Miriam Swaffield, third year student from G2, part of St. Michael Le Belfrey Church in York gives us the low down on the amazing Student Alpha course they ran this term! Read on and be inspired...
“Unashamedly messy”. I think that’s how I’d describe our first attempt at a church-wide Student Alpha. Turns out it’s a very different ball-game putting on an Alpha course in the city centre of York, advertised to all our church’s congregations and fed into by our four student cells bursting with Freshers.
We didn’t really have a plan you know. I mean, we had a team, we had a venue, the means to cook, some good speakers lined-up… but we had no idea what this would look like in practice; so we just hit the ground running. Let this immediately encourage you: out of a team of about fifteen, only four of us had ever actually done Student Alpha before. God doesn’t wait until we think we are good enough, experienced enough, planned enough. Sometimes he just says “Go for it and watch me take this further than you can imagine.”
Want to know what “further than you can imagine” looked like? Well, for starters we had a small group (that increasingly became a rather big group) of international students. This is new to our church. We consciously wanted to make ourselves far more accessible to International students when we set out our vision for this year, and God went the extra mile and brought them in, in droves. In a few weeks time we are having a joint baptism service with the local Chinese church, in which seven Chinese students are being baptised and counting.
Turns out, the gospel is still true, Jesus still saves, and God is still strength when we are weak.
Secondly, I can’t fail to mention “Homeless Alpha”. This was a bit of a curve ball to say the least. Basically every week, we ended up having a small group comprised of guys living on the streets of York. It became pretty standard practice for a student to walk into our venue accompanied by a homeless person they’d just met and invited in. Week by week our friends returned, joining in more and more until they were helping clear up, praying with the team, reciting their poems to us and even leading a rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’ on our final week. There was nothing in the plan about catering for the homeless. There was nothing in the Leaders Training about welcoming the outcasts, the addicts and the unwashed. But I wouldn’t have wanted Student Alpha any other way. We would have been the poorer without Jason, Adam, Jacko, Paul and Jo. And guests and team alike I believe will never look at a homeless person the same way again.
There are almost too many testimonies to tell you about to be honest; we saw a mouth ulcer healed when praying on the ‘What about suffering and does God heal today?’ week. We have a couple of Student Alpha guests who have come to know Jesus and have asked to be baptised and will be in a few weeks time. We nearly broke a very expensive projector when one of our speakers threw a Bible across the room in an over-enthusiastic giving out of the Word. And we’ve learnt.
Will we run another big Student Alpha this time next year? Yes. Have we learnt from our mistakes, our weaknesses and our times of faith and not by sight? Yes. Did God use our big vision and passions to share the gospel as effectively as possible to our generation, even though it seemed messy to those of us attempting to lead? Yes.
This goes bigger than us. Life is messy. Beautifully so. Take a risk. Don’t wait until you are perfect, until you think you’re ready to run Student Alpha. Go for it, and let our perfect God do immeasurably more than you can imagine.
For more info about Student Alpha visit studentalpha.org ... go on give it a try!
