Since my daughter & the 2 other teenagers from our Church went to the Methodist Youth Conference in Cardiff last year, I have been aware of a need for young people in our area to get together to learn about Jesus. Living as we do in a very sparsely populated area it can be quite lonely being a christian of any age and as all three of them have to travel some distance to go to church they go to 3 different High Schools.
I am wanting to run a Youth Alpha in September. Our Church in Newtown is one of 3 larger Churches in the circuit which also has several outlying chapels.
I have read the leaders guide but it seems very geard towards bigger churches with hip & trendy kids where there are Youth Workers & lots of youngsters to help out. As I said we have 3 teenagers + 2 kids who are 11 +12 in our church & there may be 3 or 4 other youngsters in the other churches who would be interested, but I am wondering whether to start very small scale & just open it up to these few, or whether to advertise more widely & then panic about whether I've got enough staff etc if I get a huge response?

I would love to hear from anyone who has run youth alpha in a small rural congregation!