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Is Faith Just An Emotion?

by Solas

Is faith just an emotion – just something we feel? Is it something that some people have and some people don’t, just like some of us have a taste for a certain flavour of ice cream and others don’t? Or is it more than that? In this Short Answers video, Steve Osmond from Solas looks at the idea of faith and evidence, and how the two work together in Christianity.

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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 21: Run a “Meal with a Message” Event

by Editor

Recent decades have seen the relentless march of coffee shops through our high streets. What accounts for their popularity? One of the co-founders of Starbucks once said his vision was for it to be a “third place”—neither home, nor work, but a place to linger in between.

There are loads of other such third places—pubs, cafes, curry houses—and your community probably has one or more. And they’re great places for evangelism. We live in a time when many of our non-Christian friends have no experience of church and can be suspicious about entering into “our” space: so let’s go to their space!

Over the years at Solas we’ve helped many churches put on low-key evangelism events in neutral venues. One church in Inverness ran a meal in the local hotel: church members invited friends and it was packed to capacity. After the dinner there was a short talk and lots of people later signed up for the Alpha Course.

More recently, Andy Bannister helped a church in St. Alban’s organise an event in a golf club. Again, food was served, then Andy spoke on “Finding Hope in a World of Chaos”. One guest said afterwards “this was a fantastic evening … I really enjoyed the talk”. Another said to the Christian who’d invited them that they’d love to do The Word-One-to-One.

How do you run an event like this well? Here are some principles we’ve learnt over the years:

  1. Book a local venue that serves food (either a meal, or coffee and dessert etc.)
  2. Advertise that there will be food plus a short talk.
  3. Consider selling tickets in pairs: Christians can then buy a ticket for a friend.
  4. Keep the talk short and relevant.
  5. Have Q&A afterward.
  6. Use the event to launch e.g. a Christianity Explored or Alpha Course.

Just like the Christians found in the book of Acts, when we go where people are, God shows up!

And if you need help, reach out to us at Solas; we can offer advice, ideas, and if you need it, supply a speaker for your event!

Prayer: Lord, please inspire us at our church to reach out of our four walls and put on an event in a ‘third space’. Thank you that you’re the missionary God who goes before us. Amen!

Previously: Launch Pad # 20 Host a Pre-Marriage Course, Meet and Serve non-Christian Couples

Next: Launch Pad #22 Get the Word Out!

Steve on a Mission in Edinburgh

by Editor

Duncan Street Baptist is a church which meets on the south side of Central Edinburgh,  not far from the city’s famous Meadows. Under the leadership of their pastor Robert Murdock, Duncan Street Baptist Church are engaged in various outreach and evangelism initiatives, talking the gospel of Christ to their neighbours and communities. Along with a commitment to training and equipping church members for talking about Jesus, Duncan Street Baptist Church also hosts regular Christianity Explored courses, which takes people through Mark’s gospel in an informal and interactive way. Many people have become Christian through Christianity Explored, it’s a really valuable tool for local churches.

In addition to these ongoing ministries, Duncan Street Baptist have been holding outreach evenings, opening up the Christian answers to some of the biggest question of our age. With surveys and scholars saying that people today are searching for the meaning, purpose, value of life and looking for happiness, the church was keen to show people that Jesus provides the surest foundation for answering today’s big questions.

Steve Osmond from Solas spent three evenings with the folks from Duncan Street, which he thoroughly enjoyed.  The church advertised these events with personal invitations, social media content and by handing out flyers around their neighbourhood and got Steve to address three big questions:

Can Happiness Last? Can Science and God Co-Exist? And “Given All the Options, Why Jesus?’

The church was delighted that people who are not yet Christians, came along and engaged with these sessions. Robert Murdock from Duncan Street wrote:

“Steve did an excellent job addressing three questions, Can happiness last?, Can Science and God Coexist? and Why Jesus? His presentations had depth and were thought provoking, respectful and persuasive. We had a number of people attend who were exploring what the Christian message was and how it was relevant to them and Steve’s presentations allowed them to do that without feeling pressured. Without any hesitation I would recommend Steve and the Solas team to any Church that wants to try and engage the people who live around us with reasons to believe.”

There are many, many different ways of sharing the Christian faith with folks outside the church! Holding an event like these is a great way of engaging people with the Christian faith in a respectful, thoughtful and persuasive way – or launching your Christianity Explored, Alpha or other outreach course. Solas speakers address these kinds of meetings every month, all over the country and have a range of suitable talks ready to help non-Christian audiences see the importance and relevance of Jesus. If we can help your church to run an event like this, please get in touch by pressing the ‘https://www.solas-cpc.org/contact/connect’ button at the top of this page.

PEP Talk with Matt Fell

by Solas

On PEP Talk today, Kristi and Steve chat with Matt, one of Kristi’s old school friends! He wasn’t a Christian at all back then, but over the years, Jesus wonderfully drew him in. Now working on a PhD at Cambridge, he reflects on the amazing ways that a scientific, enquiring mind can find satisfaction in a God-centred worldview. If you or your friends think Christianity is anti-science or anti-intellectual, Matt’s testimony is great food for thought!

With Matt Fell – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Matthew Fell is a PhD student in the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge. His thesis considers the implications of evolutionary theory for the Christian understanding of the soul and its creation. Alongside his studies, he is an associate lecturer at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and the director of a discipleship and church internship programme that serves the Newfrontiers network across Europe. Matthew is a passionate believer that modern science can open theological questions and dialogue with people rather than shut it down.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, our hosts 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.

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Launch Pad 20: Host a Pre-Marriage course – Meet and serve non-Christian couples

by Editor

A few years ago our church ran a pre-marriage course – a few weeks of ‘what to expect’ for couples to invest in their marriage before it began. It was advertised through the church website and in the Sunday services as a way to get prepared for marriage using good Biblical principles.

