Alpha: Nicky Gumbel Interview transcript
By Adam Rutherford, Guardian
Adam Rutherford: Ok, would you mind stating your name and who you are, so we have it on record.
Nicky Gumbel: I’m Nicky Gumbel and I’m the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton.
AR: The Reverend Nicky Gumbel and the founder, well not the founder, but the architect of the Alpha course … Would you say that was accurate?
NG: Well, some might say the pioneer of Alpha … that’s how they sometimes describe me. I didn’t start it. It started in 1977. Charles Marnham was the Curate. It started in the flat just over there, and they had six people on it and it grew from there. Lots and lots of people have been involved in the evolution of Alpha over the years.
AR: I appreciate that. Ok, just to get some background, tell me about the origins of Alpha in the 70s first, but also your role in taking over its running.
NG: Well I was involved gently in the 70s because I was a member of the congregation here from 1976. It started in 1977 in a flat here. It was a six week course for people who were already Christians. And then, in 1981, it was taken on by someone called John Irvine, who was a Curate here, and he developed it into a ten week course with a weekend, and that really changed the nature of the course quite a lot, and it started to grow quite rapidly. Then John Irvine ran it from ‘81 to ‘85 and Nicky Lee took it on from ‘85 to 1990, and I took it on in 1990. It was already a thriving course, and I did very little to it really except to make it slightly more aimed at people outside the Church, so that was when it really began, numbers wise, to grow.
AR: So, in its first inception in the 70s, you say it was for people who were already Christians. What’s the goal if people are already Christians?
NG: It was the basics of Christianity really; it was designed for people who had become Christians. It was only six weeks … I don’t know what the talks were. I have seen the original syllabus, but it was probably something about the Bible and something about prayer, and something about the Church. They had a different course for people who were enquiring in those days.
AR: And when you took over in 1990…
NG: It was October 1990. I did the talks when Nicky was leaving, but I actually took over the leadership of it in 1990.
AR: And how did the agenda change when you took over?
NG: It didn’t change a huge amount. What I found was we were getting a lot of people coming who were not Christians, and I realised then that it could be adapted a bit for them, because they had rather different questions from the people who were already Christians. So, we started to adapt it, but we didn’t do too much to it, so we left it pretty well as it was, because it seemed to be working – that was the point. It wasn’t what you would have designed as a course for people who weren’t Christians. I mean, there’s no way you’d have put those talks in that were in there. The kind of courses we had for people who weren’t Christians were, ‘Why does God allow suffering?’, ‘Are all religions the same?’, ‘Is there evidence for the resurrection?’ … so, we had this course that was designed for Christians, that seemed to work for people who weren’t. So it was that which surprised us.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
