Around 1,000 church leaders from 76 countries around the world attended Alpha’s big biannual International Week in London in May.
Among the delegates were many senior church leaders including the Catholic Archbishop of Moscow, three Catholic bishops from Peru, and three Anglican bishops from India.

The Alpha international week is an opportunity for Alpha representatives all over the world to meet together and be envisioned for the years ahead.

There are now more than 34,000 churches running Alpha in 160 countries.
Speakers at the event included Bishop Sandy Millar, Alpha speaker Nicky Gumbel, US author Bob Buford and 24/7 prayer movement founder Pete Greig.

More than 30 denominations were represented from countries including Russia, Zimbabwe, Poland, Romania, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Uruguay, Mexico and Zambia.

The week, held at Holy Trinity Brompton, the Anglican church where Alpha’s headquarters is based, began with a two-day Alpha conference divided into three ‘tracks’, with one for senior church leaders, one for those experienced with Alpha, and one for those new to Alpha.

Sessions were simultaneously translated into seven languages - Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish.

A ‘marketplace’ in a large marquee adjoining the main church gave delegates the opportunity to enquire about a range of church activities including family life courses, worship, social transformation, web technology and communications.

Here are highlights from the feedback sessions where countries reported on what had been happening:

Zimbabwe: Despite the economic problems, Alpha is working and we have seen people’s lives being transformed. Almost every day we get phone calls from pastors who are now willing to run Alpha in their churches. In June we are going to the north of the country to train 17 pastors from different denominations on how to use Alpha.

Zambia: We have had endorsements from the two leading denominations in Zambia - the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans. The Roman Catholic Archbishop said, ‘Why have you kept this the best kept secret? Christian Vision are going to give us 3000 radios on which they will play Alpha on their radio station which will mean that every prisoner in Zambia will hear Alpha through these radios.

Romania: We have now about 430 courses. At the end of last year we ran a Youth Alpha conference in Bucharest with the help of Alpha Holland. After that about 80 Alpha courses started at the beginning of this year.

Switzerland: The Swiss Evangelical Alliance did a survey and they found out that most people who found Jesus in recent years found him through the Alpha course - I think 70-80% of the people. So that was really encouraging for us.

Sweden: Over the past year we’ve had five Alpha conferences and we were greatly honoured to have the Catholic Bishop of Sweden, Anders Arborelius, open the last conference in April.

Poland: So far more than 8,000 have done Alpha as guests on our courses and 6,500 of those have been in the Roman Catholic Church.
Singapore: We have 120 churches who have done Alpha. When the Anglicans did a survey they found that those churches that were growing were those that were doing Alpha. We have fantastic stories coming from our prisons. Gang leaders who were so violent that the prison constantly kept them on watch have become Christians. They are now so mild that the Assistant Director of prison asked him what happened. He said two words: ‘Jesus’ and ‘Alpha’.

New Zealand: We have just completed our seventh annual initiative in New Zealand. We ran nine Youth Alpha training conferences in the early part of this year which trained hundreds of youth leaders during one day seminars.
United States: It’s not too much to say that Alpha is changing the way the American churches are thinking about evangelism. You probably know we have a long history of great evangelists like Billy Graham, Louis Palau and D L Moody but churches are finding that Alpha and this conversational approach to evangelism is helping the church in America enormously.

Russia: We are really honoured that the Archbishop of the Catholic Church is here today. On the stage today we have Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox - all together running Alpha. Graham Tomlin and his team did a seminar for the Orthodox Church in October last year.

China/Hong Kong: We’ve just had the first Global Chinese conference which was opened by Cardinal Zen, the Catholic archbishop of Hong Kong, along with the Anglican archbishop of Hong Kong, Archbishop Kwong. Twenty-five countries were represented among the 2,000 people, including 300 from mainland China and there was a representative from the Chinese official church. We also had two youth concerts with Tim Hughes and the Australian worship band Planet Shakers and we had a youth Alpha training day - with about 800 youth leaders and young people there.

Indonesia: In Indonesia many churches are persecuted and burned. Obtaining permits to build churches is made very, very, difficult. But we love this nation and we want to bring this good news to all in Indonesia.

Malaysia: We had an Alpha conference in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 2005 with 1400 people. We had several bishops attend and it was opened by the Roman Catholic Bishop and the Anglican Bishop. We had huge numbers of different denominations there too, so it was very unifying.

Korea: There are about 2,650 Korean churches running Alpha and more than one million Korean people have been through Alpha courses. The course is growing churches. One has grown from 500 to 1,500 members and another from 300 to 1,000 member since they began to run Alpha - it’s so exciting.

India: In 2005 we had a different Christmas in India. Billy Graham decided to reach out to one billion people using the media and using Christmas. Out of that, millions of people heard the gospel. In 2006 the best thing that happened to India was the Alpha Initiative. We had about 43 Alpha conferences across the nation and thousands of pastors and leaders went through and came to know about the tool called Alpha.

Canada: We have about three quarters of a million people now who’ve taken Alpha in Canada. Our largest evangelical denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada had not been endorsing Alpha fully but now three or four of their key churches have had such amazing fruit from Alpha that they’ve recently fully endorsed Alpha which means they’ll be promoting it to over 1000 of their churches. We will conduct a 2007 Alpha Invitation and in August, $1 million dollars worth of billboard and transit advertising will be displayed across Canada. So we’re anticipating some amazing things that God’s going to do.