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“Tens of thousands come to Christ in jails” An interview with Nicky Gumbel

6:59pm Sunday, 10th July 2011  

Nicky Gumbel, was wearing a knitted sweater and a grin, just like in the Alpha Course videos, when Eternity met him in a sparsely furnished dungeon in the bowels of Sydney’s Entertainment centre during the Hillsong Conference.

Gumbel is the presenter of the Alpha Course that has been seen by 15 million people across the world, ranging from Holy Trinity Brompton in London, where it began, to jails in South Africa. Over 35,000 Alpha courses are run each year in Churches large and small.

Eternity: Nicky, Is Christianity falling behind in western society?

NG: It is an interesting time in western society. Let’s look at the overall picture. As you know Christianity is very strong in Africa, but also in the USA- and that’s part of western society. It’s strong in India where I think it is having a revival.

Extraordinary things are happening in India. There were 200 churches doing Alpha three years ago, now there are 13,700 churches.

China—China is so open to the Gospel, Latin America is seeing massive revival. So there is obviously a big difference between what is happening in these countries and the West.

And in the West I think you have to divide the US from the rest. The US is definitely different from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe and the UK.

To say just “decline” doesn’t quite give the picture. I see two things happening: one is a continuing decline, but the other is like a field—I am not a farmer so I am not quite sure how to explain it—a field that has been burnt, and you can see the little shoots of green from next year’s crop. The western Church at one level looks as though it is dying, but at another level it looks like “Wow! There are all these new shoots”. Hillsong, Soul Survivor, Alpha and other things are happening where you have young people coming to church with vibrancy and life and hope.

Eternity. So what should Christians in our societies, England, Australia, do to lead people to Christ?

NG: I think Hillsong is part of the answer to the question of what to do. They are very contemporary. They do things extremely well. They are amazingly effective in what they are doing.

So that is definitely one way.

Alpha is working—often on a small scale. There was a Salvation Army officer here and she said the size of her church was 30. They had 28 on her last course,  and three people came to faith. Now if you do that three times a year, that is nine people. If you are doing that in 2000 venues that is quite a lot of people. And some of the courses have more than three people coming to faith.

And there’s Alpha in homes. It’s not as visible. But there are people coming to faith.

Our age group is 18-35 that’s the vast majority in our church. The average age is 27.

So there’s something in it that appeals to the younger generation.

Somehow the church has to reach the younger generation. If we don’t reach the younger generation there ain’t going to be a church in a few years time.

Eternity: So aside from Alpha, which of course you are positive about, what other things should churches be doing?

NG: I don’t think the church can expect people to come to them any longer.

A few years ago people came to church. They just did. You went to church for marriage, for baptism, for funerals: you went to church.

I think society has changed now and peopole don’t go to church. Church has to go to them.

It has to go everywhere.

We go into the prisons. Alpha is running in 135 out of 160 prisons in the UK. Tens of thousands have come to faith in Christ in prisons.

But they are not coming to faith in church . We have to go out there, into the prisons.

We have to go out to the homeless. We run a homeless shelter. People come into that homeless shelter and many of them come on the Alpha course, they come to faith and then they bring their friends.

They move off the streets. They move into accommodation. Their lives get changed.

We have to out to where the people are. So we go onto the housing estates, the poorer areas. We run gyms for the teenagers. We help to teach Muslim women English as a second langiage.

We don’t want to pressurise people to do anything but  we do want to serve them. If women can’t communicate with their children because they don’t know how to speak the same language that is a big disadvantage in life. So we teach them ESL, not to evangelise them. But they often say “wow, this is amazing”..

 

Eternity: Can I circle back to the Alpha Course? I have seen the tapes of several versions of the Alpha course. How has it changed?

NG: I think the talks have just developed over the years and I have got older and greyer. Also I have learnt things hopefully.

Eternity: What have you learned?

NG: Every presentation is different. I have given the talk “Who is Jesus?” 78 times in a row. If you don’t improve it slightly over those 78 times there is something really wrong with you.

Eternity: In those 78 times have you ever stopped and thought “I am not sure I believe that?”

NG: No, I would not say that. I think if that ever happened I would get convinced – doing the talk is a great help. It is an amazing thing about any preaching that you are always preaching to yourself. Always. I am always preaching to myself every talk I give. It is just an amazing privilege to preach Jesus, to preach the cross, to preach the gospel.

And to see the response of people to that message.

Eternity: What has Alpha taught you?

NG It has taught me the power of the gospel. I have always believed that, but I have never seen it in quite such a massive scale.

I get to travel and see it all over the world: the same message transforming people’s lives. India, Vietnam, I have just been to Vietnam. It was amazing. The stories there are mind blowing. Malaysia

Every country in the world now is running Alpha.

And the same message changes people’s lives in all those countries.

Eternity: Do you wake up sometimes and are totally surprised that God has used Alpha?

Yeah. Astonished. We are completely astonished and it gets more astonishing all the time. Because there are aspects of Alpha that we have never even thought of which start to happen. The Bishop of London hosted a stream at our last International Week for Bishops. We had nearly 100 people on that stream, including many Catholic Bishops and Archbishops from Latin America came. One of them asked the question “has Alpha been used to solve global conflict?” (Laughs)

No, no, not yet! Anything is possible. Because Alpha has helped to bring churches together—and communities together. So maybe we have not really started yet.

Eternity: Are you planning to see (Anglican Archbishop of Sydney) Peter Jensen?

NG: Before I came here, before I accepted the invitation for Hillsong, I asked the Bishop of London what the etiquette was, and he said I should inform him, but that I did not need to ask his permission, because (the Hillsong conference) is not an Anglican church, but that I should write to him and ask for his good will.

And he sent me a very nice letter back in reply saying I had his goodwill for this visit.

I asked if I could come and see him, but he is away on holiday. He is genuinely away on holiday—I checked when I got here that his plans had not changed.

I got a very warm response through John Anderson.

I am seeing Cardinal Pell this afternoon. The Cardinal has been very supportive of our work.

Not everyone is happy running an Alpha course and that is fine. We are not saying every church has to run Alpha. Of course not.

There are many many different ways of evangelism. There are many evangelistic courses. Alpha is just one way.

We always say “If it works for you, then use it”.

I always say “I am not committed to Alpha, I am committed to preaching Jesus.. If we find a better way, we are going to move on to that better way. And we are always looking for a better way. If we find a better way we are going to drop Alpha and run the better way.

But every church has to work out how to fulfil the great commission.

If you are a church that believes in Jesus, and you believe in his instructions, and he has given us a commission to go and make disciples of all nations then we have to work out how we as a local church respond to that.

Alpha is just one way.

And it is not our only form of evangelism. Church planting is a very effective form of evangelism. Sunday services are a very effective form of evangelism.

Some churches have more of a focus on evangelism on Sundays and some on mid-week, some have a different course they run midweek.

It really does not matter how you do it as long as you do it.

Nicky Gumbel was interviewed by John Sandeman

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