The first evening came around and, as my fiancé and I were also nearing our wedding date, we joined in. Looking back after 10 years of marriage, this was a good idea. It’s strange to me that so often we will invest years in training for a job or some hobby – but so many don’t give a moment’s thought to the idea that marriage may actually take some preparation – there may actually be some skills to learn as we embark on the journey. Anyway, I digress.

It wasn’t long until I noticed that there were several couples I’d not seen before. It was a big church and I just assumed I hadn’t met them yet. The course included a dinner each week where we were served by some of the church members during which there was time to chat to the other couples. To my surprise it turned out that a few of the couples weren’t part of the church – they’d heard about the course from friends and advertising – and even more surprisingly…they weren’t even Christians!

Why the surprise you may ask? Well, my assumption was that a pre-marriage course at a church – based on Biblical principles – wouldn’t at all be something that would attract non-Christians. But it did and The Lord used it! And here, in our church for several weeks were couples who were wanting to invest in their marriage and were open to hearing the Gospel – and hear the Gospel they did. Since then I’ve done marriage preparation with several couples and then conducted their wedding ceremony, and seen how marriage can be a fantastic opportunity to minister to couples.

Another great opportunity that running a pre-marriage course presents is that those serving the participants also had weeks of interaction with these couples – practically showing the attitude of service that the Lord Jesus would have us demonstrate. This is a great way to meet, and love, non-Christians very practically, pointing them to Jesus.

Here is a great place to start: https://www.themarriagecourse.org/host/the-pre-marriage-course

Previously: Launch Pad #19 Leaflet Your Community

Next: Launch Pad #21 Run a “Meal with a Message” Event

Student Mission at St Andrews

by Editor

Steve Osmond from Solas spoke at the St Andrews University Christian Union events week. To watch his reflects on an intense but rewarding week of mission play the video below!

The students from the Christian Union enthused about the week of mission they had done together.

“As a Christian Union in St Andrews we exist to give every student the opportunity to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus. So we put on an ‘events week’ like this every single year, which is really the climax of our year as a Christian Union. It’s a week of intense events and mission, to give CU members the opportunity to invite friends and to talk about Jesus. We aim to give people the chance to hear and respond to the good news that he brings. That’s what we have been doing this week!” – Amy

“For me, and I think for a lot of us, it has been so amazing to see the momentum that can be built over a week. There have been specific people who we have seen multiple times throughout the week, who have been so keen and so interested. They’ve been coming with all their questions and being able to invite them back, day-after-day to find out more – and ask more about what we think and believe, has been such a blessing! Such a blessing in fact for us to see how God has been using this week.” – Millie

Thank you again, all those of you who pray faithfully for this kind of work and those who give to make it happen practically. Thank you.

Can Christianity Be Good But Not True?

by Solas

It seems to be a curious trend that some public figures are going out of their way to laud the social benefits of Christianity – things like human rights or free speech – but don’t accept it as actually true. Is it possible to hold these values dear, but regard their source as a fairy tale? In this Short Answers video, Andy Bannister challenges us to consider whether we can really “reap the fruit but reject the root” when it comes to the Christian message.

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Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.

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 19: Leaflet Your Community

by Editor

Advertising consultants tell us the effect of their message is multiplied when people see their product in different places. If someone sees an advert five times on the side of a bus they are less likely to remember the message than if they were to see it on a bus, a billboard, on the radio, in a shop and online. One advertising guru called it the power of multi-point contact.

We are not crassly reducing evangelism to a marketing exercise; evangelism is God using us to draw people to himself! But that still means that we can practice and learn to play our part as well as we possibly can! (Why do something for God that is second-best?)

One way to multiply our message is to use door-to-door leaflet drops around our town. There are five steps to doing this well.

One: Define your community
If you are working alone it might be just your road. If you have a small team from your church with you, perhaps an entire housing estate. Don’t attempt too much, make it doable!

Two: Commit to a regular, realistic delivery schedule (perhaps twice a year)
National events can be useful times (elections, coronations) as can church events like the launch of Christianity Explored or Alpha, marriage or parenting courses, as well as the Christmas services.

Three: Choose your leaflet wisely
10ofThose produce a whole range of gospel leaflets themed around topical events, such as elections, coronations, the World Cup or Olympics. It’s important to include contact details for the church, (or yours if you are personally leafleting your immediate neighbourhood). CPO produce invitation cards you can customise with your own details and message.

Four: Pray!

Five: Head out and do the delivery.
Be friendly, polite, ready to talk to folk and be respectful. Walk on their paths, not across their grass, shut gates behind you and ‘Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have’ (1 Peter 3:15). You never know who might stop for a chat.

One church we know does this as part of their house-group programme. As well as meeting for Bible study, they regularly walk their ‘patch’ and deliver church invitations.

Pray: Lord, forgive us for being inward looking, send us out to the lost in a whole variety of ways.

Previously: Launch Pad #18 The Welcome Pack That Goes the Extra Mile!

Next: Launch Pad #20 Host a Pre-Marriage course – Meet and serve non-Christian couples

University College London (UCL)

by Editor

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

by Solas

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

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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, our hosts 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.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST

Launch Pad 18: The Welcome Pack (That Goes the Extra Mile!)

by Editor

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 Leaflet Your Community

GLO Mini Bible School

by Editor

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?

by Solas

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.

Launch Pad 17: A Community BBQ

by Editor

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 The Welcome Pack (That Goes the Extra Mile!)

UCB – Life Issues: Andy Bannister in conversation with Helen Lea

by Editor

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.