News
University College London (UCL)
It was great fun to travel up to London to lead a session of the Christian Union at University College London (UCL). I spent an evening with the students helping to encourage and equip them to share their faith in Christ with their friends and colleagues there at university.
So often it is easy on campus to play “undercover Christian”, to nervously hide your faith away, only really talking about it within the safety of Christian circles. My job was to give these Christian students some very practical and easy-to-use tools with which to initiate spiritual conversations with classmates and so forth.
It was great to chat to many of the students after the formal part of the meeting had ended. They were keen to tell me about what is going on in their university, and what they have been trying in mission.
One of the things we most love at Solas is our partnerships with churches and CU groups in mission. Sometimes this is helping to share the gospel directly by speaking to non-Christian audiences on campuses, at other times it is about helping to equip groups like these students to reach out to others with the gospel.
We are praying, hoping and planning towards making our forthcoming Have You Ever Wondered? book as widely available as we can to help with this. It will be useful for so many audiences, but we think that it will be an especially helpful book for sharing the gospel on campuses, and we are really excited about the potential it could achieve. We assist with a lot of university missions every year, and so we have a real passion to invest as much as we can in student ministry like this.
PEP Talk with Jonathan Pountney
In addition to podcasts 😉 books and tracts can be great tools for sharing the gospel and helping you learn about evangelism. Our guest today leads a Christian publishing ministry. He shares some top title recommendations, insight into trends in reading, and top tips on getting printed material into the hands of those who need to hear the gospel message.
Along the way, we mention “Scattering Seeds of Hope” by the late Jeremy Marshall and “Have No Fear” by Prof John Lennox. You can find our own “Have You Ever Wondered?” and plenty of tracts to give away on the 10ofThose website.
With Jonathan Pountney – PEP Talk
Our Guest
Jonathan Pountney is the Editorial Director at 10ofThose, responsible for their publishing house 10Publishing. Prior to working in publishing, he taught Literature at the University of Manchester and he holds a PhD in American Studies.
About PEP Talk
The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.
Launch Pad 18: The Welcome Pack (That Goes the Extra Mile!)
Imagine you arrive in your new home in your new town. You have moved there for work and you don’t yet know anybody. You don’t know your way around the town, nor where to get a take-away. On your to-do list are things such as ‘find out what clubs there are for the kids in this neighbourhood’, ‘find a decorator’ and ‘meet some people’.
Then imagine that through your letterbox arrives a “Welcome to the Area!” pack, put together by the church down the street. Attractively presented, it contains a map, a guide to all kinds of local services, such as the swimming pool and bus routes, and other helpful local info. It’s a lovely, timely and thoughtful gift.
Look more closely and the pack also contains information about the church’s ‘Parent and Toddlers’ group, the Marriage Course, community cafe, hillwalking group and counselling service. It also adds: ‘If you have questions about life but have never known where to ask them, or who to discuss them with, we hold an Alpha course in your street on Thursday evenings. Phone Dave and Pam to find out more, or join us at church on Sunday mornings at 10:30.’
A church welcome pack is not a new idea. For years many churches have offered something to new people as they move into the area. However, the traditional pack is aimed squarely at Christians, often telling them a bit about the church’s history, how to join a Bible study group, the process of becoming a church member, and how to volunteer for various projects, (one even had a direct debit form to support the church financially!!) All these things are useful.
But what about getting your church to extend that principle to focus instead on the needs of those who do not yet have faith or any contact with the church?
You’ll need someone to take responsibility for designing, printing and keeping the information up to date, and your church members to keep an eye out for the “For Sale” boards changing to “Sold” before dropping off a pack. If you live in a student town, you could work with your local Christian Union to have something ready every September for the annual wave of incomers too.
Pray: Lord, help us to find ways to connect with and welcome people from outside the church.
Previously: Launch Pad #17 Hold A Community Barbeque
Next: Launch Pad #19 Will be published soon!
GLO Mini Bible School
I really enjoyed the opportunity to be in Motherwell near Glasgow in Scotland to speak a the “GLO Mini Bible School”. GLO – which originally stood for “Gospel Literature Outreach”, is an amazing place containing a Bible College, bookshop, and a mission agency which sends trains and send people on evangelism and church planting missions all over Europe. It’s been doing that for fifty years now and is quite well-known in Scotland. In fact their director, Stephen McQuoid was a guest on our PEPTalk podcast a while ago too.
