Vision Revealed to Broadcast Alpha Course Live to the World

In light of the Annual Alpha Invitation 2005 launched across churches in the UK last week, Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) in London - the home to Alpha Course International - has revealed a new vision to renovate the Church so that the Alpha Course can be broadcasted live to all parts of the world.

Nicky Gumbel, the Alpha Chaplain, has laid out the vision at the annual meeting of HTB last month. As the Alpha Course is starting in September, Gumbel said, "We are filming the Alpha course again this term, which is necessary because seven million people could not be doing the course were it not for the filming."

However, he continued that the HTB is not designed for filming and it is intrusive to do filming there. Therefore, a new development of HTB;s sister church - St Paul’s Onslow Square is to include a main worship centre which facilitates broadcasting services and courses worldwide.

Hi-tech camera equipment and lighting will be installed into the body of the church to allow for broadcast-quality transmissions which could be relayed live to other venues or filmed for future distribution, according to Gumbel.

With the support of statistics, Gumbel explained the urgent need to make good use of technology so that abundant resources and training could be shared with many Christian leaders in the world. He wishes that the Family Life courses could be filmed or go out live across the country and across the world. It was also mentioned that the Alpha course could be broadcast live on the web.

"Already the leading theologians in this country come to speak at the School of Theology. Supposing we could bring them to a place where their talks could not only be given to our congregation but could go out to the rest of the world? Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could help to provide theological training? I read recently that in the Third World, there are 2.1 million pastors, 1.9 million of whom have no theological training at all," Gumbel said.

In addition, Gumbel shared that he was very much been inspired by the prevalent multi-site churches in the United States, which have become the latest growing trend of the expression of churches.

In his recent visit to the US, he joined a conference that met on two sites. He commented, "This is something that is growing a lot in the States - multi-site churches. What they do is they have a different band and they have different leaders and different ministry but the talk is the same. That keeps the congregation together."

"The fascinating thing about this church was that the fastest growing service was the one on video. That’s the one that young people wanted to go to."

Once the renovation of HTB and its sister church St Paul’s Onslow Square have been completed, multi-site churches could be made real in the UK. In this way, the attendance of Sunday services for both churches is expected to increase drastically. Many new churches could then also possibly be planted at the sites even though the sermon is not directly preached there.

Gumbel suggested, "If we are to plant lots and lots of churches, it is key to that vision that there’s a strong base from which to plant those churches." For example, he said St Paul’s can have a youth and student centre in the crypt and for the School of Theology and Family Life courses to be based at the HTB."

Finally he concluded, "We don’t want to build some empire. It is about the re-evangelisation of our city, of our country and ultimately, to play our part in the re-evangelisation of the world."