building purchased in 2008). St Augustine's Church Services at St Augustine's, Queen's Gate began to be administered from Holy Trinity Brompton following an invitation by the Bishop of Kensington in 2010, where Nicky Gumbel was made priest-in-charge. In March 2011, St Augustine's was formally merged into the parish of HTB. Church plants Since the 1980s, HTB has been involved in planting churches. This has resulted in a large number of churches that can be linked back to HTB either as a result of being directly planted by the church (so called daughter churches), or by being the plants of churches planted by HTB (so called granddaughter churches). This web of churches form the HTB network. Alpha and HTB The Alpha course was founded by clergy at HTB who, over a period of twenty years, kept adapting the programme in accordance with feedback until in the early 1990s, when the Alpha course started gaining worldwide attention. As Alpha grew it became the main focus for HTB as it sought to support Alpha's spread and growth. Today, this involves the production of advertising material and course material such as videos, books and tapes for each Alpha session and leader training material. Alpha is now run as a separate enterprise with separate fundraising and accounting, but it remains closely tied to HTB, with most of Alpha's staff being accommodated in HTB's offices. The clergy of HTB also share Alpha duties such as overseeing Alpha conferences and training events in the UK and overseas. Since the mid-1990s, the Alpha course programme has remained largely unchanged allowing the energy of the church to develop other initiatives which fit with the Alpha course such as creating courses on marriage preparation, parenting teenagers, bereavement and recovering from divorce, as well as publishing new books. HTB itself runs Alpha courses three times a year, and with these attracting 300–400 guests during each course, they require all of the available space in the church buildings. Pastoral care In order to address the problem of how to give pastoral care to such a large congregation as well as provide a means for new people to become a part of the church, HTB uses the Pastorate model. Pastorates consist of 20–50 people who, through meeting at least once a fortnight, can form strong friendships and support each other in care as well as developing individual gifts and ministries. HTB has quite