Every year GLO hosts a “Mini Bible School” and I was invited to speak at two sessions there this time. Despite the fact that on one of nights I was speaking there, there was a terrible storm, with high winds and lashing rain – around 150 people came, which was hugely encouraging! Equally interesting was that the organisers noted that the audience who came were younger than they often get. It was good to see lots of younger people there including plenty of students.
I ‘tagged-teamed’ the teaching with Stephen McQuoid. He began on the first night in Deuteronomy, with a series of lessons from that book about how we can live for Christ in a confusing and hostile culture. The Israelites were called to distinctive faithfulness to YHWH in the midst of all kinds of competing cultures, religions and worldviews.
So then in my first session I looked at the question of ‘worldviews’, such as atheism or Islam and how to understand them. I looked at the kinds of questions we should ask of other worldviews in order to understand what they teach and our friends who subscribe to them. I made the point that the way to get to the heart of a person or a culture is to really seek to understand them and what they believe.
In my second session at GLO, I looked at Acts 17, where Paul addresses the people in Athens. I looked at Paul’s method for engaging people there – and drew some lessons on how we can represent Christ well in our own ‘culture of confusion’ today. The way that Paul engaged the Greco-Roman world is hugely insightful for us in our own ministry today.
We then opened the floor to Q&A which was lively and engaged and then at lunchtime I spoke to the students at the Bible College there. I did a talk based on my new book, “How to Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like An Idiot”. One of my passions is that students don’t come to Bible College and just think about highfaluting ideas but also think through how to take what they have learned of the wonderful truths of the gospel and engage the world around them with those. So, it was really good to be able to equip them with some really practical tools for conversation. Hopefully as they go and serve and lead in churches around the world they will be able to take these tools and work practically.
It was a real privilege to be able to partner with GLO again this year – last year my colleague Gavin Matthews spoke there. We hope to be able to work with them again soon.
What If God Isn’t Real?
What if God isn’t real? Many people say they don’t think God exists, but haven’t really considered the implications if it’s true. Where can we find things like morality, human dignity or hope for the future if God isn’t real? Perhaps they aren’t real either. But Steve Osmond asks us to reverse the question, and discover all these wonderful things flooding back into the human experience.
Confident Christianity Lewis 2024
Thanks for coming to the Confident Christianity Conference at Back Free Church. As promised, you can find our slides from the morning — as well as recommended resources related to the talks.
Presentation Slides
Additional Resources
Launch Pad 17: A Community BBQ
Here’s the vision. Throw the doors of the church wide-open, provide great food and a hearty welcome, invite the neighbours in, raise money for a good cause and deepen links between the church and the wider community. All with the goal of breaking down barriers to the gospel.
One church we work closely with has been doing this for years with their community BBQs. The organiser, Gordy Mackay, explained that there are large numbers of friendly people on the periphery of the church community who welcome the opportunity to come a bit closer. Some are parents who bring their little ones to the toddler group, but have never been on a Sunday or met the wider church family. Others are parents who drop their kids off for midweek events or holiday clubs but who never stop to chat. The last community BBQ was timed to follow-on from the holiday club, when the church had high levels of community contact, and all the children carried invitations to the BBQ home with them.
The charity aspect is likewise very attractive for people. Gordy has links with Malawi and so ran the community BBQ as a fundraiser to supply clean water to a very needy community and hospital there. The target of £3K was smashed when £8k was raised. Gordy said: “Many outsiders only know or hear what the church is against; this event provided a positive witness about something the church is for!” Inviting guests to participate and in a sense ‘own’ what was going on was important.
“I didn’t realise you live in my street”, “I never knew you had children in the same school as me”, were just some of the conversations overheard during this year’s event. As the aroma of the hog roast filled the air and the fizzy drinks were poured, children played on inflatables while adults chatted.
The church is going to make the community BBQ an annual event, and in the coming year are going to use it to launch their Alpha course. When the community come in they will be welcomed, fed, and introduced to Alpha and invitations will go out.
What could your church do to create a low-key welcoming space in which to embrace and reach your local community?
Pray: Lord, please help us to make church an open, hospitable place for others. Amen!
