Executive Director of Alpha International, Tricia Neill, and Bishop Sandy Millar led a seminar at a European Church Planting gathering in Portugal last week.

The gathering, which was held at Dom Pedro Golf Resort, Vilamoura, joined together organisations and leaders from across Europe 'connecting best practitioners in open learning communities to accelerate missional church planting in Europe'.

Sandy and Tricia led a seminar on 'The journey of creating an entrepreneurial culture in a holistic church'.

During the seminar, Sandy said, 'Our planting initiative has come from the middle-sized groups. Nicky Gumbel saw the potential of the Alpha course.

'We needed something to feed people so we gave everyone an invitation to Alpha. We want people to know that they come from God and to know what church is like.

'The question was “would the people come to the church after Alpha”? Alpha grew out of the church and the church grew because of Alpha.'

The gathering was part of a wider initiative by the 'European Church Planting Network (ECPN), which aims to allow communities to 'undertake a shared learning process of exploring the best practices of missional church planting and thus self-select and implement proven principles to improve their own model of church planting.