News

Staff training at UCCF

by Editor

Steve Osmond from Solas went down to Glasgow to work with the University and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) Scottish “relay workers.” According to their website, “Relay is UCCF’s mission and discipleship training year for graduates who love CUs. Relay provides graduates with a unique opportunity to work on the frontline of student mission alongside the Christian Unions. Relay is all about helping people love and serve Jesus with their heart, mind and hands whoever they are and wherever he has called them to be!”

With a new intake of relay workers Steve was asked to do a day’s training with them om some foundational apologetics, at another staff member’s house in Glasgow.

Over the course of a day they looked at understanding culture, answering difficult questions, and equipping students for the task of sharing the gospel of Jesus. Steve did some teaching and presenting, but it wasn’t al lone-way-traffic, there was plenty of debate, discussion and interaction”!

On understanding culture and questions of truth, Steve begun with Francis Schaeffer who argued that in much of our culture people understand truth to exist on two levels. Christian truth claims are seen as relating only to the ‘upper storey’ of personal truth which you cling to because it you find some meaning in it. Many people do not understand that the Christian claim to truth is a claim about ultimate reality without any such separation, because the claims of Christ are rooted in reality and are objective claims. Understanding this about our culture helps to explain why we sometimes talk past each other and not to each other when seeking to engage people with the gospel. Steve went on to look at the way in Acts 17 that Paul addressed people with a similar worldview.

Responding helpfully to tough questions is a very important subject which we address regularly at Solas. Steve took the Relay workers through the ‘SHARE’ method that we often use for this. Illustrating each point of the acronym with some worked examples. SHARE works as follows, five steps to make sure are covered when responding to a hard question.

Sympathise: make sure you connect with the person behind the question, ideas can be debated, but questions such as suffering or identity have huge pastoral implications too.

Hidden Assumptions: It’s worth taking the time to probe the understanding of the question the person asking has. If the person asking the suffering question believes in karma, divine vengeance or is an atheist/materialist then these assumptions might need to be identified and gently challenged.

Apply the Bible: by using phrases such as “did you know that Jesus spoke about this issue in the gospel when he told the parable of the….” Or “The Bible has much to say about this…”

Re-tell the gospel through the question. What is it about the gospel that gives you a better story, or better way of understanding or responding to the question, or speaks to the pain.

Equipping, means sharing resources which go further. These might include a Solas Short Answer video for example. On the suffering question Steve looked at  Noman Geisler’s “If God Why Evil?” which takes a logical and philosophical look at how to understand suffering and evil and Amy Orr-Ewing’s “Where is God in All the Suffering?”  on actually navigating the experience of suffering.

Matthew Morrison from UCCF said:
“It was wonderful to have Steve through in Glasgow to teach the UCCF Relay Workers on apologetics! They found his seminars so helpful and they left feeling better equipped to tell of how Christianity is both reasonable and good!” 

Lab Notes From the Faithful: Prof Richard Buggs

by Editor

Steve: Professor Richard Buggs, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us at Solas today.

Richard: Thanks for having me.

Steve: Before we get into the nitty-gritty science side of our chat about faith and science, could you tell me a bit more about yourself, your family, and what you do?

Richard: Well, I’m married to Hannah. We have four children, the youngest of whom is just six weeks old!

I live in Kent, just south of London, and work at Kew Gardens four days a week and at Queen Mary, University of London, one day a week. And for both of them, I mainly do research on evolutionary genetics.

Steve: Wow, congratulations on the new addition! Reading your bio, it says that you are an evolutionary biologist and molecular ecologist. Can you tell me a bit more about that, and for those who aren’t familiar with those terms, can you explain what that means and what the day-to-day work actually looks like?

Richard: Yeah, so evolution is simply changes in allele frequencies in populations over time – alleles being variations of genes – and that’s what my research is studying. Basically, I study how genetic information changes over time, mainly in broadleaf tree species. I try to understand how they’ve adapted to the climate of the UK and how well suited they are to possible future climates, and also how they adapt to pests and pathogens, particularly new, invasive pests and pathogens that humans have moved around the world.

One of my focuses is something called ash dieback, which is a fungal pathogen that was found in the UK in 2012 and has spread throughout the whole of Britain and is killing millions of ash trees. I’ve been doing research to understand if there’s any genetically based resistance to this fungus. And the good news is there is, to some extent. Natural selection is selecting for it in natural woodlands at the moment. So my research has sort of led to a slightly more positive view of the future of ash than perhaps we had back in 2012, when the fungus first came in and we just thought all of the ash trees might die and we would need to plant different species.

Steve: I assume you’ve got a research team that you oversee to help with all this work.

Richard: I do! I have a group of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who work with me, doing all of this work. I mainly write the grant proposals, write the papers at the end, and manage the work that happens between, so I don’t spend a lot of time in the field or in the lab or on the supercomputer.

Steve: Don’t you miss being out in the field doing more hands-on stuff?

Richard: I miss it a bit, and I really love the sense of making the first discovery of something and looking at the data and saying, ‘Oh, this is telling me this.’ And so now it’s my postdocs who get that first thrill of discovery, and then they come and tell me about it. And so, I have it slightly second-hand, so I miss that, although it’s still exciting, even when someone else has done it for you. But I’ve always enjoyed writing, so my current situation suits me really well. I used to get a bit bored sometimes in the lab, so to be able to be mainly writing about science and writing up results and deciding what to do next – that’s good fun.

