Kicking off FOPx Worship Night last weekend, was the premiere of the new Alpha Youth Series.
Aiming to bring the Gospel to young people in a relevant way, the Alpha Youth Series features videos of interviews, discussions and stories perfect for sparking spiritual conversations among youths. The programme for each week also allocates segments for discussion time within the videos, so it remains consistently engaging for younger audiences.
“The new Alpha Youth Series is created for Gen Z and Gen Alpha,” said the Alpha Singapore team. “It is one that speaks to this generation and carries the heart of this generation.”
As Gen As and Gen Zs are digital natives whose experience of life is vastly different to previous generations, they need an Alpha Course that is able to explore questions of life, faith and purpose in a robust and relevant way.
And so, this new series is created by young people for young people. Alpha spent two years listening to youths all around the world and invested millions into producing the videos – all to equip youth to ask honest questions and hold authentic conversations so that they can explore what a personal relationship with Jesus looks like.
Simple conversations, relevant testimonies
The first episode played at the premiere focused on “happiness”. The examples presented were specifically relevant to the youth today, ranging from relationships and friendships to food and music.
After hearing from the street interviews in the video, Mavis Huang (3:16 Church), Claire Chua (New Life Community Church) and Ryan Lok (Alpha Singapore) demonstrated for the audience what a time of discussion might look like by asking each other what makes them happy in life.
To Mavis, happiness is seeing her three kids growing up and loving each other. To Claire, happiness is having an uninterrupted nap. To Ryan, happiness is collecting Pokémon cards. That’s how simple the conversation can be!
The next part of the video was a testimony from the founders of How Ridiculous, a YouTube channel with more than 22 million subscribers. How Ridiculous is famous for stunts like dropping a 600kg dart from 1000 feet up in the air, and also dropping golf balls from space.
The guys behind the channel shared that a good video and some good views will indeed bring them happiness, but that happiness often wouldn’t last long.
Facing a constant need to make great videos, all it would take for that happiness to be taken away is an idea that doesn’t work or a video that doesn’t perform well. It’s a reality of the industry that even made some of them depressed.
“I need to put my hope in something better. There’s got to be something more than this,” reflected Brett Stanford, who is one of the founders of How Ridiculous.
“If I put my hope in views, fame or popularity, at some point they will definitely let me down. And the reality for me is that my hope has to be in Jesus. He fulfils what the world cannot and He loves me unconditionally,” he added.
The hope is that, through many simple yet relatable stories like this, young people can find a space where they can explore life’s biggest questions, and eventually discover Jesus as the ultimate answer.
As the Alpha team puts it, “Alpha is just the starting line. The journey is merely getting started”.
If you are struggling to bring the Good News to your friends, would you consider sowing into their hearts through these simple sharings and conversations?
The new Alpha Youth Series consists of 10 episodes that run over 9 weeks. Hosted by eight Gen Zs of different nationalities, the series hopes to engage youth with new stories, new animations and new visual styles. Find out more about the series here.
