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Road Testing Hope Explored, the latest resource from Christianity Explored Ministries.

by Editor

Hope Explored is a new course, from Christianity Explored Ministries (CEM), which is a really useful addition to their suite of resources for churches. While on one hand it has all the hallmarks you’d expect from CEM, (high-quality production, Jesus-centred, Bible-focused, videos and discussion materials), it also carves out new territory. That’s because Hope Explored is a very short three-week course, focussing on Hope, Peace and Purpose – as revealed in Christ through Luke’s gospel. This is an attractive starting point for people who are not yet ready to sign up for the deeper seven-session Christianity Explored course.

Alan Guy has been using the resource at South Glasgow Evangelical Church and said, “three weeks is an ideal introduction for people who are interested but busy and not yet ready to commit a huge amount of time.”

Our friends at Deeside Christian Fellowship Church (DCFC) in Aberdeen have recently completed their first Hope Explored course, having used a variety of evangelism courses over the last couple of decades. Peter Barrow, one of the church’s Leaders in Training spoke to Solas about how they got on. He said, “Hope Explored is really useful as a short, three-week introduction to the Christian faith. We had two aims when we ran the course, one was to communicate the gospel to non-Christian people, and the second was to help Christians to better communicate their faith. Hope Explored was useful for both those things.”

After running the course with a small team for five guests, including one from outside the church, Peter said, “The material in Hope Explored is really good. It’s typical Rico Tice! He’s warm, he’s easy to listen to, he’s a likeable guy who comes over well on screen and people trust him and listen to him! The videos are really relational too – people instinctively seem to connect to the content, they are done well.”

Alan Guy agreed, he said, “It’s a great tool for introducing people to the Christian faith. The video presentations are thoughtful and professional and relate very well to modern life.”

In Aberdeen, Peter reported that people responded well to the course, especially session three. “The conversations that the group had were great, as the DVD stimulated them to ask searching questions about who Jesus was and why he died.”

Alan Guy added, “The opening discussion questions helped us to navigate some common issues about the nature of life and some of the challenges of living with hope, peace and purpose. In a world that sometimes jars with these basic human desires. it was invaluable to take time to think about this in addition to the group bible study each week.”
In Aberdeen, Peter said they would do one or two things differently next time however. Next time they run the course they are planning to add an introductory session prior to the normal week one of the course.

Course-leader Doug Walker explained, “Hope Explored jumps straight into the Bible. We live in a culture in which Bible literacy is decreasing. Even 30 years ago many secular people had a basic understanding of what the Bible is about, but that’s not the case anymore.” Their planned introductory week would allow guests to get to know each other over food, watch the course trailer and chat informally to prepare people for what the course is about.. Adding an introductory week, and getting to know everyone then, will allow more space in week one to address people’s questions in a more friendly, less hurried way. They then plan to have an informal extra week at the end when everyone can share what they have learned and discuss over a meal where they’d like to go next.

Peter added, “While our main aim is to share this outside the church, it’s also worth mentioning that it’s often good for people who have been Christians for many years to get back to the basics to remind them of the reason for the hope they have so as to better equip them to share their faith with others in a clear and considered way. Hope Explored can be really useful for people like that”. This was something with which Alan in Glasgow agreed.

Deeside intend to run their next Hope Explored course, immediately followed by a Christianity Explored course, as they think that one will lead naturally into the other, with Hope Explored really whetting the appetite for people to go deeper into the gospels and life of Jesus and what that means for them.

Perhaps the best commendation of Hope Explored is that both churches immediately said, “when” we run the course again, not “if”!

Christianity Explored Ministries can be found here
Hope Explored course materials can be found online here

Confident-Christianity ‘Lite’ at St Peter’s Dundee

by Editor

We had the opportunity to do another “Confident Christianity – Lite” conference recently, in Dundee. Our usual “Confident Christianity conferences”, draw on a speaking team from across the country, and usually large crowds for a full day event. The ‘lite’ version last only half a day, features only Solas in-house speakers and typically caters for smaller numbers.

