During a question and answer time after the first presentation, Dr. Murray was asked to comment on the Alpha movement that began in Great Britain and is now spreading across North America. He noted, "There is no doubt it is the most effective evangelistic method" in Great Britain today, reaching more than half a million people. He noted, however, that the videotaped presentations speak best to wealthy professionals and not well to the poor.

He said that he believes Alpha’s great strengths are that it: (1) is centered around food, (2) engages participants in dialogue, and (3) has a strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit – encountering and experiencing God, not just learning about God. Its drawbacks for Anabaptists include a strong individualistic approach and a lack of emphasis on ethics and discipleship.

In his second presentation, Dr. Murray noted another strength and a couple of weaknesses of Alpha. The strength is that it is built on the idea that coming to faith is more of a process rather than an event.

However, Alpha assumes a fair amount of knowledge about the Christian faith. Murray suggested we may need a "pre-Alpha" program and perhaps even a "pre-pre-Alpha" approach. "It is a good start, but we need to go further back to prepare people."

A second challenge he mentioned is that after only one or two rounds of Alpha, churches run into difficulty because Christians don’t have many meaningful relationships with people outside the church; so they run out of friends to invite. "We may well need to reduce our programs to release our people for mission," he said. The key is equipping our members in how to build relationships outside the church.