Alpha was born out of the desire that Merryl and I had to see people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus. Having being involved in Alpha courses in our previous church, we were fully aware of the impact that the course could have on people’s lives.

The opportunity to run a course here in the UK, Alpha’s country of origin, was an exciting prospect. Invitations to the Alpha invite dinner went out through members of the church in order to get members of the church involved. The result was that the first invite dinner saw a total of 24 people attend, 16 of whom were guests of OXCI church members.

One of our decisions was that we would run the first Alpha course in our home. This meant that we could only have a maximum of seven people do the first course. The dilemma we faced was that we had 12 people respond!

We did however, end up with the right number of people (six to be precise) on the course, with the assurance that we had the core group for the next course.

So how did the first Alpha course go? Out of the core group that started three people finished, the other three had various international events to attend and so couldn’t complete the course. We saw two people re-dedicate their lives to the Lord, we also saw one new commitment to the Lord. These are all wonderful outcomes for OXCI’s first Alpha course.

But it’s not over yet; these people will need your prayer and support. As you will know, when we choose to follow Christ, the enemy will react. Therefore this is a time when all these people need our love and support.

We have learnt many lessons in running this first course and we look forward to applying these on the next course, which will run at the beginning of 2009. We look forward to your continued support and to having more people involved in the process as we are looking to increasing the number of people who will attend.

Greg and Merryl

Copyright Oxford Church International 2008

Together we can!

Registerd Charity Number: 1123454