Youth Alpha

Worship is key to what Alpha is all about – giving people the chance to meet Jesus. When I was 18 a friend gave me a tape of worship music recorded at a gathering of about 10,000 young people. I remember putting the tape into my walkman (retro I know) and being blown away by the presence of God that seemed to fill my bedroom. That was the first time I experienced the Holy Spirit and I remain convinced of the importance of worship.

Surprisingly perhaps, worship plays a central role in an Alpha Course. But the key question is, how on earth can you ask a bunch of people who don’t believe that God exists to worship?

Worship on Youth Alpha
We suggest you introduce some sort of worship on week one of Youth Alpha. We’ve tried not having any form of worship, and that’s hard because by the end of a ten week course people have pretty much formed their understanding of what Christians do, and then they rock up to church and you’re all there singing. It’s weird then. We’ve tried introducing worship on the weekend away, and it’s weird then, because people already have enough going on with the whole thing of going away with a bunch of strange Christians. So, we ended up shooting for the first night, because at least then everything is weird. This could be either a couple of songs led by someone on a guitar or with a band, or just listening to a worship song or other idea.

When I lead worship the first time on Youth Alpha I normally say: “Hi, my name is Al, I am your worst nightmare, a Christian with a guitar.” And they laugh, because it’s true. Then I say “would you like to stand, we’re going to sing together…” I sing two songs and say “would you like to sit down.” That’s it. I don’t pray, start explaining stuff (“Yeah, I wrote this next song the day my dog died…”) or ‘coach’ people in worship. John Wimber always used to say “worship is better caught than taught” and there’s a lot of truth in that. People will figure it out, and the teaching material of the course covers worship, so there’s no need to add an extra five minutes each night beating the sheep and trying to make them look and sound like your Sunday night crowd. Let them be. They probably won’t sing for weeks.