Back to reality: Taking Alpha from online to in-person

Fr Philip Cunnah tells us about running his first Alpha over Zoom from his dining room table and the shift to in-person.

Hi Fr Philip, tell us a bit about yourself and your church.

I’m a priest of the Diocese of Middlesbrough, six years ordained this summer. I’m just starting my first year as parish priest here in a place called Guisborough which is a market town just outside of Middlesbrough, it’s about just over 20,000 people. We have a lovely new church built in 2010 and that’s a big part of the community life here, it’s got a great community feel to it. 

What made you want to run Alpha?

When I came into the parish, within about two weeks, one of the parishioners out of the blue said to me, ‘have you heard of Alpha, I think we should run it’. And I thought to myself, ‘well, maybe that’s just a prompt from the Holy Spirit and maybe we just need to be led by the Lord on this.’

What was that like, that your first experience running Alpha was totally online?

Overall I really enjoyed Alpha, I enjoyed the way that the videos used testimony and witness. That’s something that I’ve always seen in youth work and school work, that it’s actually the testimony and the witness that is the most powerful thing that resonates with people.

In terms of sitting in front of a screen and watching the videos, it didn’t really matter if you were watching on a screen in a church hall or in front of a screen in your own home - still, that power came across.

We didn’t have the challenges of providing food, sorting out washing up and all that sort of thing afterwards. 

It became very easy to do and I could just run it here from my laptop at my dining room table which was dead easy. 

Then we used breakout rooms to split into small groups to have that time of discussion afterwards.

What was your experience of opening up this space of conversation? What effect did you see that having on people?

I think people really appreciated the space. The experience of being listened to is always good because you feel valued when people take the time to listen to you. We did that for each other and that definitely deepened our bonds of affection and friendship. 

And then just a chance to talk about some of our own experiences and some of them were really powerful. We were also opening up a space for people who have almost a charism of sharing their faith and who share it in a really profound way with great conviction. That was very moving for people, particularly if they felt that something didn’t resonate with them. Then they would hear someone else speak in such a passionate way and think ‘gosh, maybe that’s challenged some of my assumptions there’.

With preparing for the next Alpha to be in-person, how are you feeling about that?

A little daunted, I would say! 

A bit like just starting it online, you sort of just have to jump in and figure out the pitfalls as you go.

You can’t have everything signed, sealed and delivered beforehand, you’ve got to think on your feet a bit. So we feel like we’ve got the setup now to do it in the church; we feel like we can give ourselves permission to make a few mistakes as well. 

How do you see Alpha fitting into your parish? Does it take the place of an easy invitation?

I think it’s perfect for that. One of the issues is that very often in the parish the only thing we have is Mass. So you invite people to Mass, which is very formal, very ritualistic, maybe in a language that people aren’t familiar with - that doesn’t come across as a welcoming experience for a modern mindset I would say. 

There have been a couple of times where someone has invited someone along to Mass, and then they sit there thinking ‘when do people stand up, or sit down - how do they know when to do that?’ It feels like you’re sort of left out a bit. 

There’s a really important need within our parishes to create a threshold where people can hear faith in a way that is much more relaxed, much more welcoming, and where people can be themselves a bit.

That’s my hope, that Alpha can be a threshold for secular society, the other 19,800 people in Guisborough who perhaps haven’t had the opportunity to hear the gospel. 

If they choose not to follow Christ that’s up to them but I think they deserve the chance to at least hear the message. If they choose not to follow Christ that’s up to them, but I think they deserve the chance to at least hear the message.

With being in a smaller parish, did you ever worry that you couldn’t run Alpha there?

That is something that we’re conscious of. Do you have the resources to run it and to keep it going? And that is a question for us.

In terms of running Alpha, I think if we focus on it then we have the resources to do it. So if we run it five times for the next three years or something like that and we had twelve people each time, that’s sixty people - which is great, you can do a lot with sixty people. That’s more than Jesus had initially with the twelve. 

You just need to start with where you’re at really. That sense of providence and prayer is a huge part of Alpha. A sense that the Lord is at work, the Lord is going to bring you the people that He wants at this time.

How has using Alpha and planning towards renewal affected your priesthood?

You know, we still talk about the New Evangelisation and at some stage, we’ve got to take part in that because St John Paul II is almost two popes ago now! 

The New Evangelisation has to come to Guisborough, it has to come to many small market towns outside of Middlesbrough and I feel like I’m engaging in that.

What would you say to someone who’s considering running Alpha but is unsure?

I think you can wait around forever for the perfect programme and at some stage, we’ve just got to get our hands dirty and start toiling in evangelisation and try what we can. 

For me, I’m reassured by the number of people before who have said, ‘we’ve used this, it’s good’ and we would recommend trying it again. 

Everything has its limitations and we’re so analytical today that we can unthink ourselves out of any programme. I’m giving it a go, why not give it a go yourself?