Andy and Anita Middleton, of Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, ran Alpha courses in a local pub for many years but then made a radical decision: to add a conservatory to their home and run the course there. Here Anita Middleton describe how they have seen scores of people come to faith over the years:

I am one of eleven children. My brother became a Christian while in prison and when he came out he told us about Jesus. In the space of a year, six of us, plus our 71 year old mother became Christians. I had a sister that was into drugs and prostitution, another brother that had also been in prison and a brother that was a drag queen.

I was quite violent and drinking heavily in a very violent marriage. My brother told me I needed to sort my life out with God which deeply offended me because he had been in prison and I hadn't.
A year after becoming a Christian I was divorced. I met Andy three years later and we've been married for fourteen years. Now we both share a passion for evangelism.

Ten years ago our church - The Community Church - was going to run Alpha for the first time but before it could start the lady who had been to the Alpha conference moved out of the area.
We had eight people from outside the church wanting to do Alpha, so I and another friend, Pam Kyles, decided we had to go ahead with it. We had originally volunteered to do the drinks, but we got the training video and learnt what to do.

The course was a brilliant success and I think six guests became Christians. After that Pam and I became really excited about it. We decided to do live talks ourselves on the next course and we got two other people to help us do the catering. After that we constantly had eight people turning up each time.
We held it in somebody's front room and ran one course a year - every autumn. It was all very new to our church and only four of us had done the training.
Andy came on board six years ago. The church asked us if we'd take on the responsibility of running it three times a year for them.

We've run it in lots of different places but the most exciting one was in a local pub. We wanted to make Alpha relevant to the people around us (we live in the middle of a really rough council estate), so we decided a pub would be ideal.
I manage a church charity shop. An alcoholic man was one of my customers and I invited him on to Alpha. He said he would only come if we did it in a pub. So that was a further incentive.

We contacted many pubs in the area but they all said, 'We don't want that sort of stuff going on in the pub, it will lose us customers...'
Finally we approached the Boathouse - a pub on our estate. The landlord was quite blunt, saying that he had never heard of Alpha. So we offered to meet him.
We prayed that God would go ahead of us as it seemed like an impossible task. When we met he said, 'How much are you looking at paying me to have it here?' Here was the brick wall...
We said, 'Well, we've got ?30 - and you'll need to shut your restaurant down on a Sunday evening to allow us to run it.'
He told us that the room which he was going to loan us usually costs ?75-?100 for an evening, plus meals (which the pub would provide) on top of that.

Then he told us that the night before he had been speaking on the telephone to his daughter, who was a missionary in Papua New Guinea.
He said, 'My daughter told me, "Alpha is brilliant, Dad. Let them do it, and make it as cheap as you can." So I suppose you've got to come and do it here.'
We ran about six courses there for a few years - two a year. We had between 14 and 26 on each course - all unchurched people. We had two helpers and a guest speaker (if it wasn't one of us doing the talk).

We advertised it as a course for people who are not connected with the church. We bought a good printer and did some great glossy posters.
When we first started, the punters downstairs were very anti us being there and very vocal about it.

So what we'd do was cook a two-course meal for everybody that came on Alpha, but then also cook extra food and give it to everybody downstairs as well (between 12-20). So we became popular downstairs.
We'd cook roast dinners, jacket potatoes, pizzas, puddings - and once we did a hot chicken buffet.
But there was this hard bunch - one guy in particular who was like the ringleader, who wasn't having any of it.
Eventually we ended up sitting at the table with him and his group and they bought us a drink. After that we got to know him really well.

The landlord even sat in on the course because he was going through a really difficult time. He didn't become a Christian on it but he was certainly touched.
We saw quite amazing things in the pub. One lady came along who had not had any contact with her children for years - she seemed quite sad. She didn't say anything at all throughout the course.
Andy said to her, 'Could we pray with you?' and she said no. She didn't want us even to talk with her - even a few weeks into the course.
Finally, Andy asked her again, 'Would you let us pray with you?' and she said yes this time. Andy said to her, 'Our God is a God of reconciliation...

Obviously we don't know what has happened in your family, but we do know that this hurts you, so we want to pray that God will reconcile your family.'
It turned out that she hadn't seen her son for about 17 years - he was a little boy when she'd last seen him.
A week after we prayed, she told us that an amazing thing had happened: she'd been in a supermarket and she'd seen her son and had recognised him.
He'd recognised her too and it was quite emotional. A week later she took him a teddy bear and they have restored their relationship since then.

Eventually, the landlord of the Boathouse pub moved away and we felt that God was really on his case when he left.
When he left, he had it written into the contract with the new landlord that we could still continue with Alpha at this price.
Also, the guy who had been the ringleader of the hard bunch of regulars said to the new pub landlords, 'Make sure you get them Alpha people in, it's a really good course.'
The new people were quite happy for us to keep going and we ran about two or three courses after that.

Until they got Sky TV. This attracted lots of football fans and youth and the pub became too rowdy and noisy to continue Alpha there.
But we saw quite a lot of people become Christians over the years - about 80% success. And some of them are helping us on courses now.

For three years we'd been trying to buy this big old people's residential home. We wanted to live upstairs and open the downstairs up as a community place, running Alpha and all sorts.
Unfortunately it fell through so we thought, 'What can we do now?' So we decided to re-mortgage our house and build a really nice 25 square metre conservatory on to the back of the house.

We installed a projector with a big screen and cinema surround sound. We thought, 'We'll make it a venue that's trendy and will attract people.'
We were worried about the transition from pub venue to a home conservatory. Would people still come or would they think we were getting too posh for them? We prayed a lot about that and we believed it was the right thing. And people came.

I put a limit on the size of the conservatory. We can get sixteen people in comfortably. The last time we did Alpha we had to take the sofas out to get another table in, to fit twenty.
We have also bought a pop-up marquee (6m x 3m) to fasten onto the side, because we have got faith to see Alpha grow! This will double the size of it.
This is our second year since we have had the conservatory. We run three Alphas a year - we're now on our fifth one.

We estimate that around 154 guests have attended our courses and of those 93 have made a commitment to Christ.
We have every age group - from 18 year olds upwards. They are always people with no church background. Some of our guests come after finding our course on the Web - by going to Alpha.org.
We are very particular about who we have as helpers. We take on a team that we know are not going to come out with church jargon, who are very chatty and good at putting people at ease. And we always train the team.

We love Alpha because it's about the basics - we're able to leave out all the church jargon that people outside can't relate to.
It tells people how precious they are to God, that God loves them with all their baggage and problems.
Alpha's a tool that God uses to demonstrate his love for people. And we have seen people in tears, we have seen lives changed - that's what we love about it.