If you feed them, they will come

​After a successful launch of Alpha at the parish as part of our community’s response to the synodal process, it was a natural progression to bring Alpha Youth to the students at St. Joseph’s Collegiate (SJC). SJC is a grade 9-12 Catholic school in Brooks, with about 460 students. We cater to a diverse community, with a wide range of cultural and language backgrounds, as well as varying practices of faith – most students non-practicing, many nominally and some practicing Catholics, some ethnic orthodox denominations, as well as a growing number from other Christian church communities.
 
Just before the start of the school year, we committed to running the Alpha Youth series in our school during our 42 minute lunch break. Four staff were recruited to facilitate groups, the supervision schedule was adjusted to free us all up at the same time, and we started online training and promoting. The Alpha Canada website has training videos, print resources, digital and print media for promotion, suggested schedules and to-do lists based on the timeline of one’s Alpha session, with access to mentorship and online support. It is all high quality, and user-friendly – even the copyright guidelines.  
 
Alpha has a simple format for success: share some food, watch a video, discuss.

There are 13 videos recommended for 9 sessions with a retreat day or weekend. The youth series is set up with similar themes and the same overall format as the adult series, but the youth videos, roughly 20minutes long, have spots to pause and discuss three questions per episode. Often the first acts as an icebreaker: “If you could have a superpower, what would it be?” deepening to: “Have you ever tried praying? How did it go?”. The videos are high production quality, with goofy, relatable hosts, that open up the Christian faith at its most fundamental, non-denominational level. Alpha discussions are not to answer every question, or to stage a great apologetic defense, but to facilitate authentic conversations and be a comfortable place to challenge and ask questions.

If it is true that if you feed them, they will come, it is even truer with teenagers. When we first started promoting our series at the school, the initial uptake was from a few practicing Christians looking for a place to gather with other faithful students – many of them already familiar with Alpha from other home churches – but as we started to get community commitments to provide food, and let the students know lunch was included, more students showed up. Overall, we have had a consistent 24 students who have made most if not all of the sessions, and probably had another dozen or so who checked it out a couple of times at the start.
 
We have had three consistent small groups and the students are really receptive to the topics and getting into good discussion with their peers. Feedback consistently sounds like: “I love my group, so my favourite part is discussing ideas, expressing my thoughts, and listening to other’s opinions.” Or, my favourite part is “the connection and community.” Reassuringly we even gotten, “the food is great, but I also enjoy hearing other people’s perspective on the questions.” Almost half of the students are in one group, and do all of the discussion in Spanish; we are so blessed to have diverse staff as well as students so that we can facilitate this! (The first version of the Alpha Youth series is available dubbed in Spanish and other languages, so we will be looking at using that for an all-Spanish session in semester II.)

We are nearing the end of our first session, and have just had our retreat day. It ended up working best to run after school on a Friday, to save the need for rides. With our short lunch hours and the gradual introduction to prayer, it was our first opportunity to really dig into prayer with each other.

It was such a blessing to hear students praying for each other and to have the opportunity to pray within small groups. We had worship with great participation, led by one of our staff, and we were so blessed by members of our parish with meals and snacks for the day. The spring session at the church had such a positive impact on participants, that they have been very quick to support our youth session at the school – mostly by helping with food! Overall, just like the spring session at the church, our first Alpha Youth session has been awesome!
 
The smiles on student faces as they come in for lunch, and join with their groups, are such a reassurance that Alpha has been an appreciated opportunity our school. Furthermore, the participating students are keen to get involved in hosting and helping with the next session, and are starting to prayerfully consider who they will invite to the next round. One thing emphasized in the planning is to make sure participants have a way to continue involvement after Alpha, so we will run the next session with them as the hosts of the small groups. They are excited to keep the conversations going to continue to explore and deepen their own faith, and to share it with their peers. God is Good!

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Submitted by Natalie Sturch, teacher at St. Joseph's Collegiate, Brooks,
​Photo credit: St. Joseph's Collegiate. Poster: Alpha Canada.