Previously: Launch Pad #16 Put The E Into Evangelism!
Next: Launch Pad #18 Will be published soon!
UCB – Life Issues: Andy Bannister in conversation with Helen Lea
Andy Bannister recently joined Helen Lea on UCB radio for a lively discussion about sharing the Christian faith. They started talking about Andy’s book, “How to Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like Idiot“, and then the conversation went out from there! The whole of this hugely enjoyable programme is available online- click the UCB icon to get the programme.
PEP Talk with Roger Carswell
Steve Osmond and Kristi Mair are delighted to chat with a living legend of the British church, Roger Carswell. Roger reflects on over 40 years of sharing the gospel in different ways, with his trademark warmth and wisdom. HIs insights on the changing world, the consistent gospel, Christian literature and the heart of gospel preaching are so encouraging.
With Roger Carswell – PEP Talk
Our Guest
Roger Carswell is a travelling evangelist and author. He leads evangelistic church and university missions as well as speaking at Christian conferences. He has written a number of books including ‘And some evangelists’ and ‘Where is God in a messed-up world?’ and publishes numerous gospel tracts and booklets. He is married to Dot, has four children and lives in North Yorkshire
About PEP Talk
The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.
Launch Pad 16: Put the “E” into “Evangelism”
Hardly a day goes by without yet another product being updated, digitised, and relaunched with an “e” prefix. We’ve had e-mail, e-bikes, e-books, e-cigarettes and thousands more products. I even saw an advert for an “e-toaster” (which connected to your WiFi and would ping your phone when your bagel was done!) In our digital, highly-Internet-connected age, maybe we can do the same for “e-vangelism”!
Many of us have a complicated relationship with the Internet. Some of us spend way too much time on it! And others of us get sucked into the black hole of the culture wars waging online: I’m reminded of the cartoon of the man sitting at the kitchen table, staring bleary-eyed into his laptop and shouting over his shoulder, “Honey, I can’t come to bed yet—somebody is wrong on the Internet!”
But maybe there’s a better way of being a Christian online. If you’re on any kind of social media platform, what about trying some simple “e-vangelism” by getting into the habit of sharing good quality, thought-provoking content regularly online? Things that your non-Christian friends might be intrigued by, not wound up by? For example:
- You could post a Have You Ever Wondered? article or video. These are great little pieces designed to gently get people thinking about spiritual themes. (We heard recently from one man who had great success starting conversations by dropping these occasionally into his village WhatsApp group).
- Or try a Short Answers video. Don’t merely post it: put a little comment with it, maybe “I found this video quite thought-provoking: what do you think?”
- Keep on the lookout for Christian material that engages the issues of the day in a thoughtful way: for example, our friends at Seen & Unseen have some great resources.
- Share a Bible verse that has encouraged you (and say why). You could use a free tool like Canva to make it look attractive in a post.
- Talk about a film or TV show that’s raised a spiritual question for you. Or mention a good Christian one—The Chosen would be an excellent example.
And don’t forget to pray as you do this. Here’s a prayer you might use: Lord, please help me be neither addicted to nor afraid of the digital world, but to use it as a space in which to be a faithful witness for you. Amen!
Previously: Launch Pad #15 The Opportunities in Daily Routines
Next: Launch Pad #17 Will be published soon!
Back to Blair
Solas has had a long and warm relationship with Blairgowrie Evangelical Church, an independent fellowship which meets in the Perthshire town of Blairgowrie. Over the years we have spoken at various events and services for them, including some memorable outreach events in a hotel in the centre of the town.
I was delighted to be invited to go to up to Blairgowrie to give the church there an update on the ministry of Solas, and to preach for them as well. Our old friend Iain Craig (who works for Mission International in the adjacent office to us in Dundee!) led the worship, and I brought a message from the Bible to the church. Blairgowrie Evangelical are doing a series of consecutive sermons through the book of Acts. So I thought it would be a useful idea to bring a message which was complementary to that, without stepping on Derek (the pastor’s) toes in his consecutive studies. So we looked at the way the early church used their homes for ministry, both for outreach and fellowship. Drawing on various texts from the New Testament, and writers like Tim Chester – we thought about the way in which we are called to use our homes for God and his gospel (if we have one).
