Ipoh, Malaysia
“The biggest highlight is how the small group talks are empowering the students to take up leadership roles”
Alpha is running in a school in Ipoh, Malaysia, where students themselves are being trained to lead and run the entire course! We find out more from Fung, who introduced Alpha to the school:
How did this Alpha start?
Since the school in Ipoh started running a chapel service last year, we discovered that many of the students who came for chapel knew very little about the gospel, so we (the church) collaborated with the Christian Fellowship leaders in the school, shared with them our vision for running Alpha, and they agreed to be trained and to run the course this year during chapel service.
What are the logistics of your Alpha?
We are currently using the Youth Film Series and we run it every Thursday during chapel service. Due to the time constraints, we can only play half of each session, so our total time spent on Alpha is 24 sessions instead of the usual 12 sessions.
What were some of the highlights?
The biggest highlight is how the small group talks are empowering the students to take up leadership roles within their groups.
What were some of the challenges and how did you overcome them?
Time is a big challenge for us. We only have around 40 minutes to run chapel service, and when we incorporate worship, the talk, and small group discussions into that time frame, things can get hectic! We try to overcome it by having strict time keeping, and by spreading out our workloads so everyone does something, instead of a few people doing everything.
What are your plans for the Alpha Weekend?
There will not be an Alpha Weekend due to this being run as part of school curriculum. We will just play the Weekend videos as per normal.
What would you say now to others thinking about running Alpha, especially in schools, among students?
Just do it! The new Youth Film Series is an amazing tool, even if you have not run Alpha before, the training videos are very informative and overall, it is easy to run. Alpha also indirectly builds up leaders (within the small groups) and empowers the young people to think of others before themselves.
Register now to download the Alpha Youth Film Series here.
“The biggest highlight is how the small group talks are empowering the students to take up leadership roles”
