At Whitehouse Presbyterian Church in North Belfast, Northern Ireland, we are preparing for our fifth Alpha Course. It has been a slow steady growth over each one and although recently our church building has been flooded out, we are taking the course off site into the community for the second time. As part of our development we have grown along side our friends at St Johns the Baptist Parish Church in Portadown and watched this year our other friends from Newcastle Presbyterian go on from the Whitehouse course, to start their own in Newcastle, Co Down. Partnering with other churches from various denomination has help us all to grow and creating the opportunity for us to learn from each others rich heritage, which few other christian initiatives has done before in Northern Ireland.

For this forthcoming course we have invested in a billboard campaign that links to a website at www.askjesus.me.uk. The idea is that this site allows visitors to submit their questions in response to the ad campaign, watch the alpha invite video and register their interest in our forthcoming course.

We have also created a Facebook Event where church members, Alpha leaders and helpers can invite their friends on Facebook. This has proven to be quite successful, with people finding this an effective method of asking friends to the course. Once asked these people can then ask their own friends to attend using the Facebook Event, creating interest in the Whitehouse Alpha Course through recommendation from friends.

We thought it might be useful for other churches to hear about our methods to attract interest and how partnering with others has strengthen our own experience in running the Alpha Course.

Derek Hall
Whitehouse Alpha Co-ordinator