Steve: I can relate. Research design is something that I do have a real heart for and often miss. You mentioned being out there discovering things for the first time – I believe there’s a tree named after you, is that right?

Richard: Yeah, that’s true. It’s a species of birch tree that grows in China.

Steve: Nice. What’s the name?

Richard: Well, Betula is Latin for the genus, the birch genus, and so this one is Betula buggsii.

Steve: That’s when you know you’ve arrived in life…when you have something’s scientific name being your name! Very cool. Tell me a bit more about your background in the sciences? What led you to pursue the sciences? Where did you study? What is it about the sciences that you love to really pursue it as a full-time career?

Richard: Sure. It was a slightly roundabout route, really. I was brought up on a farm, which means I’ve always had a real connectedness to nature, to the countryside, and to plants and animals through that. During my A levels I became pretty committed to the science route, so I ended up doing natural sciences at Cambridge, specializing in my final year in plant sciences, and I loved it.

I had a very inspirational teacher who was a Professor and also the director of the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, who taught us about plant genetics and something called polyploidy, which is whole genome duplication, and it just blew my mind that plants can have massive changes in their genomes and still basically look the same and be indistinguishable from something without that massive change – that fascinated me. I went to Oxford and did a PhD on this topic of polyploidy, which I had this very inspirational professor teach me about as an undergraduate, and so I did my PhD there in evolutionary ecology of plants, with some genetics.

After a little while I realized that it was the genetics that really interested me and was the bit of science that was really progressing fast at the time, because the cost of sequencing genomes was coming down, making it possible to do genomics on plants that weren’t particularly economically valuable. I spent some time at the University of Florida doing postdoctoral research with some leading plant geneticists and worked with them for a while before coming back to Britain for a fellowship that took me to Queen Mary University of London, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. I’ve been at Queen Mary ever since, gradually working up the ranks there, getting a lectureship, senior lectureship, and then finally a professorship there. Also, in 2016 I started to work four days a week for Kew, which meant I could do more research on tree genetics.

Steve: As I was reading up on your work, did I see you did the first full sequencing of, was it the Ash or the Birch?

Richard: That’s right, it was the Ash genome. My group were the first group to sequence it. We got funding for that after the ash dieback fungus came into Britain, and there was a lot of focus on Ash, and I was really the only person in Britain at the time working on the genomics of broadleaf trees. And so, it was quite easy for me to then move into Ash and build a research program there.

Steve: Let’s change gears slightly: as well as being a highly accomplished scientist – as you are – you’re also a Christian. How did you come to faith as a Christian, and what does that look like for you today?

Richard: Yes, that’s right. I was brought up in a Christian home, so I always knew the Bible well from a young age, but my parents always emphasized to us that we weren’t Christians just because they were, but that it had to be a personal faith of our own – we had to investigate it and make our own decision.

For a long time, the simple idea of trusting in Jesus and throwing yourself on his grace and to depend entirely on him and his work and his sacrifice – the simplicity of that – just eluded me.

But eventually I understood it and realised it’s not about me earning God’s love – it’s a gift. So, I was baptized just before I went to university, and that was a huge help to me, because it meant I went to university as someone who was confident that he was a Christian and had made a public profession of that, and that meant I could get stuck into Christian Union and local church, and I grew a huge amount as a Christian in my three years at Cambridge. It was just such a vibrant atmosphere to be in. I’d grown up in quite a small church, didn’t really understand the wider landscape of Christianity beyond my small denomination, and just being mixed with lots of other Christians from different backgrounds really helped me to figure out what was important and what wasn’t.

Steve: You highlight the emphasis that this needs to be your own faith that you hold for yourself – that’s so important. Let’s talk about faith and science then: if you look at the popular media, the idea that God and science are at war is something that is still proliferated so much. How do you generally respond to that idea as someone who is a scientist and also a Christian?

Richard: I certainly don’t think there’s a war between science and Christian faith. I think science actually came out of Christianity. It’s no accident that after the Reformation, as people started to read the Bible for themselves, realising very individual can read it and think about it for themselves, that soon after that they turned to the natural world as well and said, ‘Well, we can read this for ourselves too’. We don’t have to be constrained by what Aristotle said. They all believed there must be a God’. They  believed in a lawgiver and that regularities reflected that lawgiver, and therefore it was possible to study the natural world and do science and make discoveries. And that’s what they did. And so, I see science very much as a product of Christianity and of the Reformation. It all fits together extremely well in that if you believe that there is one God who’s all-powerful and is the Creator, then you expect to be able to do science. Especially if we’re made in his image, as the Bible claims.

Interestingly, Christian ethics is also core to that. In science you need honesty, you need integrity. You need people to be able to admit when they’re wrong. You need people not to make up the results of their experiments. One thing that worries me a little about science – sorry, this is going slightly beyond your question –  is that without that Christian ethic, we are seeing a proliferation of people faking results and manipulating data, and the incentives are just so strong. People know that if they get a high-profile paper, then they can get a job, get more money, and so on. So, we need that fundamental commitment to truth and honesty in order for science to progress. And one of my worries is that science itself is actually becoming endangered by the loss of a Christian worldview and Christian ethics within science.

We’ve had period where these values have hung around despite a wider rejection of Christianity. But I think now we are sadly getting to the point where you just can’t take for granted some of those shared values, and it’s a real problem for the sciences.

So, yeah, I don’t see a conflict between science and Christianity at all. Personally, I’ve always found that my science has bolstered my conviction that God exists.

Steve: Those are some really important points. More particularly then, to the idea that evolution has just disproved God—you still hear that idea thrown around. When I was at university I studied some evolutionary biology and sometimes when people found out I was a theist they said that we don’t need God anymore because we have evolution. How do you personally respond?

Richard: It’s really a bit sad. I look at the world around me, the complexity of biological things, the amazing software that’s encoded in genomes – it’s just amazing! I’m looking at a birch tree in my garden right now. That tree has got trillions of cells, and every one of them has got millions and millions of base pairs of DNA that are coding for it to be the tree that it is. And the expression of genes is being triggered by different environmental effects. The complexity of what’s going on is just staggering, and knowing about that – and having the privilege of being able to work on that every day – just reminds me that there must be a powerful, intelligent God who is behind all of this.

Steve: It fascinates me that people can look at that same data and essentially throw their hands up and say it’s really all just an accident.

Richard: Yes, that’s a big leap of faith. Of course, people would say, “Well, it’s not pure chance. It’s chance and natural selection, and natural selection is not chance.” But when it really comes down to it, you have to have the origin of life. And now it’s where we’re really coming onto your question about evolution. For evolution to happen, you have to have life. You have to have replicating biological entities. And we know that for replicating entities to exist, they have to be quite complex. The minimal cell has a lot of genes and a lot of nanotechnology to mean that it can replicate itself and keep a record of itself in either DNA or RNA. And you can’t have natural selection before you have that ‘thing’. You have to have massive, massive doses of luck to have any view of how we could have gotten here without God being behind it.

The well-known atheist biologist Richard Dawkins, for instance, admits that in his book The God Delusion. He basically says we need massive doses of luck, probably more than many people have ever realized, both for the origin of life and the origin of the eukaryotic cell, and for the origin of human consciousness – and maybe for some other steps along the way. So at the end of the day, chance is, at root, the only alternative to God, and we’re talking about such low probabilities that it’s just, to my mind, completely unbelievable and a massive leap of faith to think that there could not be a God.

Steve: In referencing Richard Dawkins there you also highlight that scientists are aware of the improbability issue. I think back to Charles Darwin in his time too, something I know that you have an interest in. There’s something termed ‘Darwin’s abominable mystery’ and the explosive origin of higher plants. Can you double-click on that briefly and explain what that ‘abominable mystery’ is? What did Darwin see that gave cause for concern?

Richard: Good question. I found as a plant geneticist and plant evolutionary biologist, I kept hearing this term banded around within the field: ‘Darwin’s abominable mystery,’ and I was struggling to work out if people actually think this is solved or not. It’s a term that’s nice to use when you’re writing a grant proposal or a paper. But what did Darwin actually mean by it? Well, the way Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ is normally understood today is that it’s about the origin of the angiosperms, which are the largest group of plants. There are over 300,000 species of angiosperm in the world—we refer to them as the flowering plants.

Basically every plant that we eat is an angiosperm. Wheat, barley, apples, oranges…all angiosperms. Things we have in the garden: chrysanthemums, daffodils, and tulips—they’re angiosperms. Cotton, tobacco, and cannabis are also angiosperms.

The world we live in would not be habitable for humans without angiosperms. So, they’re a big, big deal. The thing is, they appear suddenly in the fossil record! In the Cretaceous they appear suddenly and with great diversity, and this doesn’t fit with Darwinian gradualism. And so famously, Charles Darwin, in 1879, wrote a letter to the then director of Kew Gardens, his friend, Joseph Hooker, saying that the origin of the higher plants in recent geological times is an abominable mystery.

I dug into that a bit to work out exactly what was meant by ‘the higher plants’ back then. It turns out that the way people used to classify plants then was a bit different than today, and Darwin was actually referring to the dicotyledons, not the angiosperms, which is actually a smaller group of plants. The dicotyledons are flowering plants that don’t include things like wheat, barley, and grass—the monocotyledons. Darwin thought the monocotyledons had a long fossil record, and it was just the dicotyledons that appeared suddenly in the Cretaceous period, while today we now believe it was all flowering plants.

So, in that sense, the mystery has actually become bigger. The group of plants that seems to defy a Darwinian explanation has got bigger than it was in Darwin’s time. If it was an abominable mystery for him, it’s even more abominable now for us. And this is a problem people have worked on for over 150 years, and it’s still an unsolved problem.

Steve:  Thanks so much for your insights, Richard. This has been really interesting. One last question: thinking of younger people who are looking to go into the sciences, especially maybe Christians, what would you say to them? And for scientists who are maybe interested in God but don’t think they can explore that further, what would you say to them?

Well, I think we don’t have enough Christians working in research biology, and I wish there were more, because there’s just so much Christian motivation for studying biology. Here are just two of those. One is that we are, in a way, thinking God’s thoughts after him when we come to do science. The other is to care for His creation. And I think both of these are mandates that the Bible gives to us, and that’s what I’m trying to do as a scientist. I think there’s good Christian motivation to be a scientist and to care for the natural world.

