D.L. Moody and Evangelism

This is an interesting interview by Off the Maps of Todd Hunter

Here's a smidge...
Why would the Emergent Church movement be interested in Alpha? Isn’t it just another contrived, modernistic church program?


The emerging church scene may be interested in Alpha because the vast majority of them instinctively know that the movement as a whole (and most of its parts) is not doing a bang up job at evangelism. I believe we all want to, but we are stuck having deconstructed things we don’t like but have not yet put forward positive alternatives. If by contrived one means “made” or “manufactured” that may not be a bad thing, because anything we build, including the emergent church, has been “made.” If on the other hand, one means the negative nuances of the word like “false” or “hypocritical”, then I don’t believe that to be an accurate description of the Alpha Course. D.L. Moody (I think) responding to one of his critics, who was not engaged in evangelism, is reported to have said (Hunter-paraphrase) “I like the way I am doing evangelism with all its faults better than I like you're not doing it.”


My honest assessment of Alpha is that it has both modern and postmodern aspects to it. Thus, I can certainly see why some people might look at it and observe the modern components and say that it doesn’t fit the postmodern world. Others, however, notice the postmodern components and believe that they can work around the modern parts.