Bishop Sandy Miller Visit to Kuching

On 5th Feb 2013, Alpha Malaysia and the Anglican Church, Kuching joining hosted a dinner for Bishop Sandy Miller from the Anglican Church in England.

In 1985 as the Vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, he helped pioneered the Alpha course.  The Alpha course is an introduction to the Christian faith.  In 2005 he stepped down from his post and the Alpha course was taken care by Nicky Gumble. Nick Gumble further developed this course to its present worldwide appeal across denominational lines. There are now many variant of the course, such as Alpha Senior, Alpha Campus, Alpha Prison, Alpha Youth, and those under the Relationship Central banner.  Millions of people have taken the Alpha course, and they are now in 120 countries worldwide.

Bishop Sandy said that he believed the reasons for the success of the Alpha course are:  a) Vicar Nick Gumble worked very hard on this course.  Indeed he had put in all the efforts in improving the course to appeal to the non Christians first in the UK and later worldwide.  According to Bishop Sandy he had put in tremendous effort in ensuring its success.  One important point is that Alpha involves the laity and not only the clergy.  People can help with the venue chair/table arrangements, caretaker foods, invite friends, and be facilitators etc.  b) The Alpha course Bishop Sandy said he humbly believed is a gift from God.  He emphasized that Alpha is not a program but a tool.  It is a tool that all of us can use to share the Gospel with non believers.  The theological part of the course are already in the video all we have to do is to share with others, and let them ask questions.

Later, Arch Bishop Bolly Lapok of the Anglican church in his speech advised his clergy in attendance to seriously look into using this tool to evangelize in their respective areas.

Alpha National Director Foo Lai Wei gave the audience an overview of what Alpha has done over the few years in Malaysia and what it is going to do this year.