Looking for ideas on how to make your Alpha as fun as possible? We’ve got you covered. Here are nine top tips from Dave Larlee in Texas that will keep your guests engaged, entertained and coming back for more.
From his experience at All Saints Dallas we pluck nine top tips on how to find the fun…
1. Go location shopping
In a city with more Bible Studies than coffee shops, Dave wanted to differentiate their church outreach. Having initially run Alpha in their building’s ‘horrific’ basement, Dave realised it was key to frame the course in an environment that was fun. ‘We didn’t want going to Alpha to be synonymous with going to church,’ he explains. ‘We wanted it to be like, ‘Why don’t you come for a fun night out?’’ So they started to look for a location away from the church where guests would feel more engaged.
2. Break expectations
What better place to invite friends to a night out at than a wine cellar? We can’t think of many. That’s where Dave and his team decided to host their course. ‘All of a sudden, everything started to change in a positive way,’ he says. ‘When the first question you ask people is, ‘Red or White?’ they’re caught off guard, because here in Dallas that’s quite counter cultural.’ After three courses being run in the cellar they’d outgrown it and once again were on the search for a location that would be equally appealing to guests!
3. Make every penny count
There’s no two ways about it, the processes of thriftiness and budget management don’t get many of us excited—but if you know what you have and how you can spend it, a little budget can go a long way! ‘I have someone on my team who knows that for $10 a head we can do this, for $12 we can do that,’ Dave explains. And they didn’t stop there, they even carried research out into the flow of business on a Tuesday night in the city so they could approach the right venue, haggle on price and run the best Alpha possible on their budget.
4. Go big or go home
One of Dave’s team works as an events planner and once they’d outgrown the wine cellar he suggested a venue where he’d recently thrown a fundraiser. The venue was one of Dallas’ most popular nightclubs and, after running one Alpha in the function room, they rented the entire club. ‘Our ceiling jumped from 65 guests—which was the most we’d ever had—to 110 at the course we just finished. It just took off!’