There is also a lot to think through though, because the majority of scientists are atheists, or at least exclude God from their science, and there are a lot of topics that you have to think really hard about. Something like the origin of life: do I actually believe that could have happened purely naturally or not? A lot of my colleagues would just assume it must have happened purely naturally. But as Christians, of course, that’s not a presumption we come with. We view the data in a more open-minded way. There are lots of things like that that you have to think really hard about, and we need Christians to be doing that with specializations in lots of different areas. You have to be prepared to think hard, but that makes you a better scientist and a stronger Christian. I would just really encourage young people to consider doing science and that that’s a valuable thing and a very legitimate thing for a Christian to do.

Steve: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us at Solas.

Richard: My pleasure!

 

To find out more about Richard Buggs and follow his work, why not visit his webpage at https://richardbuggs.com/

Students by the Sea! Steve, GUCU and Wonderful Weekend.

by Editor

It was a great joy to go to Arbroath with the students from the Glasgow University Christian Union (GUCU), for their CU weekend houseparty.  Somewhere between sixty and seventy students, I reckon, joined Matty from UCCF and I at the Windmill Centre there overlooking the town on Scotland’s east coast. It’s a lovely old building and ideal for these sorts of gatherings.

I was so impressed with the GUCU crowd. Not only were they a huge amount of fun, but they were also really serious about their faith, and zealous for the gospel. The times of sung worship were amazing. Before and after I spoke each time, they raised the roof with their singing which threatened to drown out the musicians!

I lead the Bible teaching over four sessions over four sessions, based on the New Testament book of James. The rest of the programme was packed full or times of prayer, discussions, worship, and loads of brilliant informal conversations in which the students picked my brains on issues of faith, the Bible, theology and evangelism. Their were also lots of fun times, which went on into the night – I suspect that some of them barely slept all weekend! On one particularly moving evening, some students shared testimony about how they had come to faith in Christ and what walking with Him means to them today. One young man spoke of the persecution he had endured in his home country where Christianity is a minority faith, and where following Jesus is hard. We were all challenged and encouraged to serve Jesus more faithfully by his words and example.

GUCU contains students from a broad range of churches, all united together with the aim of sharing the gospel on the campus. I heard students mention various of their churches, some of which I recognised like Glasgow Grace and The Tron, as well as several I didn’t including some independents, another from the New Frontiers group and an Anglican.

It was so good to be with these young, passionate, fun-filled students and to encourage them in their mission on the campus. Many things will live long in my memory, but I think the joy and enthusiasm of this crowd of students will be my abiding memory of my weekend preaching in Arbroath!

With Alistair McKitterick

by Solas

If you encounter apathy when sharing the gospel, it could stem from a worldview that sees faith as irrelevant in a world ruled and explained by science. Research in the area of intelligent design can be a great tool in breaking down those barriers within a scientific mindset. On PEP Talk today, Steve and Gavin learn more about how we as Christians can connect with those who think this way.

For an introduction to Intelligent Design, check out this video from Stephen Meyer or Cosmic Chemistry by John Lennox.

With Alistair McKitterick – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Alistair McKitterick is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader of the MA in Practical Theology and Ministry at the London School of Theology.  He has a particular interest in the science and faith debate, with his doctoral research on the effectiveness of teaching science to Evangelical theology students.  Before lecturing in theology, Alistair studied physics and taught mathematics and science in Zimbabwe in an Elim Pentecostal mission.  He is married to Emily and has four grown up children.

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.

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What Evidence Do We Have That God Exists?

by Solas

Do Christians just believe because they believe? Is faith just believing things for which you’ve no evidence, other than a hunch? In this Short Answers message, Andy Bannister looks at some of the many (just a few of many, many, many) pieces of evidence that God exists and Christianity is true.

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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!

Have You Ever Wondered Why We Love Spring?

by Editor

My favourite day of the year comes just before Christmas. Depending on the year it might be the 20, 21 or 22nd of December – it’s the winter solstice. People are often surprised when I tell them this, given that they know that I’m not a fan of winter, and the winter solstice marks the start of….. Winter! But in my mind at least it, actually marks the start of spring! Yes, I know it’s still cold and dark, but from that moment onwards I know that the days are getting longer and therefore I know that spring will come!

Some people notice the arrival of spring with improvements in the weather. The problem with doing this in the UK is that we can have all four seasons in one day. Indeed, I’ve known days in the middle of winter to be warmer than in high summer. Last July I was driving into town in the middle of the day when I noticed that the thermometer on the dashboard was registering just 12 degrees Celsius! If it hadn’t been for the leaves on the trees, I could have been forgiven for thinking it was December. Therefore, I find a more reliable way to observe the arrival of spring is to watch the plants rather than the weather.

The first harbingers of spring are the snow drops… this year I was delighted to notice one lone snow drop in the front garden on New Year’s day.  Next to come are the crocuses springing up with joyful abundance wherever they are. I was recently walking through a rather run down part of inner-city Manchester but was stopped in my tracks by a swathe of bright tulips – an invasion of beauty into an otherwise bleak landscape.

My favourite arrival of all though has to be the humble daffodil. From January onwards I regularly buy bunches of them – I’m not sure anything else can bring such joy for £1! I then keep my eyes peeled for the first daffodil to flower in the garden.  And although for a few days it was something of a lone ranger, within a week the whole garden and many of the verges on the surrounding roads have become a sea of yellow.

Along with the spring colours, I also love the arrival of spring fragrances. A few years ago, I flew from the UK to New Zealand – leaving behind our winter and arriving in the height of summer. As I walked down to the beach near Auckland, the first thing I noticed was the beautiful fragrance of the surrounding plants. It made me realise that winter is often devoid of any scent at all.

The first scents of spring normally come from the sarcacossa (winter box). I was walking through the university in Reading at the end of January and I noticed they had masses of it across the campus – the fragrance was intoxicating and brought such joy despite the otherwise dreary weather. Next up comes the Daphne – when I first smelt the flowers of one I immediately went and bought one for our garden. After several years of growth it has this year flowered for the first time. I think my neighbours must have thought I had lost the plot when I got down on my hands and knees on the patio to get a whiff of the first flower to open!

Now I realise that I may be slightly obsessive in my interest in the sights and smells of spring flowers, but I haven’t yet met anyone who hasn’t admitted to at least some joy at the sight of the first daffodils of spring. They tell us that winter is ending, and spring is coming. The days are getting longer and, with any luck, the weather is going to improve. At some point, there comes a day when it actually starts to feel warm again. I love observing people on that first sunny, warm day of spring – even the queue of people at the bus stop on the way to work had smiles on the faces. It seems we all love spring. But why?

I think the answer is – hope. Spring brings with it the hope that things will get better. Winter will not last forever. Summer will come. But I think spring awakens a deeper hope in us. As we look at our broken and divided world we hope for so much more. An end to violence, injustice and conflict. A hope that the world could become a better place – but will it?

According to the Christian story the answer is yes. The Bible tells us that the world we live in is not the way it once was – something has gone wrong and we see the evidence of it all around us. But the Bible also says that the world we live in is not the way it one day will be – this broken world will be put right. Christian hope it not about escaping our world to go to some celestial paradise – in fact quite the opposite. The penultimate chapter of the Bible describes how heaven comes to earth!

‘Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”’  – Revelation 20:1-14

The Bible looks forward to a day when our world will be put right. Death will not have the final world. Eternal spring will come. Indeed, one of the main things people observed about the early Christian community was their hope. One early Christian leader instructed other believers to be ready to explain the reason for the hope that they had. Their hope, in the midst of suffering and hardship, was so noticeable it provoked questions. The social historian, Rodney Stark, pointed out that one of the ways early Christians demonstrated their hope was their willingness to risk their lives to care for others during the plagues that periodically swept through the Roman Empire. This tangible expression of their hope led not only to many people surviving the plague through their care, it also caused them to embrace the same faith.

In fact, in the Bible we find that the very passing of the seasons is meant to remind us of this ultimate reality. The Jewish year didn’t start in the middle of winter like ours does in the Northern Hemisphere – but in the autumn. So, in the Bible, each year went from the death of winter to life of summer! This cycle of the seasons was reinforced by the cycle of the days. Again, unlike our own, Biblical days didn’t start at midnight but at dusk. Just as each year was a journey from death to life, so each day was journey from darkness to light.

Could it be that our love of spring reflects a deeper longing and a greater reality. The trajectory of history is not towards death but life, not darkness but light. My favourite description of spring in all of literature comes in CS Lewis’ children’s classic, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. The magical land of Narnia has been held under a curse by the White Witch so that it is ‘always winter and never Christmas.’ However, the coming of Aslan the great lion, breaks the power of the witch’s magic and ushers in the start of spring. What normally takes place over the course of several months happens in a matter of minutes. Lewis vividly portrays the arrival of spring and describes the children’s wonder and joy at the rapid advance.

The Christian imagery in the book is quite clear – Aslan is the Christ figure who alone can bring an end to the power of evil and usher in the spring of new life. Although the twist is that bringing in that life will also require his own voluntary death.

Lewis’ friend, JRR Tolkien also employed the cycle of the seasons in his best-known classic – The Lord of the Rings. The book takes place over the course of one year – travelling through the darkness of winter. Yet while it is often dark and cold, the main characters always long to return to the shire in time for the start of summer!

Perhaps the reason we love spring is that deep down, we long for an eternal spring. We hope that death and darkness will not have the final word, life and light will yet come. If the Bible’s vision of reality is correct, then our love of spring really does point us towards something even greater. According to the Bible, death has been defeated through the death of Jesus – and nothing can stop spring from coming.

Have You Ever Wondered? is also the title of our popular book and a series of articles and videos on this website. With intriguing answers to questions as diverse as ‘Have You Ever Wondered’ why we are drawn to beauty, respect altruism, value the environment, preserve the past, chase money, love music and defend human rights?; the book has a wide range of authors who’s wonderings have drawn them to spiritual and Christian answers to their investigations. With free copies available for people who sign-up to support Solas for as little as £3/month, and big discounts for bulk orders – Have You Ever Wondered? is an effective and affordable way to engage in helpful spiritual discussions.

A Great Day at Cirencester Baptist Church

by Editor

Cirencester Baptist Church is large church in Gloucestershire, where I have spoken a few times over the last couple of years. I’ve got to know Matt Frost, their pastor quite well too – which has been great. Matt was a guest on the Solas PEPTalk podcast last year, which is well worth a listen! He has a really good podcast of his own which is called “Two pastors in a pub” which you can find here. In their podcast they take on a different topic and try a different drink every episode – it’s a great little programme!

So, it was great to drive back over to Cirencester and catch up with Matt and speak at Cirencester Baptist Church again. This time we did a Confident Christianity event – but on a Sunday morning, which was a new innovation for us. Usually we have done these types of training events on a Saturday and then contributed to the normal worship service on the Sunday. Matt is conscious that most of his people lead very busy lives and wouldn’t be able to come to a Saturday event and to church on Sunday, so integrated the Confident Christianity into the Sunday programme.  We designed a one-hour session which began with some sung worship, Matt then did a five-minute devotional talk which set the whole thing up so well, then I did a series of fifteen-minute talks, broken up with five-minute discussion slots followed by Q&A. We ran that twice, at both morning services, and then used the same structure but with different topics at the evening service. That way, by coming to morning and evening people had access to a lot of the Confident Christianity experience and material we cover. It was great to see around 90 people back in the evening too, which was encouraging as evening services are not always that well supported these days. It was a new format for us, with shorter, tighter talks and really focussed discussion times. Of course, not everyone likes discussion times, it can be an introvert’s nightmare! So I named the elephant in the room and said that I realised that some people would dread the thought -so that seemed to help them to relax, acknowledging that it’s not easy for everyone. But looking round the room, the groups were all very animatedly chatting away!

It’s been really encouraging to hear from people who came to this event and said how helpful they had found it. One chap tracked me down on line and emailed to say that it had been ‘life-changing’ , so that was exciting and encouraging to hear. During the day we looked at things such as conversational evangelism, engaging the apathetic, and connecting people to the gospel through ‘wondering questions’.

We’re always keen to be as flexible as possible in our approach so that we can meet the needs of different churches, of different types and sizes all over the country; and this new format seemed to go well – so we’d be very willing to do this again for other churches, if they felt that the normal Saturday conference format wasn’t suitable for their context. Please do get in touch with us, if that would be something that you’d be interested in Solas bringing to your church fellowship.

One of the sessions from Cirencester was filmed and is available below.

With Tim Dieppe

by Solas

In the UK today, an increasing number of our colleagues and neighbours come from Muslim backgrounds. Although there are issues arising from the clash of Islamic theology and Western values, how can we interact constructively and lovingly with Muslims we meet? Today on PEP Talk we look at the challenge of Islam and the opportunities for sharing the gospel with those who follow it.

With Tim Dieppe – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Tim Dieppe is Head of Public Policy at  Christian Concern with a specialist interest in Islam. He regularly writes and comments in the media on Islamic affairs and is passionate about encouraging Christians to respond with confidence to the growing influence of Islam in the UK. Tim holds a degree from Oxford University and an MA in theology from Westminster Theological Centre. He co-authored Questions to Ask Your Muslim Friends with Beth Peltola.  He is also the author of The Challenge of Islam published this year by Wilberforce Publications, which seeks to equip and inform Christians how best to respond to the rise of Islam in Britain.

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.

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Confident Christianity At Broughty Ferry Free Church

by Solas

Thanks for joining the Solas team at Broughty Ferry Free Church for our recent Confident Christianity conference. Below you will find all the presentation slides from our speakers, in downloadable PDF format.

Conversations That Count_Steve Osmond_Broughty FerryDownload
Andy-01 WorldviewDownload
Biblical Apologetics_Gavin Matthews_Broughty FerryDownload
God and Suffering_Gavin Matthews_ Broughty FerryDownload
What About the Bible_Steve Osmond_Broughty FerryDownload
Andy-02 Jesus and IslamDownload

Central Baptist Church March 2025

by Solas

Thanks for coming along to the Confident Christianity sessions with Steve Osmond at Central Baptist Church last month. Below are the downloadable slide presentations for you in PDF format.

Conversations that Count_Steve Osmond_Central Baptist CCCDownload
5 Steps for Answering Tough Questions_Steve Osmond_Central Baptist CCCDownload
Worldview_Steve Osmond_Central Baptist CCCDownload
The Importance of Audience & Using Testimony_Steve Osmond_Central Baptist CCCDownload
Engaging the Apathetic_Steve Osmond_Central Baptist CCCDownload

Panic-free Evangelism! Andy at the Christian Book Collective

by Editor

Lydia Houghton interviewed Andy for the second ‘Christian Book Collective’ podcast. Looking at all kinds of practical aspects of evangelism today, the conversation includes some insights from Andy’s books incuding How To Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like An Idiot, and Have You Ever Wondered? 

Solas’s work is totally dependent on gifts which people give us to support our ministry. If you’d like to become one of those people who keeps our work going, click here. If you are able to give as little as £4/month, we’ll send you a copy of How to Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like An Idiot, or two copies of Have You Ever Wondered? as a thankyou!