We launched these ‘lite’ events in response to the needs of local churches who were not yet ready (post-Covid) to assemble large numbers of people in busy buildings for long periods of time; and for congregations who wouldn’t want to wear a face mask for a whole day! We’ve also found that these ’lite’ versions of our training conferences are easier for smaller fellowships to host.

This time we had the joy of returning to St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee – the place where Solas began and where several members of the team worship.

Andy Pearson, the new minister at St Peter’s welcomed everyone and kicked the morning off with an encouraging devotional message from Acts 13 in which Paul and Barnabas shared God’s word, saw opposition and God working to save people – and knew joy in the work of evangelism.

Solas’s Andy Bannister then led the folks at St Peter’s through a crash-course in question-asking, conversational-evangelism; with a particular emphasis on the secular workplace. After a short break he then looked at the ever-difficult topic of ‘suffering’. This is something which both causes sceptics to resist God and can prevent Christians from sharing their faith and so it deserves some thought. Andy asked everyone to develop a response to suffering based on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ – who both knew suffering himself, and promises to ultimately save us and deliver us into an eternity free from pain.

Andy was then joined by his Solas colleague Gavin Matthews for a Q&A session at the end. There were some really insightful questions which required some theological wisdom and a pastoral sensitivity. Alongside questions on science and sexuality there were hard questions about those who die without ever putting their faith in Christ – as far as anyone knows. In his reply Andy explained that while we can’t be sure of where someone else stood before God in their last breaths, we can be right with God through Christ now – and that is the urgent thing today.

Will Lind, St Pete’s Associate Minister commented, “It was brilliant to have Andy and Gavin with us at St Peter’s. We gathered together the morning after storm Arwen hit Dundee and the two of them were certainly a breath of fresh air! As Christians we often find it hard to share our faith: we live in a challenging culture and often worry we won’t be able to answer the difficult questions our friends and family might ask. Andy showed us that sometimes the most helpful approach is to ask a question in response. Both taught us not just by what they said but how they said it: at the end of the morning, they dealt with some searching questions from the floor with a wonderful mix of humility, honesty and humour. As we left the conference, speaking about Jesus felt that little bit more possible than it did at the start.”

Solas’s evangelism-training can be tailored to suit any church. We are still more than happy to do our full-day conferences to large audiences with a team of speakers. Equally we love doing these smaller events, in half-days, with a small team. It really is all about serving the needs of the local church. Please do contact us to discuss how we could help your church; or all the churches in your town, in encouraging, and equipping in evangelism today.

PEP Talk Podcast With David Hutchings

by Solas

Apart from toddlers, teenagers probably ask the most questions about difficult subjects! Spare a thought, then, for Christians teaching adolescents in our schools. What can we learn about how to handle faith-questions in such an environment, where a mis-step can land you in hot water so easily? Today we hear from a science teacher about using questions like “Do you believe in aliens?” to encourage gospel conversations.

With David Hutchings – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

David Hutchings is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and physics teacher at Pocklington School near York. David is a regular speaker on the philosophy, history, and theology of science across the United Kingdom.  He is the author of Let There Be Science and God, Stephen Hawking and the Multiverse: What Hawking said and why it matters. The latter is reviewed here. His latest book, Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World, co-written with James C. Ungureanu, examines the 19th-century origins of the faith-science conflict myth. 

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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Forgiveness, our great need. Outreach in Kinross

by Editor

Loch Leven Church in Kinross invited me to speak at an outreach event they organised at Loch Leven’s Larder – a lovely café and shop in a celebrated beauty spot overlooking the hills and the loch.  They’d booked the covered, heated outdoor seating area, from which we could listen to the band, and worship while watching the sun set behind the distant hills – enjoying good coffee and cakes. It was idyllic!

When we arrived to set-up, the café was buzzing with people – several of whom stayed for the worship once the open invitation was offered by the church, to anyone who wanted to stay. Stephen Jones, who was helping to run the event,  (well-known to Solas readers from his contribution to the Frontlines series) said, “the fact that our church doesn’t own a building, and the school we often use isn’t currently available has been good for us in some ways. It’s forced us out into the community, to do the things we should have been doing anyway!” Richard Gibb from the church agrees, “temporarily lacking a venue has made us think innovatively.  After speaking with management at Loch Leven’s Larder – we were delighted when they allowed us the opportunity to use this ‘neutral space’ for a very informal café church service,” he said.

Richard added, “We advertised this event to the wider community via our public Facebook page: “We Love Loch Leven” and it was brilliant seeing people come from a range of churches, bringing some of their friends, and also for the staff of the venue to be part of the event – as we were all reminded of the wonderful hope that has been made possible 2,000 years ago in the person of Jesus Christ who made it possible for us to be forgiven and reconciled with our Creator God.”

After the band had played, I spoke on the great subject of forgiveness and why it is the ‘glue’ that repairs fractured relationships between humans and between us and God. When someone has been wronged, denial and revenge don’t solve the problem – only forgiveness brings the parties together.

The issue of our need of forgiveness from God is remarkably similar. God offers to not count our sins against us, and not exercise his right to punish us, and calls us to confess and not deny what we have done wrong. Humans sometimes struggle to forgive one another because it requires vulnerability and there is always a cost. When God forgives there is also vulnerability and a cost. He approaches as – in vulnerability, so to speak – in the incarnation. When Jesus came, he didn’t come as a warrior to judge, but as a baby to forgive. Then at the cross he pays the costly price of forgiveness; taking the cost of sin into himself.

All of this comes together in two verses in the Bible, 1 John 1: 8-9, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” In Jesus there is truth and reconciliation between us and God. I encouraged people who were there to have a truthful conversation with God about their sins, because reconciliation with Him is possible, forgiveness is available because of the cross.

As well as seeing churches working together, and getting out into the community; it was especially encouraging to speak at the end to someone who is not a church-goer who was intrigued by the message saying, “I have never, ever heard anything like this before – I think this message was for me”.

At Solas, we love working with local churches sharing the gospel of Jesus with their communities all over the UK. If we could be of service to your church, please do get in touch using the connect button above to talk to us about what might be possible.

Outreach in Dumbarton

by Editor

Lennox Evangelical Church in Dumbarton didn’t just invite Solas to come and do some evangelism-training with them; they made a day of it – by inviting us to work with them in an evangelistic meeting that evening!

They hired a local hotel for their annual outreach dinner this year which worked really well. Church members were encouraged to buy tickets and invite their friends to come for a good meal, and hear an after-dinner speaker. For many people, saying ‘let me buy you a ticket for a dinner in a hotel, and hear a short talk’, is a lot easier than saying ‘come to church with me!’ There seem to be quite a few people who will happily come to the hotel bar, who would not consider an invitation to an event in a church. The fact that Christians are offering to pay for their friends to come adds an element of hospitality and generosity to the invitation as well. The church subsidised the tickets to make it easier fr people to come as well.

The hotel provided a lovely dinner, and people sat around tables of six – chatting with the friends they had brought, along with others. After dinner, I spoke on “The Pursuit of Happiness”, which is a talk I use a lot with non-Christian audiences. I talk about the way in which we look for happiness in all the wrong places and really only if look for in it connection with the God who made you and designed you and in whom you can find true joy and happiness.

The audience seemed to be really engaged and the aim was to help the church to have further conversations with their friends about Jesus to help them discover him for themselves.

Professor David Galloway, the host from the local church said, “The real encouragement was that fact that several sceptics in the audience listened very attentively to the talk and I know of several follow on conversations that occurred afterwards. One is particular with a scientist. We’ll certainly have a chance to follow this up. The “Pursuit of Happiness” talk  just right for that occasion and that audience. we are now planning some follow up events to develop these contacts.”

One notable feature of the evening was that along with people from Lennox Evangelical, there were people from other churches in the area – and those with no church connection across all ages ranges. The youngest person I spoke to was eleven, and the oldest in their mid-eighties; with good range of people in between. Young adults are sometimes the hardest group to get to these events, but there were plenty of them present too, which was really good to see.

Thsi kind of evangelism can seem really daunting the first time you attempt it, so if you are wanting a hand in reaching out to your community, please do contact us at Solas. We work with all kinds of chuches in all sorts of different communities to help communicate the saving message of Jesus.

What Is Love?

by Solas

Have you ever wondered what love is? Is it just a chemical reaction, a trick pulled on us by biology to get us to mate and reproduce? If love is *more* than that, then why is it often so hard to find? And why do we all desperately want to be loved? The rock band U2 famously sang “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”—but what if our desire for love is a clue to something so much bigger?

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Have You Ever Wondered Why the Best Stories Are About Good and Evil?

by Editor

A strong contender for the four most well-known words in the English language must arguably be: “Once upon a time …” Whether we are children or adults, we love stories; indeed our love of stories is something uniquely human. From the earliest recorded cave paintings to the most modern movie, across time, country, and culture, humans are a storytelling species.

As a child, I loved nothing better than to lose myself in a novel. Now I am a parent, I’ve passed on this love to my children—they don’t care (that) much for television, but their rooms are lined with books. Shortly before writing these words, I was curled up in bed with my six-year old son reading him the first volume of the brilliant Wingfeather Saga; there were mighty protests of “Dad! Just one more chapter!” when I closed the book.

Some stories are here today and gone tomorrow, but others become classics, retold to generation after generation. When a story is first written, it’s hard to tell whether it will become a classic but I would suggest that one thing most of the great stories, the classic tales, all have in common is they are built around a common theme: the triumph of good over evil.

Whether it’s Frodo and the Fellowship’s struggle against the evil Sauron in The Lord of the Rings; or Harry Potter and his friends and their fight against Voldemort; or the epic battle of the Rebellion against the Empire in Star Wars; or Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist with the angelic Oliver up against the wicked Fagin; or T. H. White’s epic retelling of the Arthurian legend in The Once and Future King—the list could go on almost endlessly. Our most loved, most classic stories concern the battle of good over evil.

But have you ever wondered why we love stories? After all, if we live in a godless universe, all that matters is survival and reproduction. The only truthful story in this kind of world would be something like The Little DNA Molecule That Could, which I suspect would be somewhat lacking in the plot department. What kind of bizarre trick has nature played upon us, messing with our genes in such a way that humans—and only humans—seem to think that story matters? We’re more deluded than the craziest power-mad wicked step-parent in a Grimm Brothers’ fairy story.

But it gets stranger, because not merely do we love stories, despite their total uselessness to the whole he-who-passes-on-his-DNA-the-most-successfully-wins game, but as we’ve seen, the stories that have the greatest longevity are stories where good triumphs over evil. For sure, there is some pretty dystopian fiction out there; but in most of the classic stories, evil always gets a kicking.[1]

But in a godless universe, that’s a load of old rubbish, isn’t it? First, because “good” and “evil” are meaningless categories in a world which is just atoms in motion. Morality is just a nice story for children—but grown up atheists are those with the courage to say “Bah, humbug!” to all that. On top of which, even if you don’t have the courage as an atheist to go quite that far, the grim truth is that good doesn’t triumph. It simply doesn’t. Chaos wins in the end: suffering and death await all of us, await even the universe itself. The story of your life is the same as everybody else’s: “Born. Suffered. Died.” So our love of stories where good wins is merely delusion, wish-fulfilment, or brilliant marketing by publishers.

Yet have you ever wondered if maybe there’s more to it than that? Could it be that the reason that we’re drawn to these classic stories is because deep in our very bones we know that they resonate with reality? That in some way (part instinct, part common-species-memory, part something yet deeper still) we sense they are reflections of the one true story?

The theme of good triumphing over evil is, of course, profoundly Christian. It is the theme that runs through the whole of the Bible culminating in the story of Jesus and his victory over the forces of darkness. That Christian storyline is reflected in many of our favourite stories, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidently. For example, Tolkien wrote:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.[2]

Whilst in a 2007 interview, J. K. Rowling described herself as a Christian and explained how the Harry Potter books were deeply influenced by her faith.[3] Even the Star Wars stories, for all of George Lucas’s interest in Eastern religion, are saturated in Christian ideas: think of the sacrifice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope, or the existence of life after death that runs through the movies.

If Christianity is the true story of how a good God created a good world and placed human beings in it; of how we were corrupted by our love of greed and power; but how God then stepped into creation to rescue us, even at the cost of his own life, then it should not surprise us that when human beings engage in our God-given role of “sub-creation”,[4] of creating stories of our own, that these should reflect the One True Story.

But one last thought. It’s been suggested that you can divide most of the world’s stories into two types: comedies and tragedies. A tragedy is a story which begins with all going well and then ends in catastrophe for somebody. (Think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the titular character’s downward spiral into murder and insanity). If you graphed the trajectory of a tragedy, it would look like a frown ☹️. By contrast, the graph of a comedy looks like a smile ?: at first it seems all has gone wrong, but then comes a dramatic turn of events and the story climbs up to victory (or what Tolkien called eucatastrophe).

If atheism is true, if we live in a godless universe, then we are living in a tragedy. No matter how high humanity may squirm up the greasy pole of existence, everything ends in wrack and ruin. But if Christianity is true, then no matter how dark things may look, as they looked for Jesus as he hung on the cross, we know that this is not the story’s end, but that evil will be ultimately defeated and that after the last tear has fallen, there is love. As Sam Gamgee said to Frodo in the film adaptation of The Two Towers:

It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.

I believe that our love of stories was wired deeply into us by the God who created us, as one more clue, one more pointer to who we really are and for what—indeed for whom—we were really made. And so the question becomes, will we follow Ariadne’s thread, the trail of the stones in the wood, the light from the lamppost—will we follow these clues where they lead? Or will we slam the book shut, close our eyes, stop up our ears, and mutter: “I’m just a 1% bit of pollution in the universe” to ourselves until the lights go out.[5] Now that really would be a tragedy.

—

[1]        And even in dystopian fiction, like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, as a reader you’re meant to protest; not cheer at the triumph of Big Brother.

[2]        Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 172.

[3]        See Jonathan Petre, ‘Christianity Inspired Harry Potter’, The Telegraph, 20 October 2007 (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3668658/J-K-Rowling-Christianity-inspired-Harry-Potter.html)

[4]        A term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien.

[5]        That was the atheist Lawrence M. Krauss’s memorable description of what he thought human beings were; cited in Amanda Lohrey, ‘The Big Nothing: Lawrence Krauss and Arse-Kicking Physics’, The Monthly, October 2012 (http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/october/1354074365/amanda-lohrey/big-nothing).

Confident-Christianity ‘lite’ in Dumbarton!

by Editor

Solas recently partnered with Lennox Evangelical Church in Dumbarton on Scotland’s west coast – where one of our board members, Prof David Galloway is a leader.

For several years we have run day-long “Confident Christianity conferences” with churches around the UK. These are designed to encourage and equip Christians to share their faith with others, engage in natural gospel conversations and answer their friends’ questions or objections. For these major day-conferences, churches have typically worked together to bring in a large crowd – and Solas has provided a varied speaking team with a range of expertise. Like so much else, Covid has changed much of this and many people don’t want to spend long periods of time in large crowds in busy buildings. Neither do they want to spend a whole day wearing a face mask!

Instead, we have begun to do “Confident Christianity: Lite” events. In these we don’t bring in a speaking team from all over the country, but I bring a very small team with me from Solas. We also don’t do a whole day – but usually a half day. After speaking to pastors and other local-church leaders, it became clear that many of them would welcome this smaller option in the current circumstances and we’re happy to help!

At Lennox, we did four sessions. I did an introductory session on conversational evangelism, slanted towards our witness in the workplace. Then we looked at the whole question of suffering and how to respond to the challenge that is to faith. David Galloway then explored the question of science and Christian faith and I ended with a look at evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Q&A is a really important part of virtually all Solas events, and we had a really good session of that in Dumbarton, with thoughtful questions from an engaged audience.

Churches seem to respond really well to these events, and we have a number planned for the rest of the year in various places. These half-day ‘lite’ events make some of what we do more accessible to churches who don’t – for a variety of reasons – want to mount a large conference. So we’re delighted to change our format to meet their needs. If an evangelism-training event like this could be useful in your church, we’d love to speak to you. Please do hit the “connect” button above to get in touch.

PEP Talk Podcast With Tracy Cotterell

by Solas

Jesus didn’t spend his life in church, he ministered in the real world. How can we think about life with Jesus as an adventure in the real world, not just someone we meet in church? Today’s guest Tracy Cotterell speaks to Andy and (filling in for Kristi) Gavin from Solas. She encourages us to identify our primary role as God’s child, participating in the Father’s business to reach the world. 

With Tracy Cotterell – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Tracy Cotterell is a former advertising planning director and served the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity for sixteen years, latterly as Managing Director. She has degrees in theology from London School of Theology and Redcliffe College, and is completing her doctoral programme at Portland Seminary in the USA. Tracy is LICC’s Senior Mission Associate, a Board Director of the Evangelical Alliance, and engaged in the development of disciple-making models for today’s culture. Her latest publication is Mark: Living the Way of Jesus in the World, the final title in LICC’s Gateway Seven Series of Bible Studies of which she is also series editor. Tracy is married to John, and they have three adult 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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Have You Ever Wondered Why We Long for Happiness?

by Editor

We are a happiness obsessed culture. Every day, a million Westerners type “happiness” into Google. There are hundreds of books telling you how to find happiness, podcasts discussing it, movies and songs all about it. Coming of age in the 90s, I can still remember the cheerful bubble-gum flavoured lyrics of R.E.M.’s classic Shiny Happy People. Whilst more seriously, among the most popular programs ever run at Harvard University were Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s lectures on positive psychology, nicknamed “The Happiness Course”.

But have you ever wondered why we humans pursue happiness? After all, the rest of the animal kingdom usually seems pretty content with just the biological basics: survival and reproduction. But humans? We need so much more than merely the bare necessities of life: so what is going on here?

Let’s explore this by thinking a bit more about happiness. Perhaps the first question is what exactly we mean by the word “happiness”. Ask most people “Do you want to be happy?” and of course they’ll say “Yes!” But inquire: “What do you mean by happy?” and that’s a bit tougher.

I love reading old books, for it gives one a different perspective, rather like talking to somebody from another culture. And reading one day I stumbled across something that Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, observed: namely that there are actually four levels of happiness and to be truly happy, truly satisfied, we need to ensure that we are living at all four levels.

Happiness level 1 is basically animal happiness and is all about fulfilling your appetites. So, for example, I see the chocolate donut. I eat the donut. I am happy. I feel good—and I can, of course, if it’s a box of six and my wife isn’t watching, repeat this exercise. Eventually though, the happiness will be over (and pretty quickly if I indulge too much, if I misuse this appetite). The same is true of that other appetite, sex. In the context of committed love, sex can be amazing. But abuse it, for example treating the other person involved as a means rather than an end, then a great deal of unhappiness can result. Furthermore, if you misuse your appetites—eating to cope with anxiety, or having transient one-night stands to cope with loneliness or boredom—you will soon end up deeply unhappy. And if you’re unhappy at level 1, suggested Aristotle, the only way is up, to level 2.

Happiness level 2 is all about comparison, about having more or being better than the next person. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, with developing a skill and using it well. Excelling in sport, succeeding at work, coming top of the class, all that can bring happiness. But be warned: you won’t be at the top forever. Indeed, trying to live at happiness level 2 can be deeply stressful, as you worry what happens when you are no longer the fastest, smartest, or whatever. And even when you do win, sometimes that can be a hollow victory. In the movie Cool Runnings, about the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s debut at the 1988 Winter Olympics, there’s a moment where the coach, played by John Candy, says to the team: “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

When happiness level 2 lets you down, you need to move up to level 3. Happiness level 3, said Aristotle, is all about living for somebody other than yourself. One example would be parenting; pouring your time and energy into caring for children. If you’re not a parent, you can still find other ways to serve others, giving of yourself to others less fortunate. But the problem is that these things also come to an end: those you care for will one day no longer need you. And if you’re not careful, this approach to life can also become profoundly selfish: the real reason you’re helping others is really only because it makes you feel good.

So where now? If happiness levels 1 through 3 don’t ultimately satisfy us, presumably the only way is up? So what lies at the top of this ladder, what precisely is happiness level 4? Well, to paraphrase our old friend Aristotle, level 4 comes when you get connected to an ultimate source of happiness outside of yourself.

Which reminds me of something that Jesus of Nazareth once said. Jesus had much to say about happiness, often highlighting our tendency to look for it in all the wrong places, which wearies and drains us; and so Jesus said:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”.

The basic problem with happiness levels 1 through 3 is the weight of the effort is based on us—so we exhaust ourselves running, trying to reach that ever elusive goal of happiness, only to watch it constantly recede into the distance, like the end of the rainbow. Trying to find happiness this way will drive you to craziness, cynicism, or both.

But Jesus offers us something refreshingly different. For Jesus claimed to be God himself, stepping into space and time and history, and as the very one who made us, he is also the one who knows what we really need, what we were truly designed for.

There is nothing inherently wrong with food and sex, sport and success, generosity and self-giving. But they can never ultimately satisfy us. And for a very good reason: we were made for so much more. But if we make it our goal in life not to merely to be happy but to know Jesus, the one who also said “I have come that you might have life!”, then we can discover something infinitely more than a happiness whose shine quickly fades; but we can discover a joy that nothing or nobody can ever take away from us.

Andy Bannister at Carrubbers Christian Centre

by Editor

I’ve spoken twice recently for Carrubbers Christian Centre on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. One of these was the final sermon in an evangelistic series they have been doing entitled “A Better Story”. And the ‘better story’ I was asked to present was on happiness. It was encouraging to hear that there were quite a few visitors present from outside the church too.

The idea of the message was to unpack the different ways in which we look for happiness. At a basic level we look for it in food and sex, but that is transitory – because no matter how good the experience, it comes to an end. Moving ‘up’ from those instinctive drives, some people then look for happiness in achievement perhaps at work, the sports field or academia. However the same problem arises here, the happiness gained there comes to an end. Moving even further up, people can gain some sense of happiness from serving others –perhaps being a parent and pouring energy and commitment into someone else’s wellbeing. And that’s all good – but once again comes to an end. Kids eventually leave home and no longer depend on you, and others we serve can outgrow their dependence on us. The essential problem with all these sources of happiness is that they all eventually, in one way or another, come to an end. When people make food, sex, pleasure, achievement or service the centre of their lives they will always be let down because we need something higher than those things to be the ultimate source of happiness. Now of course that leads into the gospel of Christ – and the story of our fractured relationship with a God who loves us and his son who came to redeem us because of his great love for us.

That’s a topic I have spoken about regularly with audiences of non-Christian people- because “How can I find real happiness?” is a question that a lot of people are asking today, not least because Covid has swept away so many of the things people had assumed were certainties. Many people have had things such as assumed job security threatened along with foreign travel, much of their social lives – and so much of what makes us happy.

The second invitation to speak at Carrubbers came because their pastoral assistant who was due to preach at their annual carol service was diagnosed with Covid the day before! So our great friend, and Solas associate David Nixon (who is also Associate Pastor at Carrubbers) phoned and asked if I happened to be available to deputise at short notice. Thankfully I was, and so a second trip to Edinburgh was hastily planned.

I spoke on “Is there something more this Christmas?” – asking if there is more to Christmas than the usual rounds of parties, food and fun. It all comes together around Matthew 1:23, which says  “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). That tiny verse opens up the answers to the four key questions, “What is God like?”, “Where is God in all the suffering?”, “What’s gone wrong with the world?” and “What’s the solution?” (see more on these questions in my book). The Christmas message is that God is seen in Jesus, he’s here with us, that we are broken and sinful – but that Christ came to redeem us! The irony is that while at Christmas we often get deluged with gifts we don’t need; God has actually sent us a gift that meets our deepest needs – his own son, our saviour Jesus.

I closed with the words of my favourite Christmas carol – the final verse, of O Little Town of Bethlehem, which says:

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today

So- changing the “our” to “my” I invited people to pray those words with me. The church did a wonderful job with the music and the whole service. So it was a real privilege to preach the gospel in that setting with our friends at Carrubbers. We’re looking forward to doing a Confident Christianity conference with them later this year too!

The whole service can be seen here:  https://youtu.be/GmciIzXll_s

Why Are Human Beings So Curious?

by Solas

Have you ever wondered why human beings are so incredibly curious? Whether’s it our desire to explore the highest mountain, deepest ocean trench, or to put humans into space. Or our thirst for knowledge, or for constant technological improvement. There is something uniquely, wonderfully human about our desire to ask “Why?” But where does this come drive come? And is it a clue to where we come from?

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WPTS Teaching – Saturday 12 March 2022

by Andy Bannister

Andy really enjoyed teaching his “A Christ-Like Response to Islam” session for WPTS on Saturday 12 March 2022.

Download a copy of Andy’s slides as a PDF here.

The lecture Andy gave today was a condensed version of chapter 4 of his book, Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? (IVP, 2021). If you found today helpful, do check it out:

Read or listen to a sample of the book for free here

Get a copy of Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? as a gift by signing up to support Solas’s work of evangelism—for just £3 a month you can help us reach (and train) many more people across the UK. And you can get Andy’s book (or another, if you prefer) as a thank you. Click here for details.

Want to stay in touch with and prayer for Solas? Sign up for the Solas email newsletter—packed with news, prayer points, and free resources each month.

Watch a Solas Short Answers video:

For more information about the Solas Centre for Public Christianity that Andy leads, visit www.solas-cpc.org. In particular, do check out our SHORT/ANSWERS video series. Over a million people have now watched, downloaded, or shared one of these videos with friends. They’re a great, free evangelistic resource. 

If you’d like to help support Solas’s work of evangelism and evangelism training across the UK, you can do for as little as £3 a month and we’ll send you a choice of one of several great books as a gift.

Questions, questions, questions! Gareth Black at Hollywood Baptist Church

by Editor

Gareth Black joined Hollywood Baptist Church in Belfast for an evening of questions! Billed as  “Making Sense of God in a World of Covid”. Gareth was grilled by Assistant Pastor Aaron Williamson on the perennial subject of “If God is Good – why is the suffering in the world?” –  around the the great issue of recent times the global pandemic.

Aaron put questions to Gareth such as: How has Covid changed people in terms of their focus and priorities? How can a good God allow this particular suffering? “God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it’s his megaphone to rouse a deaf world – CS Lewis.” If that’s true, what is God shouting to us through this pandemic? How do we take Covid seriously but not live and operate in a spirit of fear? How do we navigate different opinions around Covid and restrictions etc? How can we love and serve one another despite all the different opinions we have?

There were around 60 people at Hollywood that evening, and they joined in an extensive Q&A, which carried in informally at the end of the meeting!

Gareth said, “It was a great evening, with lots of really good interaction both in the meeting itself and from really encouraging people afterwards. There was much discussion about how the church should respond to these issues, especialy when we disagree about things like resrictions. The guiding principles in all of this are to be a good witness to the gospel, and to care for one another in the church as we work these things out together.”

The whole evening was captured on film and can be watched here: