

What impact have you seen through Alpha? It’s been incredibly helpful to fuel our desire to share our faith and introduce Jesus. When you start Alpha and have someone who wasn’t a Christian, then over the course have their life transformed, it’s incredible. There’s just nothing better than that.

Any examples? We had a guy, Joe, on our first course who was pretty disillusioned with the church as a whole. He wasn’t sure of this whole ‘Christian’ thing. His wife actually signed him up for Alpha – so he really didn’t have a choice on whether or not to come! Well, over the ten weeks of Alpha he discovered a God that was loving, kind and forgiving. He discovered a different side of the Christian faith, and he dived in head first. A few months after Alpha he decided to join a missions trip to India – something he has never done before and completely out of his comfort zone. I went to India with him and I’m sitting there watching this guy teach others in India how to pray, praying for others and sharing his faith with all those around him. He was completely transformed.

Why do you think Alpha works for you guys where you are?

We are missing spaces in our culture to belong before you believe. Alpha provides that space. Everyone believes in something here in Long Beach and Alpha offers a space to open up that dialogue – without judgment or condemnation.

What’s next for you as a church – what’s the vision? We don’t have a vision for the church, we have a vision for our city. We want to see lives transformed and cities renewed. Our hope is for our city to tangibly see the impact of a local church. We want to decrease the lostness of Long Beach, decrease homelessness and poverty, and we want to increase joy, love, peace and hope – we want families to be stronger and this city to thrive. We want to continue to bring life to the city and help write a better story!

Join the Adventure Pray The first and most important way that you can be involved with Alpha is to pray. Pray that people have the opportunity to explore faith and pray for those running Alpha that they get the chance to build relationships and impact lives. Alpha.org/pray

Invite By inviting people to Alpha, you can be the first point of contact for those looking to explore the big questions of life. Invite friends, family, colleagues, streets and whole communities to discuss the basics of the Christian faith together. To find an Alpha near you, head to: Alpha.org/try

Run Alpha is run all over the world in pretty much every location imaginable: from schools to coffee shops, from prisons to the armed forces. Running Alpha, wherever you are, is now easier than ever: to find training, tips and materials for running your first Alpha visit: Alpha.org/run

Give Your support makes it possible for millions of people to explore life and the Christian faith in a friendly, open and informal environment through Alpha. Giving to Alpha equips and empowers people around the globe to run Alpha in their local communities. To find out more and to donate, visit: Alpha.org/give

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