Vicky's Story
 In January of 2008 I was at a point in my life where I felt like giving up. I was frustrated, sad and confused; I could no longer try to control the issues or fix the problems that my grown daughters were undergoing.
My brother and sister-in-law spent years inviting me to visit their church. I finally decided to take them up on the invitation and began attending Shepherd of the Hills Church in Bechtelsville, PA, hoping to find some comfort and answers. I was greeted by Pastor John Brown, the senior pastor of the church, who also leads the Alpha course. He thought the Alpha course might help me and continually encouraged me over the next few weeks to attend. I finally took him up on it and decided to attend. It was the most touching, educational, and warming few weeks of my life. Alpha made me feel like I was not alone. It taught me how to find Christ, how to have a relationship with Him, how to read the Bible, how to pray and, most importantly, how to know the Holy Spirit.
| It was the most touching, educational, and warming few weeks of my life. |
About half way through the Alpha course, I attended the weekend retreat where I was blessed by the Holy Spirit. He communicated directly to me, giving me an appropriate message to help another young lady who was also attending the retreat and was dealing with a very emotional event. I felt Him guide me with comforting words and actions to help her. It was a feeling I will never forget nor can I put into words to appropriately describe it. Trying to explain it doesn't seem to do it justice. Needless to say, since that day I have created a relationship with the Lord. He has answered many prayers for me since that day and I know he is always with me.
Alpha was the conduit for His entry into my life. I will be forever thankful to Pastor Brown for encouraging me to attend Alpha. I learned that it is my role in life to be an advocate and recruiter for the Lord through Alpha. I want to bring other people - Christians as well as those who are not aware of Christ to the Alpha course so they can learn what they are missing in their lives.
Since that first course, I am now one of the lead promoters for Alpha in my church. When I attended Alpha, there were approximately 8-12 folks attending the course. Using some unique recruiting strategies, we increased our numbers to close to 30. We then recruited for our second session and had all and all approximately 70 people in attendance, new comers and repeaters for our follow-up courses.
We did a variety of things to promote the course such as:
• We provided the entire congregation with a package that contained eight business cards with all the information on Alpha and the next scheduled course. We asked each member to pass out all 8 cards to other folks they know, inviting them to attend.
• We also put posters with tear off sheets in the local merchant stores, the tear off sheets provided the date and time for Alpha.
• We had a huge banner outside of the church along the street for an entire month for everyone to see.
• We video-taped testimonies of the folks who attended Alpha in the past and showed them during the opening of sermons on Sundays a few weeks prior to the start date.
• We held an Alpha Sunday sermon that focuses strictly on Alpha with live testimonies of people who attend Alpha and the impact it has had on their lives.
• We created homemade felt refrigerator magnets shaped like Crosses, of which the Alpha information was attached. We handed out these refrigerator magnets to the entire congregation. We also made baskets of them up and placed them in the local Christian merchant stores to hand out free.
• We met with willing Alpha grads who shared new ideas, of which one was creating a post card to distribute to friends and family that was entitled "Dinner and a Movie". This was to get them to come to the at least the first Alpha session to see what it was like.
• We obtained free advertising in the local newspapers for 3 weeks straight as well as free advertise on the local Christian radio station.
Do I ever feel like throwing my hands in the air and giving up when it comes to promoting Alpha? Absolutely not! Like Nicky says, I want others to know about the Good News of the Gospel – even if it only reaches one person!
Nicky tells about the star fish. “While walking on a beach, there were thousands of starfish that had washed up on the shore. A little boy was walking down the beach and throwing the starfish back into the ocean so that they would have a chance to live. A gentleman approached him and said, ‘Why is it you even bothering, you will never save all of them, the job is too big, and it won’t even matter.’ And the boy looked at the man picked up another starfish, threw it into the ocean and said, ‘I bet it will matter to that one!’”
I hope to get to at least one starfish!
Vicky Romanoski
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