(coming soon!)MATCHING GRANT UPDATE!
Alpha France and the CCFOF have raised the full amount and have received the $112,000 matching grant!
After a hugely successful Paris Invitation in September 2007, the demand for the Alpha Course was so great that the French organization had no choice but to immediately begin plans to do a full on National Alpha Course Dinner.
Over 5,300 people were drawn to the dinners in Paris and almost 50% continued to the end of the 10-week course.
There is a spiritual thirst in France that causes the French - when approached correctly - to run to Christ!
Could Alpha be a major catalyst - even a key - to revival in France? We believe so! There is no other program that is so adpated to the French culture (discussion around dinner), has both Catholic and Protestant participation and endorsement, and has seen such a remarkable turnout (in both sheer number and percentage of participants).
Will you help spread the Kingdom of God in France? Read on to learn how you can support this project!
This project will provide the Alpha course and technical assistance to 440 Christian churches of all denominations throughout France to invite their non-Christian neighbors to explore the Christian faith in the non-threatening context of a dinner. The guests attending this initial Evangelistic dinner will be subsequently invited to participate in a local Alpha course - a 10 week introduction to Christianity which has already reached millions of seekers worldwide and is used by more than 450 churches in France.
For this project, churches have been encouraged to organize festive or special evenings such as multicultural evenings, barbecues, or inter-denominational dinners. After dinner, the Alpha talk will be given on the subject “Christianity: boring, untrue, irrelevant?”
The National Invitation will be supported by a national advertising campaign reaching over 5 million people including radio, television and internet advertising spots, and press articles - all geared at giving the local churches and Christian communities more positive visibility in society.
The projected outcomes are:
Based on the results of the Paris Invitation, we expect a 50% growth in the number of people attending the launching dinner.
The beneficiaries of this National Launch:
The local church
Churches in France struggle with reaching non-church goers with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Catholic parishes generally lack practical evangelism programs. Evangelical churches have to confront the common fear that they are cults and find it difficult to grow. The lack of unity among churches also prevents them from having more of an impact in French society. We are therefore targeting churches of all denominations, who realize the need to evangelize but have very little practical ways to reach out to the un-churched, especially in the Catholic Church.
After a successful Paris Invitation last year, we know that we have a model that works on a large scale – locally implemented but supported by the National Alpha Course organization. This project is the natural expansion of the Paris campaign to a national level – working with regional and local churches to launch the dinner and course. By opening the doors of traditional denominations and evangelical churches towards non-churchgoers in a spirit of unity, we fully expect that Alpha will create a long-awaited and measurable growth in local churches throughout France. Additionally, unlike in Paris, this project has the potential to create connections between churches in the country and mid-sized towns. In fact, many churches have already been asking for a national invitation and support for their local/regional Alpha courses.
Non-churchgoers
Alpha France is ultimately affecting the lives of many non churchgoers who cannot find ways to explore the Christian faith within the current Christian landscape in France. This is a huge portion of the French population. Out of 63 million people, 45 million are baptized in the Catholic Church, yet only 5% of the population (including Evangelicals) goes to church every Sunday. Figures are only 1-2% as regards the French youth.
Spiritually, people are turning more and more to Astrology, Numerology, Eastern religions, Buddhism, and the occult. Many high ranking civil servants and semi-public business leaders belong to Freemasonry networks. The general hostility and ignorance surrounding Christianity in France, fuelled by the negative coverage of national media, makes people very suspicious towards the Church at large. This population sees the Catholic Church as an authoritarian and rigid institution and Evangelical churches as cults. This project was born out of two observations reflecting how the Church works with this population: a) the thing people find most difficult in evangelism is to invite non-churchgoers somewhere to hear the Gospel; and b) the experience in a dozen of countries has shown that a concerted date and mobilization has doubled the number of people attending the Alpha course.
Alpha, with its non-threatening, hands-off approach, is effective because it is based on friends inviting friends to an initial dinner and subsequent discussion groups. This approach is very well adapted to French culture’s practices of meal-time discussion and debate. Nationwide, approximately 53,000 people have already been to an Alpha course. 10,000 people per year go to an Alpha course, of which 75% come from outside of the Paris Region.
Although the matching grant has been met, as a CCFOF Partner Ministry, Alpha Course France is still able to receive gifts to ensure comprehensive FOLLOW UP and will receive 100% of all gifts made for this project!
To make a gift, please click here!
To send a gift by mail, please address all checks to "CCFOF" with "Alpha Course" in the Memo section and send them to the following address:Christian Community Foundation of France
829 Stansbury Drive
Marietta, GA 30066
*The Christian Community Foundation of France is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. As such, all gifts are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