With York St John University Christian Union 

by Editor

I had the privilege of joining the student Christian Union (CU) group from York St John University for their weekend away. They had hired an Anglican Christian retreat centre in beautiful countryside about ten miles from Scarborough – and invited me to join them for the weekend as the speaker. It’s one of the smaller CU’s that we work with, and they managed to get twenty of their students along for the houseparty.

Over the course of the weekend, I led four sessions. We began with my introduction to conversational evangelism, (which I also wrote up as a book) called “How to Talk About Jesus Without Looking Like An Idiot”, then we did a session entitled “How to start spiritual conversations with your friends” which was a reworked version of the “engaging the apathetic” session we do at Solas. It draws deeply on the things we cover in the “Have You Ever Wondered?” book. The “Crunchy Christians” talk was next!  In that session we focussed not so much on the words that we use in evangelism and the questions we use as tools; but about the character we need to display to make the gospel attractive. We are called to live in such a way that people are struck by the quality of our lives. ‘ Crunchy Christians’ are those who aren’t able to talk about their faith naturally, but make it awkward or weird! Praying, loving people well, saying sorry and serving are ways to de-crunchify ourselves! Of course, when the church is ‘crunchy’ we have a bigger issue – and so we had a look at John Dickson’s book “Bullies and Saints” in which he uses the illustration of the ‘music of Jesus’. If you want to know what a piece of classical music is like, you can listen to it played well or badly; but really to really assess it, you need to hear it as the composer intended. The music of Jesus has often been played badly, but people need to see Christianity as he intended it to be. Then of course when the church has got it wrong, we shouldn’t get defensive – but apologise. Then our final session was entitled, “The uniqueness of Jesus in a world of other faiths” – which ended the weekend thinking deeply together about Christ himself.

The retreat centre is a great location for a student weekend, the meeting room had big sofas set out which made it less formal and great for discussion times too. So we didn’t do long teaching sessions, but a bit of teaching them discussion, them discussion and Q&A – and then loads of great informal conversations with the students over meals, and coffee. There are advantages to smaller groups actually you can do a lot more interactively and get to know people much better.

York St John University CU are a great bunch of students, who are really friendly, very missional and keen to engage in the topics and then go and do outreach. I’d crossed paths with three of these students before, two at Word Alive in Wales, and one at CreationFest in Cornwall – which is how this invitation to speak had come about.

What is Love, If You’re An Atheist?

by Solas

What is love? If atheism is true, love is arguably nothing more than a trick played on us by our genes in order to persuade us to mate, reproduce, and propagate the species. But that seems light years away from our experiences of love. Why is that — and could our desire to be loved unconditionally be a clue to a bigger story?

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Have You Ever Wondered Why Sport is More Than Just a Game?

by Editor

“What team do you support?” I get asked this a lot as I grew up in Manchester but live in Newcastle, two great footballing cities. The truth is that I don’t really like football, but I do love sport. I could watch tennis and snooker (I know!) for hours and really enjoy playing racquet sports and pool.

We’re a nation of sports enthusiasts. 19.2m people in the UK are regularly cycling, running, swimming and / or doing team sports (that’s about 28% of the population)[1]. 31% of UK adults reported watching live sport in 2023/4 and this is increasing[2]. Whether we’re joining in our local Park Run or cheering on the Lionesses, there’s something about sport that stirs our emotions and compels us to be part of it.

But have you ever wondered why sport is so important to us? After all, football is essentially a group of people kicking a bag of wind about. Snooker is people spending hours in dimly lit halls hitting balls with a stick. F1 is people going round and round in increasingly technologically advanced cars. Is there any deeper meaning to all this? What does all this tell us about our humanity?

There are many important things that sport teaches us about what it means to be human, but I want to highlight three in particular:

Our need to grow

Sport teaches us important co-operation and social skills, which is why we were all forced to do PE at school. We admire the discipline and skills of the athletes we follow. Sport is more than just getting a ball in a net or winning a race; it’s a means to develop character and perseverance.

Most of us hope not to just perform certain tasks throughout our life, but to become better people. We admire the courage, teamwork, discipline and self-sacrifice that we see on the sports field or track. But that in turns raises the question: why does our character ultimately matter?

The aim in competitive sports is to win a medal, trophy or title that we can rightly be proud of and makes all the hard work worthwhile. But ultimately our abilities fade, the trophies get dusty in the showcase and someone else becomes world champion and breaks our records. Our prize doesn’t last. We grow, we hit our peak and then we fade. The great Novak Djokovic was recently derided as a ‘has-been’ by an Australian tennis commentator who clearly thought his 24 Grand Slam titles no longer count for much![3] In a wider sense, this is analogous to our lives. Unless there is an ultimate purpose: we’re born, we grow and learn, we achieve things and then we die. The question is: is there an ultimate purpose that means all our development won’t go to waste?

Our need to belong

Sport is also about shared purpose and bonding. It brings people together. It’s our tribe verses the opposition. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff put it like this:

“Humans love teams, team sports, synchronized movements, and anything else that gives us the feeling of “one for all, and all for one.“[4]

We long for belonging – to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We are embodied people who want to touch and be touched and to connect in meaningful ways. In our over-sexualised and individualistic culture, sport might be the only context in which we can give and receive healthy touch as we tackle an opponent or hug a fellow supporter when a goal is scored. We want to matter to other people and we want to be missed when we’re not there. Sport – whether we’re watching or participating – gives us a community to belong to. When the season-ticket holder’s seat is empty; when there’s no one to fill the wing attack position on the netball team; when a match is cancelled because we’re injured, we are missed.

“To be included you just need to be present. To belong you need to be missed.”[5]

Sport does give us an important sense of belonging, but it’s also fragile. There are conditions attached. What if we don’t make the team? What if we get injured or fail the time trial? What if we can’t afford the match tickets or Sky Sports subscription? Is there anywhere we can securely belong no matter what our circumstances?

Our need to worship

Diego Maradona famously said, “Football isn’t a game, nor a sport; it’s a religion”[6] and it’s easy to see why he thought that. Whatever the particular sport, we often hear the language of ‘heroes’ and ‘gods’. We hear people saying that they worship their favourite players and stars.

Sport is a whole-body experience. We jump up in elation when we’re winning and hang our heads in despair when we’re losing. In victory, we pile on our teammates and perform celebration rituals. Communal chanting and singing on the stands on a Sunday morning echoes the hymns and songs being sung in church at the same time. Fans sacrifice huge amount of time and money to support their beloved teams. The billion pound merchandise industry shows that we’re keen to publicly demonstrate our allegiances by wearing the right kit and collecting precious memorabilia. Hard core fans study stats and spend hours discussing tactics.

But so often our sporting heroes let us down. Whether it’s through cheating scandals, poor performances, unwise words or bad behaviour, we’re painfully aware that all human beings are a complex mix of good and bad just like us, whether they’re sporting stars or not. So can our inherent need to worship be directed towards someone who won’t let us down?

Ultimate growth, belonging and worship

There’s no doubt that sport can be really good for us. It shows that we value character development, it helps us build community and places to belong and it calls us to worship someone other than ourselves. But does sport point to something that’s even better?

The Bible often uses sporting metaphors to point us to our true purpose:

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.[7]

The promise that’s being talked about here is eternal joyous life with God in a remade and healed world. Unlike a medal or trophy, it can be enjoyed forever and God invites our active participation in it! Whoever we are, whatever our skills and talents, we can all be welcomed into God’s community where we can experience belonging without fear of rejection.

And our in-built need to worship is only truly satisfied when it’s directed to our heavenly father whose love is never-ending and has promised to never leave us if we trust him. Unlike a fallible sports personality, he will never let us down.

Sport is great and adds huge value to so many people’s lives. But have you ever wondered if it points to something even greater than itself? We are made to grow and develop, to belong to a family and to worship something bigger than ourselves. Christians believe that these profound needs, while hinted at in sport are truly met in Jesus Christ.

If you recognise a need in yourself to grow as a person, to belong to a loving community and to worship something beyond yourself and your own limitations, I’d encourage you to explore the message, life and person of Jesus for yourself.

Have You Ever Wondered? is also the title of our popular book and a series of articles and videos on this website. With intriguing answers to questions as diverse as ‘Have You Ever Wondered’ why we are drawn to beauty, respect altruism, value the environment, preserve the past, chase money, love music and defend human rights?; the book has a wide range of authors who’s wonderings have drawn them to spiritual and Christian answers to their investigations. With free copies available for people who sign-up to support Solas for as little as £4/month, and big discounts for bulk orders – Have You Ever Wondered? is an effective and affordable way to engage in helpful spiritual discussions.

[1] Sport England, Nov 21 – Nov 22. Sport England, Active Lives Adult Survey November 2021-22 Report, 2023

[2] UK Government, Main report for the Participation Survey (May 2023 to March 2024)

[3] https://news.sky.com/story/australian-broadcaster-apologises-to-novak-djokovic-after-has-been-comments-13292913

[4] Haidt, J and Lukianoff,  G, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Penguin (2019) p.153

[5] John Swinton, From Inclusion to Belonging: A Practical Theology of Community, Disability and Humanness, (2012) p. 184

[6] https://www.thechase.co.uk/projects/football-is-a-religion/

[7] 1 Tim 4:8

In Pursuit of Greatness: Solas at Maddiston

by Editor

We really value our fellowship and friendship with Maddiston Community Church. It’s a church which I have spoken at many times, over many years, where we’ve done Solas evangelism-training evenings – and which contains quite a few Solas supporters. So it was a real joy to go back there on Sunday to preach at their morning service where they are working their way through the gospel of Mark. Mark’s gospel brings us face to face with Jesus – and this week in chapter 9 to the question of ‘true greatness’ – in fact what is life really all about! It’s a question we get asked a lot in Solas, because our speakers are often working outside the church, and in our culture today the search for the purpose of life is very much a live question.

In the sermon (which you can watch in full below) I attempted to do five things:
1) Show that the disciples had a distorted view of what greatness is, which largely matches our culture today
2) Explain how Jesus confronted them and us, with a radical, revolutionary idea that sacrificial service for others is in fact the nature of true greatness
3) Demonstrate that only Jesus has ever fully lived up to his lofty ethical teaching
4) Show how Christ shares his righteousness with us, by grace so when we turn to him we are forgiven
5) Show how Christ changes us so that we can live increasingly great lives (as Christ defines greatness)

You can judge how well (or otherwise!) I succeded in that by watching the sermon here: