James was a philosophy lecturer at the University of Bristol. Rational, argumentative, and mildly hostile to organised religion. His colleague bet him he couldn't sit through the Alpha course without becoming a Christian. James took the bet.
Two Sceptics Walk Into a Church
Across town, Ling was a data scientist from Beijing who'd grown up in a strictly atheist household. Her flatmate had been going to Alpha at a church in Clifton and wouldn't stop talking about it. Ling decided to attend and "politely dismantle the arguments."
They sat at the same table on the first evening. Both were visibly uncomfortable. Both asked the most aggressive questions. The table host looked like he was refereeing a debate.
By week three, something shifted. Not the intellectual arguments — those were fine but not decisive. It was the stories. Regular people sharing how their lives had genuinely changed. A former addict. A grieving father. A woman who'd been healed of chronic pain. James and Ling couldn't argue with lived experience.
The Weekend Away
Alpha courses include a weekend retreat focused on the Holy Spirit. Both James and Ling almost didn't go. When they did, both had experiences they still struggle to articulate — James described feeling "a physical weight of peace" during a prayer time. Ling said she "heard a sentence in Mandarin that no one in the room could have spoken."
By the end of the weekend, both had given their lives to Christ. Separately. They didn't even know the other had done it until the final evening when they found each other crying in the same room.
From Sceptics to Soulmates
They started dating three months later. They married in the same Clifton church where they'd met. James now teaches philosophy of religion and has written two books on faith and reason. Ling leads a Mandarin-speaking fellowship for Chinese professionals in Bristol.
"We both walked in planning to destroy the arguments," James says. "God destroyed our defences instead. And then He introduced us to each other."