The audio (only) of the talk can be found here:
Solas places a huge weight on the importance of the local church, which is why we don’t run events in our own right – but only go and serve the church where we are invited. The local church is God’s biblically mandated instrument to take the gospel to the world – and so our job is to serve the church. That’s why going to towns like Blairgowrie is an absolute joy for us, to work with partners in the gospel, doing good, faithful gospel work in their communities. Please get in touch if it would be helpful for us to come to your church or community.
How Can We Get the World to Change?
Turn on any news channel and you will find no shortage of depressing stories of what’s going on in the world. There’s so much that’s wrong, so much that’s broken, even within ourselves. When we pause to consider all of these things, we often wonder how we can get the world to change – to be a better place. Do these feelings and intuitions actually point us to something more? In this Short Answers video, Steve Osmond highlights the Christian hope for real change in the world and how it can start with us.
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Support
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose a free book as a thank-you gift!
Launch Pad 15: The Opportunities in Daily Routines
We’ve all seen those crime series in which a private investigator is hired to tail someone and figure out their daily routines. Which café they go to for their morning coffee, the route they take to work, the people they speak to and the school they fetch their kids from.
Now, ignoring the potentially sinister nature of that kind of profiling, it does raise a point – we all have a routine! We all have patterns and rhythms in our lives where we will use the same routes, and go to the same stores, car-parks etc. If we pay just a little attention, we will notice that we regularly cross paths with the same people as we go. This creates a great opportunity to slowly begin to build relationships, move from surface level conversations to deeper ones, offer friendship and ultimately share our faith.
Someone once spoke of the ‘ministry of dog walking’ – they recognised the great opportunity that dog walking presented as a way to meet new people, slowly build relationships, and get to a place where they could share their faith in conversation with people (see here and here for some tips on how to do that naturally).
So, thinking like a private investigator for just a moment, do a little assessment of the regular patterns of your life. What trends do you see? What places are you regularly visiting? Can you see the faces of some of the people you regularly pass along the way? Is it the guy in the yellow reflector vest walking his Alsatian along the same path, or perhaps the lady with the long pink hair walking her little ones to the same school that you walk your children to?
What might start with a courteous nod, can progress to a ‘hiya’, to ‘hey, how’s your week been?’. The great thing about this approach is that there is time to build a relationship slowly and meaningfully. We don’t know the stories of all the people we pass – but we know their need for a Saviour, the need we all have.
Pray: ‘Lord, please help me to see the patterns and rhythms in my life where there is opportunity build relationships and share your love and grace. Make me bold as I look to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those people you bring into my life’
Previously: Launch Pad #14 Create a Welcoming Impression of Church
Next: Launch Pad #16 Will be published soon!
“Have You Ever Wondered?” Book
Beauty. Justice. Identity. Love. Stories. Nature. Hope. These things intrigue us, move us and prompt us to ask big questions. Could there be clues in our deepest desires that point to life’s meaning?
Have You Ever Wondered? is an exciting new evangelistic book from Solas. Available in the UK direct from 10 Publishing.
Buy a copy, get the ebook free!
If you’re a church or a group you can bulk buy for as little as £2.50 a copy.
Special offer: buy one, get a free copy to give to a friend.
For our friends in the USA, Have You Ever Wondered? will be released in North America on 3 June 2024. Find it on the 10ofThose US site.
In Canada, you can save US shipping costs by ordering from our friends at Apologetics Canada here.
Have You Ever Wondered? invites you on an immersive tour through the issues that matter. This book is for anyone who has looked at a landscape and contemplated why we are drawn to beauty, or wondered why we are so insatiably curious about our universe, or even for those who have simply looked up at a million stars in the vast night’s sky and just wondered.
Contributors with backgrounds in science, law, linguistics, theology, bioethics, history, and more, reflect on how their questions have, in some cases unexpectedly, led them to a compelling Christian spirituality and a profound sense of meaning and purpose in life.
Featuring chapters by Andy Bannister, Gavin Matthews, Gareth Black, Andy Moore, Mary Jo Sharp, Andy Steiger, Michael Ots, Clare Williams, Anne Witton, and David Nixon, Have You Ever Wondered? is the perfect gift for friends, family, colleagues, or as a giveaway at events for churches. It’s designed to be a highly accessible, fun, and easy to read book that will help begin conversations about Jesus.
