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Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Andy on Unbelievable?

by Editor

Andy Bannister was a guest on Justin Brierley’s popular Unbelievable? programme recently. Andy’s book, “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?” argues that the Biblical and Quranic conceptions of God are incompatible and so the answer to that question is  a nuanced ‘no’. Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon from the Nigerian Anglican Church takes a different view – arguing that we all worship the one God, in different ways. Justin Brierley brought them together for a discussion around these important issues.

Does Biology Point to God or Atheism?

by Solas

Does design in biology —especially the presence of what appears to be a carefully engineered biological programming language (DNA) in the heart of every living cell — offer yet another powerful piece of evidence for the existence of God? In this episode of Short Answers, Andy Bannister dives into the world of biology to find out more.

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The Negative Experience Gap 2

by Editor

Several years ago I had a desire to launch a large youth convention out of my local church in Northern Ireland. The vision for the project was simple, yet ambitious: To create an event where adolescents from across the borough could gather together to encounter God through contemporary worship music, prayer and inspirational bible teaching. At the time, I was heavily influenced by the Passion268 conferences that ran in Atlanta every January and considered that something akin to this – though on a much smaller scale – might be both necessary and possible in my own context. So with my expectations through the roof, and encouraged by the two friends who had been supportive when I shared the vision, I poured my heart and soul over the next few weeks into getting the event off the ground. We called it Resolution, recognising that, next to the Holy Spirit, every successful youth event needed a cool name. Our name seemed fitting given that we planned to hold it a couple of days before the new year, and because the aim of the event was to encourage young people to resolve to follow Christ with their whole hearts, as the great revivalist Jonathan Edwards had done as a teenager.

To say that what actually transpired on the night of our first Resolution event didn’t exactly meet my expectations would be the understatement of the century. I had harboured imaginings of around one hundred young people encountering God enthusiastically, without inhibitions, in an atmosphere of worship and awe. What in reality occurred was a gathering of around seventeen people in a sports hall with awful acoustics and a broken heating system, indulging a makeshift, mediocre praise band and wishing that the speaker would hurry up and finish so that they could get back into their cars to warm up. I was hugely discouraged. I’d invested a lot of time, money, imagination, emotional energy and spiritual expectation into this venture and what transpired was a mere shadow (and a freezing shadow at that!) of what I had hoped for. I locked up the sports hall after the event feeling embarrassed that I had failed and with the only resolution in my mind being that I’d never attempt anything like this again – it simply wasn’t worth the risk!

Fast-forward ten months and one of my friends who had attended that night caught me completely off guard one day by asking: ‘Can we do Resolution again this Christmas?’ Call it peer-pressure, but something in me told me not to dismiss the suggestion despite how negative my former experience had been. So, with a little more time to plan and promote the event this time round, and applying some of the lessons we had learned from the previous year’s mistakes, a few of us set about organising Resolution one more time. What transpired was one of the most memorable and significant evenings in my early Christian life: Several hundred young people turned up (I still don’t know how they all heard about the event); the presence of God was  palpable; young people unashamedly poured out their hearts and voices in praise to Jesus; and scores of students publicly committed their lives to Christ. We continued Resolution biannually for several years after this. It wasn’t always as big or powerful as this second event, but that evening taught me a humbling and invaluable lesson: Negative experiences are no indicator that God wants you to abandon something. Had it not been for the pressure I felt when my friend laid down the expectation that we ought to run Resolution again, I would never have returned to the project; my initial experience was simply too disastrous and personally disappointing. But trying again, with all the sense of foolhardy risk, uncertainty, and personal vulnerability it required prior to what we saw God do that night, was the right thing to do.

It doesn’t take a sage to recognise that each of us have a natural aversion to returning to situations where previously we have had negative experiences. It’s basic human instinct to not put ourselves at risk if we can at all avoid it. And the aphorism once-bitten-twice-shy is no more true than in the context of Christian evangelism. Many believers avoid any kind of personal public witness to Jesus simply because of how unpleasant their previous experiences have been. This might be a product of negative things that we have observed in the name of Christian evangelism: an animated individual effectively shouting the Gospel at high street shoppers through a loud speaker system and in the language of the King James bible perhaps; or the sordid and disingenuous efforts of some evangelist who attempts to emotionally manipulate people into making decisions to follow Christ with all the guile and strategy of a used-car salesman. It may well be that our rightful distaste for many of the methods of evangelism we have observed, as well as our lack of awareness of any truly positive expressions of the practice, forces us to sidestep any opportunities we may have for sharing our faith with others. More often than not, however, the evangelism vacuum that can emerge from negative experiences derive from personal disappointments or senses of failure akin to my first attempt at Resolution. It might be that we plucked up the courage to invite someone to an Alpha course only to be shot down and made to feel like an idiot; we might have genuinely tried our best to share our faith with others only to have been confronted with intimidating questions or assertions that we had zero answers to; we may have been involved in evangelism teams in the past only to have been made to feel inferior by people evidently more confident and competent than ourselves; or it might be that we have a friend or loved one that we have been sharing the Gospel with for years without receiving even a scintilla of interest – let alone spiritual breakthrough – in return. Whatever the specific negative experience(s) might be for us personally, it is important to be aware of it and talk about it with both God and others. At the end of this article, why not take some time to think about what, if any, those negative experiences might be for you? If it helps to reflect upon it by writing your thoughts down in a journal, do so. Then take the experience to the Lord in prayer, as well as perhaps to a trusted friend or Christian leader. God is neither surprised nor disappointed with you because of these experiences. He is a loving Father who longs to hear about it and process it with you so that you can move forward. The first step in that process may simply be to identify and own the experience rather than bury it. As the author Terry Pratchett once said: ‘Before you can kill the monster you have to say its name.’[1]

So if we do find ourselves more than a little evangelism-averse due to negative or disappointing past experiences, what ought we to consider so that we can positively move forward and not allow such incidents to paralyze us with an unhealthy fear or even sense of self-pity? Here are a few thoughts…

First, it is important to remind ourselves that, ultimately, our participation in sharing our faith with others is a matter of obedience, one that transcends our personal experience, whether positive, negative or somewhere in between. Many areas of ethical decision-making in life involve what is often called cost-benefit analysis: we evaluate what the right thing to do is by weighing the expected resulting benefit of doing something against any potential risks or costs that doing so might incur. Christian evangelism is not so consequentialist. The mandate for our evangelism is, in the end, not determined by that evangelism’s outcome, nor our personal experience of it, but by the fact that Jesus commanded us to do it (Matthew 28:18-20). This is not to say that God does not take our experiences and concerns seriously, nor is this reality intended to be used as a rod to spiritually cajole people into sharing their faith by riding roughshod of over their personalities and understandable anxieties. It is simply to say that such personal dynamics and experiences, though extremely important to consider, cannot ultimately be leveraged to circumvent God’s expectation of our public witness. Isaiah was told ahead of time that his witness for God would be universally disregarded (Isaiah 6:9-13), and though Jonah knew his preaching in Nineveh would be hugely successful, he considered this a negative experience because he didn’t want God to be merciful towards his enemies (Jonah 4). Yet none of these realities were legitimate determining factors in whether or not these prophets ought to bear their witness. That came down to one factor alone: God had told them to witness and it was up to them to obey. Our public witness is no less a question of obedience. Imagine getting to heaven and meeting Isaiah – whom tradition tells us was sawn in half for his obedience in witnessing for God – and telling him that, though you claimed that Jesus Christ was your Lord, you disregarded his command to share your faith with others because someone once embarrassed you by turning down your invite to a Christianity Explored course. Awkward.

Though this first consideration might feel like the throwing down of a gauntlet, it is important, secondly, to remember that it is a truth that also offers us a tremendous reassurance: If the most significant factor in whether we get involved in evangelism or not is ultimately faithfulness to Jesus’ command to share the Gospel, it will therefore be the most significant criterion by which God will judge our evangelism. In other words, what God expects of each of us in terms of our evangelism is our faithfulness in obeying his commission to do it, not how ‘successful’ or emotionally fulfilling we may find every occasion of it to be. In the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, I am always struck by how both of the good servants receive precisely the same commendation, ‘well done good and faithful servant’ from their master even though, quantitatively speaking, one has produced two and a half times as much as the other.

This deeply encourages me because it implies that, in appraising our service, this master is the kind of auditor who will not merely consider the bottom line of apparent ‘productivity’ in evaluating success, but will both recognise that we have often been given very different levels of ability and opportunity to others. He will judge us according how faithful we have been with the capacities He has given us individually, not in how more or less productive we have been relative to anyone else.

If what God is, in the end, looking for in our evangelism is to be faithful in obeying his command to share our faith in accordance with our personal abilities, opportunities and personalities, this ought to liberate us from the bondage of judging our ‘success’ in, or ‘experience’ of, evangelism by comparing it with others or by holding our efforts up against some other criterion of triumph other than God’s expectation of our humble faithfulness. Many people’s negative experiences in evangelism come from an unhealthy – and, more importantly, ungodly – comparison with others that creates unrealistic expectations that they then judge and often condemn themselves in the light of. Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden light (Matthew 11:28). Even the great apostle Paul – who would have graduated summa cum laude by any worldly standards of evangelism proficiency – refused to allow himself to be appraised by such standards, knowing that it would only lead to the bondage of pride or shame. Instead Paul said:

…it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.[2]

This means that we can be patient with ourselves in our evangelistic efforts. We can make mistakes, we can bear disappointments and frustrations, and we can continue steadfast in lovingly sharing our lives and faith with the seemingly uninterested in full assurance that these are not deal-breakers for God. All God ultimately asks of us is to be faithful and allow him to fully disclose the success of our efforts at the right time – a judgement that I believe may well disclose more than a few surprises when we realise just what mysterious triumphs God has achieved with things we once considered disappointments!

Third, remember that any mistakes or weaknesses you may have experienced in our evangelistic efforts don’t define you. It is so common to pluck up the courage to evangelistically put our head above the parapet, only to be dispirited by a negative experience or realise how inadequate we are, and then allow that to dissuade us from ever trying again. Perhaps some other Christian foolishly even made a comment about your abilities that majorly discouraged you? Remember that evangelism is always hard but, like trying anything new, is particularly hard for those who don’t have much experience of it. To expect that we ought to be able to do brilliant evangelism the first few times we try is like someone who watches the Ryder Cup, gets inspired to play golf, and expects to complete 18 holes at the local links course in a round of 62. 99% of the time what will actually happen is that that person will get onto the course and within about two holes discover that playing golf is much harder than it looks on TV. A round of golf can be a very embarrassing and painful encounter in such moments and, speaking from experience, it’s very easy to return home and never want to play again. Christian witness, like golf, is a dynamic enterprise. No one is good at it the first few times they do it, and the only way to overcome our fears and weaknesses is to keep stepping up to the evangelistic tee and taking a swing at it.

When I think of not being discouraged by negative ministry experiences, I think of the figure of John Mark. Although the details are sketchy, it is clear from Luke’s account in Acts that John Mark mistakenly opted to abandon Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia (Acts 13:13) and return to Jerusalem. Rightly or wrongly, Paul no longer trusted Mark and refused to allow the young man to join them on their second missionary journey when he had returned to them in Acts 15. Barnabas disagreed with Paul’s decision, presumably because he believed in Mark’s potential and was willing to give him another chance, but the dispute led to he and Paul to permanently separate from each other. Talk about a negative experience! If I had been John Mark and knew that the great apostle Paul felt this way about me, I don’t think I’d ever entertain any form of ministry ever again. Thankfully, Mark had Barnabas who believed in him and was willing to patiently and encouragingly support him. Eventually, Mark would serve God alongside Peter (1 Peter 5:13), an experience that equipped him to be the first individual to write a Gospel account, one that now occupies our New Testament canon. And, remarkably, even Paul changed his mind about Mark. At the end of his life, when all others had abandoned him, Paul outlines his needs and gospel priorities to Timothy, one of which was: ‘Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.’[3] The grace and space that Barnabas gave Mark in allowing him to make mistakes in Christian ministry – to grow through those mistakes rather than in spite of them – proved fundamental to the progress of Christianity, progress of which we, even today, are beneficiaries. All of us need those Barnabas figures in our lives, and especially in our evangelism lives; those people who reflect God’s patience with us in allowing us to grow, all the while completely committed to our realising our full potential. Who might these people be in your life?

Finally, remember that many of the most significant things in life inherently often involve risk and, therefore, the potential for negative experiences. That is not to say, however, that avoiding them is the right course of action, nor that in doing so we will not detrimentally impact us in other unanticipated ways. C.S. Lewis once highlighted this danger in a discussion on the risks inherent to love. As anyone who has ever truly loved will know, loving another person is an innately vulnerable thing to do. Many a person who has offered their heart to another only to, at some point, experience the trauma of having it rejected can understandably become significantly more hesitant about allowing themselves to be put in such a position again. Indeed, should we decide that the only guaranteed way to avoid such painful experiences in the future is to never allow oneself to truly love again. As that lesser-known sage Tina Turner once sang: ‘What’s love got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?’

Lewis warns us against the dangers of these myopic approaches to self-protection:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

Sharing Jesus with someone – which is, after all, an act incredible of love in itself – is equally vulnerable. Whatever our experience or apparent levels of success might be been previously, there is simply no guarantee that our next evangelistic opportunity won’t end in rejection, embarrassment or (sometimes worse!) indifference, no matter how proficient a communicator or faithful to the Gospel we might have been. Granted, we may safely avoid these particular negative experiences if we choose to retreat from any meaningful opportunities to share our faith. Yet, as Lewis warns, doing so will not leave us unchanged, but may, in fact, eventually render us both ignorant of, and impervious to, the needs of lost people, as well as impotent to do anything about those needs by directing those people to Jesus. That, by any standard of Christianity, would surely be a far greater tragedy.

So whatever previous experiences of evangelism, let us today, like Peter when he had toiled all night and caught absolutely nothing (Luke 5), be prepared to get back out there and cast the net again simply because our Lord asks us to. For, ultimately, our ethical basis and mandate for doing evangelism is not determined by how successful we can expect to be, nor by any risk-benefit analysis, nor by any guarantee that we won’t experience anything negative, but simply by the fact that our Lord has told us to do so. Even if our evangelism to date has felt very much like having toiled all night and caught nothing, who is to say that our being willing to go back out and cast the net one more time at our Lord’s command, might not on this occasion produce some form of miraculous catch?

[1] Terry Pratchett, Shaking Hands with Death (London: Corgi Books, 2015).

[2] 1 Corinthians 4:2-5, ESV.

[3] 2 Timothy 4:11, ESV.

Andy at The Redeemed Christian Church of God

by Editor

I had the privilege of speaking at the RCCG (Redeemed Christian Church of God) in Edinburgh, several weeks ago. The RCCG has origins in Africa and is one of many churches with roots outside the UK which have sprung up here in recent years and experienced quite remarkable growth. Churches which have been here for much longer, and ministries like Solas – have not been good at getting connected to some of these newer churches. Apologetics has had a bit of reputation for sometimes being rather exclusively ‘white’, so it was amazing to be invited to minister within the RCCG network and to speak to their men’s group which meets on a Saturday afternoon.

They gave me the topic, “The Cost of Discipleship”. I looked specifically at the way that Christians sometimes run away from evangelism because we have been afraid of the cost. Evangelism can cost you your reputation, can cost life being easy, simple and straightforward whereas keeping our heads down at work is much easier than standing up for the gospel –  which can be tough.

The biblical basis of what I said was Matthew 16: 24-27

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

Then I told them some stories of Christians who have experienced persecution. Because of their faith in Christ. I also referred them to our recent webinar with Eddie Lyle and Ron Boyd-MacMillan from Open Doors and linked them to the challenge that those persecuted believers bring to those of us in the West where perhaps following Jesus has been a bit too comfortable.

Importantly of course, when Jesus calls us to take up our cross, he isn’t calling us to do something that he hasn’t first done himself. He carried his cross and gave everything for us, which gives him the right to ask us to do the same. It was on that basis that I encouraged the men to step out in boldness in their workplaces , universities. We don’t need Christians who are going to do anything stupid, but we do need to be bold in talking about our faith and clearly identifying as followers of Christ.

We then had a brilliant and lively time of Q&A, which was terrific. Working with the RCCG was a new partnership for us at Solas, and one I appreciated immensely. I hope we can work together again in the future.

Editor’s note: Dr Viani Djeundje Biatat, the event organiser said, “Our men’s meeting with Andy went very well. The feedback received from the attendees was extremely positive. In particular, the attendees enjoyed Andy’s approach: Talk followed by discussion. It was such a pleasure; we will not hesitate to invite Andy again in the future.

PEP Talk Podcast With Richard Gibb

by Solas

During the periods of restrictions we’ve had during the pandemic, some churches have become very creative with their outreach activities. Today Andy speaks with the pastor of a small church plant about their “drive-in church” and Christmas carols on the back of a tractor and trailer. Full of ideas and enthusiasm, it’s great to hear how a small church is having a big impact.

With Richard Gibb – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Richard Gibb is on the leadership and preaching team at Loch Leven Church in Kinross. He is married to Alison and works as a Director for a management consultancy firm. Richard, who helps lead activities within the new church, studied Theology at Wheaton College near Chicago and at the University of St Andrews. He swims each day and had a mid-life crisis a couple of years ago when he took up judo!

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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THE NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE GAP 1

by Editor

In our house growing up it was a weekend ritual to watch “The Waltons” – an American drama with a family of three generations living under one roof during the 1920s and 30s.  One of the ensemble characters was the Reverend Matthew Fordwick.  Fresh out of Bible College, he made quite an impression on the quiet little village with his hell fire and brimstone sermons, screamed at the top of the voice: “REPENT!”  However, it wasn’t a good impression – his preaching scared the children and hardened the religiously apathetic father, John Walton.  Only after a public moral failure and being granted a second chance by the village did his character mellow and his preaching begin to reflect more of God’s grace.

Sadly, not only have Christians had bad experiences doing evangelism; but non-Christians have had bad experiences of Christian evangelists.  Many of us will have had friends or family members tell us upon discovering we are a Christian: “Oh I hope you’re not like… [fill the gap]”.  Such experiences can cool our enthusiasm for speaking about our faith in Christ – because we can assume the person is closed to considering the gospel, or because we are afraid of being lumped in the same category as the Westboro Baptist Church.

But what if I told you there is a way to talk about Jesus without being offensive?

Although the gospel is an offensive message, we ought not to be offensive as its messengers.  I think that the media mogul Marshall McLuhan is right when he observes that the ‘medium’ matters as well as the ‘message’.  The apostle Peter agrees.  In his famous passage exhorting Christians to be prepared for gospel conversations he adds: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (v.15b-16).

Someone who has helped me bridge the negative experience gap is the secular psychologist Jonathan Haidt.  He makes the case that human beings are more than brains on a stick.  Instead we are powerfully directed and influenced by our hearts (emotions and desires) and not just our heads (reason and logic).  He writes: “We are emotional actors! We are highly intuitive beings who act first, and justify later. Our beliefs, convictions, and values are far less “rational” than we imagine”.  That’s why, no matter how much of an expert you are in health matters, the allure of the box of doughnuts is so difficult to resist.

Central to all of Haidt’s work is the image of the Elephant with a Rider perched on its back.  If you imagine: our emotions/desires/intuitions are like the elephant, while our intellectual reasoning is like the rider perched on top.  While the rider has a certain control over the elephant’s course and direction, if the elephant decides to do its own thing (responding to something it sees or smells or hears nearby) then there is very little the rider can do about it.  The elephant is much larger and stronger than the rider perched on its back.

The subtitle of Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind” reveals one of the questions that animates his work: “Why good people are divided by politics and religion”.  He is distressed by the growing polarisation and decline of civility in western societies – where people regard those who disagree with them as dangerous.  Haidt argues that these divides in politics will not be bridged by facts and figures alone.  Rather he traces this partisanship down to the breakdown of community and relationships with people who see the world differently to us (and warns that our social media echo chambers have only escalated this problem at an exponential rate).

So Haidt suggests that if you want to get people to consider your point of view and perhaps changing their own mind, then you need to do more than talk to their Rider with facts and arguments, you also need to appeal to their Elephant.  How?  Well Haidt in the 21st century makes this suggestion that I believe runs parallel to what Peter wrote in the 1st century:

“The elephant can be steered by the presence of other friendly elephants: Do you want to influence the people who disagree with you? You have to talk to their elephants. The main way we change our minds on moral, political or religious issues is by interacting with other people. We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs—others must do us that favour. We are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. But the interactions must be civil. When discussions are hostile, the elephant leans away and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, and trust, the elephant leans in and the rider tries to find truth in the other person’s arguments. The elephant may not usually change in response to objections from its own rider, but it may be steered by the mere presence of other friendly elephants”

This reflects Haidt’s own testimony.  Although he was a secularist he experienced a change of mind about the value of the Christian faith after his experience of welcoming church communities during his field research.  As he has reflected elsewhere: “When your heart is open, then your mind is open”.  As the old saying goes: people want to know that you care before they care about what you know.

So what does any of this have to do with evangelism and apologetics?  Well one of the ways in which apologetics goes wrong is when you start thinking that your job is to WIN ARGUMENTS with people rather than to WIN PEOPLE for Christ.

Haidt’s image of the elephant and its rider reminds us the significance of leading with compassion and concern for people, before seeking to share the reasons for our hope in the gospel – so they have open hearts and open minds to consider what we have to share about Christ.

It might be that as we grow in relationships with people that we discover that there are significant hurts and bad experiences of abusive churches or hypocritical Christians in their past.  It may even be that we discover that there are things that we have done or ways in which we have been perceived by colleagues, friends or family as offensive or insensitive.  In those cases we may need to apologise and ask for forgiveness – confessing that all Christians are sinners in need of the pardoning grace of Jesus, acknowledging that churches are hospitals for fellow sick people (rather than museums for saints) in need of the Great Physician, embracing that we are merely beggars telling other beggars where to find bread.  For one of my friends, whose father was converted late in life, it was only when he realised the extent to which his unbelieving father had felt judged by his believing son and apologised, that the door was reopened to look into the gospel.  So let’s ask for God’s help to build bridges across the negative experience gap to connect with people and tear down barriers of offence that we have unwittingly erected ourselves.

The European Leadership Forum (ELF)

by Editor

Earlier in the year I had the opportunity to speak at the European Leadership Forum (ELF). That is a conference which brings Christians from right across Europe together to teach, equip and train them in everything from evangelism to apologetics to theology to preaching and much more! It is an amazing conference!

Because of the ongoing Covid-related restrictions on international travel, the conference was online this time. In some ways that actually increased the richness of the event as it meant they had people from other continents joining them for the first time.

I spoke at three ELF sessions this time.

They asked me to speak firstly on ‘short and sharable messages on digital media’. Friends of Solas will know that we have our Short Answers videos that have been viewed somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million times (it’s hard to track the numbers!). ELF asked me to think through what we do when we communicate through short answers and how can we teach that to others. So we talked about the rationale behind Short Answers, that is creating video pieces which are short, succinct, accessible, free of Christian jargon. We talked about the content of Short Answers and the way in which they take people’s questions and objections and respond to them; then how hard we have worked to get people to share them. After all, it’s one thing to create a good resource, it’s quite another to get it seen! Another critical part of the Short Answers series is that they are free to view. It’s really important not to hold back gospel resources but to get them out there. So it was great to share so much of what we have learnt through Short Answers and we pray that as a result others will be stimulated to be creative in digital space in different contexts across Europe.

Here’s an example of a Short Answers video.

My second session was entitled, “5 steps for answering any really tough question”. In that session I really wanted to stress that rather than trying to learn complex, detailed answers to every tough question there are five steps that we can work through whenever a tough question arises. It begins with the importance of really listening to, and connecting with the questioner. It continues with giving the questioner cause to think about or even question their own worldview. So for example if someone says, “how can you believe in a good God when there is evil in the world?” then its worth getting them to think about atheism. Can you meaningfully use words like “good” and “evil” if we live in an atheistic universe? The next step is to think about a biblical worldview and how the Bible sheds light upon the question and then critically how we connect that to Jesus. we need to show people difference that the gospel makes to the question being posed. Then lastly we looked at the importance of connecting people to good resources.

My third session at ELF was about “Joined-Up Evangelism” which was about helping people to connect their deepest longings to the gospel. We live in a world in which so many people are just apathetic about God and faith – but a lot of Christian apologetics has focussed on how to answer hostile atheists and their objections. But what if your friends don’t have objections, but are just apathetic and disinterested. So in this session, I looked at the way that those deep longings that our friends have for things like justice, beauty, meaning, truth, identity, significance and value (the list goes on and on!), only make sense and join up in a coherent when seen through the Christian faith. We looked at that with the help of the great Christian thinker from a few centuries ago, Blaise Pascal, who said, “Talk about the gospel in such a way that good people wish it were true – and then show them that it is.” Sometimes we leap to the ‘show them that it is’ stage, but people aren’t interested in engaging with evidence for the resurrection of Jesus yet. What they want to know is what difference Christianity will make. So in that talk I showed that Christianity makes a massive difference to all the things we humans are wired to care about.

Have a look at the European Leadership Forum website, because many of the talks given there by me and loads of others are available there. We look forward to working with the ELF more in the years to come.

The Terrible Consequences of Atheism

by Solas

Why does atheism have such terrible consequences? With the help of several famous atheist thinkers, Andy Bannister explores the implications of atheism for human value and dignity, freedom, and for meaning itself. If all the things that you care most about actually only make sense if Christianity is true, maybe it’s time to give Jesus a closer look.

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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 “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Frontlines / Christians at Work : The Coffee Shop Owner

by Editor

For this edition of Frontlines, Gavin Matthews spoke to the owner of “Pots of Coffee”, Mark Davis.

Solas: Hi Mark, thankyou for speaking to us for Frontlines. Tell us a little about your job..

MD: Well, we have a coffee shop, with a gifts and gardening shop which we have been running for 23 years. The gardening shop came first and lots of people said to us, “wouldn’t it be great if you had a wee coffee shop in here too!” We prayed a lot about it, because it was a big investment for a family business and all kinds of circumstances came together to make it possible. One of those was that we would need an experienced coffee shop manager, then a good friend at church called Stephen told us he was selling his coffee shop for family reasons, but was available. The amount we could afford to pay him, was exactly the amount he needed to keep his family. So everything fell into place. We had been praying, Stephen and his wife had been praying and it was lovely to see the way God dovetailed the two situations. We didn’t set out with aim of running a coffee shop, but we’ve been lead in this direction and have seen how God has massively blessed us in it and our community through it. We started with 35 seats but the coffee shop has grown and grown and is now 120 seats as the need for social space is so great.

It’s a small business with 13 staff so everybody has to be a ‘jack of all trades’! My wife, Rosemary is an accountant but she also does the cooking. I am mainly front of house, although I do a bit of cooking as well. In truth, my wife Rosemary is the real engine room of the business, she works very hard – and we do work very long days; 12-16 hr days are normal for us.

Solas: What’s the best part of your job?

MD: Without any doubt the best thing is people and conversation! I’m a Biochemist by training but if there was ever anyone totally unsuited to being a biochemist it was me! I am really just a people-person. In hindsight I can see how God shut several doors to me, in order to move me in the right direction. We all want to know what God wants us to do with our lives, and I think that God has made me and wired me for people and so this role that he has placed me in has been such a blessing. I love seeing people coming in through the door, hospitality is a very Christ-like thing, and so I love being in the hospitality ‘industry’. I love welcoming people in – and allowing them to open up about whatever is going on in their lives. Obviously all that is within the context of having to do a day’s work too!

Solas: What are some of the challenges that you face at work – and how does your faith in Christ help you to navigate those?

MD: One of things about entrepreneurs is that we are never satisfied. We set out targets for productivity, income, and social-things and then when those targets are met, we set news ones. We never rest on our laurels, because our attitude is ‘if you’re not moving forward you’re not moving at all’. Now that is hard to reconcile with what Paul writes in the Bible, “for I have learned to be content in all circumstances”. We have a very successful business, with 400+ people a day through our coffee shop. So the challenge is to learn contentment! Lockdown obviously helped with that a bit – because not every change I wanted to make was possible, and I had to learn to rest in the situation we were in! So that’s a challenge for me because I’m a wee bit hyper! Rosemary and I have two children, but the business has felt like a third child at times and it’s been hard to make sure that priorities have been right around those three.

Not opening the shop on Sundays has been absolutely vital for this too. There is a huge pressure to do so as Sundays would be the busiest day of the week for us if we opened. A lot of our Christian customers respect the fact that we don’t open on a Sunday, and support us. And that’s good because there is a temptation to compromise our values and pursue the most profit. Instead, the coffee shop gets used for Alpha courses and church youth groups then.

Solas: Does being a Christian make a difference to the way you approach work?

MD: Colossians 3:23 is our motto – which we wear on our uniforms and is on the wall in the shop. It says, “In all things, whatsoever you do, do it as if for The Lord and not for man.” So when we recruit we make that clear to all of our staff that that is how we try to live our lives. So customer service is massive for us. If The Lord walked in the door, how would we treat him? That’s how we aim to treat all people who come in, regardless of how much they might spend, they all deserve the very best treatment. For some people the only refuge they have in a day is the time they spend here in this coffee shop. We have all the big coffee shop chains locally – but we want our customers to have a very different experience than that. Something different, and more personal, and we want people to ask why it is different and what drives us.

Solas: Do people you work with know that you are a Christian? How do they react to that?

MD: Yes, they do and so do the customers. Along with the Bible reference on our uniforms, we have posters on the walls with quotes on them. Many of them are secular quotes, but there are some Bible verses amongst them too. Then we play secular and Christian music in the shop – and all these things are a talking point for people. We talk openly about our faith and reactions have been by in large – fantastic! There are loads of coffee shops in our town so people have plenty of choice and if they don’t like our coffee, our Christian music or our cakes or our ethos, there are plenty of other places to choose from! In twenty-three years we have had four complaints about our faith. A member of the gay community went on a vitriolic rant on social media because they disagreed with a Bible verse on our wall. Then someone wrote a review which complained that although the food was lovely ‘we had to sit under a Bible verse looking down upon us’. Then one lady complained that the people at the table next to her were discussing the Bible – and that I should stop them! Two young lads had come in and were doing a Bible-study, so I said to her that I had no control over what customers talk about, be it the weather, the football or their faith. She said, “Well, I’ll never be back here again”. Then someone complained about Christian music – but really it’s my shop, and my choice on the sound-system!!

The staff like the Christian ethos. It’s not threatening, everything we do is very ‘soft-touch’. In fact we know that a lot of people who are not even churchgoers apply for work here because they like the ethos and feel it’s safe here for them. Quite a few folks like that ask if we have jobs for their teenage kids, because they want them to work in a place where the employer cares about the staff.

Solas: Have you ever had opportunities to share your faith with people you know through work? What things have helped you to have good conversations about faith? Did you deliberately set about to have these conversations, or did they occur naturally?

DM: All of the above! As I mentioned we’re often able to use the coffee shop for church youth events and Alpha courses on Sundays when it’s closed. So we have this wonderful space available in the town centre, which we can use in a non-profit way on a Sunday to serve – so that I suppose is a deliberate and planned way of sharing the gospel here.

But spontaneous conversations are huge and they occur everyday and usually start with a sincere, “How are you today?” We celebrate birthdays, we commiserate losses – all of life. One day I looked down the shop and could see eight tables and there was someone on every one of those tables who was going through a tragedy. A divorce on the first table, a bereavement on the second, a motor-neurone disease diagnosis, someone who had lost a child on the next and so on. I’d spent time talking to all of those people, and a member of my staff said to me, “How do you cope with speaking to all those people?” And I said, “That’s part of what we do here, and I have the privilege of sharing what God means to me – into all of those people’s lives.” She said, “What do mean by that?!” I said that each of us meets tragedy and joy in the journey of life, and that God has helped me through the joys and tragedies I have experienced. The next day she came into work and said, “What you said about God yesterday – how would that relate to me?” Which meant we could continue the conversation.

One customer comes in every day. He’s been bereaved, and he chats to me for half an hour every morning, about his late wife and about life. He wants to talk about things such as what happens when we die and if there is a better place. I said that I believe there are wonderful promises about the future when we trust The Lord. So he asked what it meant to trust The Lord and it was a lovely opportunity to share that with him. But I never, ever, force conversations – it has to be natural. And of course when you have regular customers for many years, they also see you live your life, and trust you as a person too; so relationship usually comes first.

Solas: How do people react when you talk about your faith in Jesus? Interested? Angry? Apathetic? Do they ever raise objections…. What were they and how did you respond?

MD: Some people want to know more, others aren’t so happy. I was chatting to an older Christian gentleman who was had lost his daughter and was really suffering. In the conversation we talked about our great hope and joy being that when we pass from this life we enter something which is perfect, complete and the way it was meant to be. As I walked away from the table, a man on the next table said to me, “you know that’s a load of claptrap don’t you – I suppose you believe in creation too?” I told him that I do believe that God made the universe. I was a biochemist – so we were able to have really good chat about abiogenesis – and the origins of life. I gently challenged his claim that the big bang came out of nothing, created everything; and that that was a more intellectually sustainable argument than my argument that God had created everything. It was a really busy day in the coffee shop and I only had about three or four minutes to chat, but he came back another day to talk more.

Solas: Why do you want to talk to colleagues and friends about Jesus?

MD: Really because of my own experiences, and my experience of being a dad – of knowing the difference that God has made in my life and in my kids lives too. There is also a sense that ‘there but by the grace of God go I’. I could be one of the folks that don’t know Christ yet. It has been a huge privilege that He opened my eyes and I now have the promise of an eternal future in him – and so sharing that is a natural thing. If you were a doctor and had a cure, why would you not want everyone to have it too? I’ve been granted the privilege of having a forum in which to do that. Who else gets the privilege of seeing maybe 400 people a day? I get to share in their lives, and their journey. People need hope today more than ever and there is no greater hope than in Christ.

Solas: What advice would you give a young Christian entering your field of work who wants to be faithful to Christ there?

MD: The verse that we hold so dear, Colossians 3:23 has stuck with me through all we have done over the years, and is the key to hospitality. If you can treat people as you would wish to be treated yourself; and if you can do everything as if you were doing it for The Lord then everything else follows. You have to have a passion for people, but if you are doing everything for the Lord, then even on days when it all goes pear-shaped, you won’t feel defeated – but you will try to improve. Finally remember that you are not in this alone. You may have many members of staff but you also have someone more important present. He’s your counsellor, your helper and your sustainer and the person who provides the opportunities for you to have an opening into peoples’ lives.

Solas: Thankyou so much for speaking to us Mark!

Solas and Dundee APC

by Editor

Two of the things that drive us at Solas are our commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ; and our partnerships with local churches. So we were delighted to accept the invitation from our friends at Dundee’s Associated Presbyterian Church (APC) to spend a morning with them.

Although lockdown restrictions were easing when we joined them at Dens Road Church, numbers were still limited, face masks were in place, and several older, more vulnerable members of the church tuned-in online for the morning.

Andy Bannister kicked the morning off with an informal seminar, looking at some of the ways we can initiate good gospel-conversations, especially in the context of the secular workplace. Many Christians are recognising their workplace as a mission-field to which they are called (for more on this click here). Andy looked at various biblical principles for helpful conversation and showed how they could be applied to some contemporary examples. As we so often stress at Solas, listening to people is such an important step in evangelism, as is asking good questions which can disarm hostile atheists, and interest the apathetic, if used well.

The morning worship service was conducted by Philip the church’s pastor who introduced Psalms, and led Bible readings and prayers before Gavin from Solas looked at 1 Peter 3:15. While apologists focus on “always be prepared to give an answer for the hope you have” – on Sunday we set that in the context of 1 Peter 3, where the apostle encourages the church to also exhibit the beauty of the gospel in their speech and behaviour. The emphasis there is that we are to commend the gospel to a hostile culture in speech, character, integrity and generosity, because we recognise the Lordship of Christ and want the world to see His glory!

The APC is a really friendly and welcoming church, which we enjoyed visiting. The local church is central to God’s mission in the world – and it is essential that every parachurch organisation such as Solas constantly remembers that. Our aim is to be a helpful gospel-proclaiming resource, for the church to use. It was great to chat to the folks in the church at the end of our time together, and to hear how they are active in God’s work. Andy had one memorable conversation with a student who had recently come to faith and been baptised and who has many non-Christian friends who have many questions for her about her new faith. He was able to give her a copy of his new book!

Our prayer is that mornings like this will be an encouragement to God’s people to step forward in evangelism and outreach. If you would like us to serve your congregation in this way, please do get in touch with us.

PEP Talk Podcast With Dominic Muir

by Solas

Street Evangelism. A phrase conjuring up images of crazy preachers with placards reading “The End is Nigh”, one that strikes fear in many Christians. Is it a thing of the past, with no place in our multicultural 21st century cities? Or is it still a means that God can use, even one He still calls us to?

With Dom Muir – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Dominic Muir is an apostolic pioneer, evangelist, teacher, author (‘God Hunger: Meditations from a Life of Longing’ and ‘Firebrand: Devotions from a Life of Burning’) and revivalist with a passion for street ministry and the priesthood of all believers. Dominic runs Jesus Fields (www.jesusfields.com), a bi-annual gathering of radical disciples, The Wesley Academy, an online school of evangelism, is co-founder (with his wife) of I Am So Many Things (www.iamsomanythings.com), a business and ministry which celebrates true identity through courses, books and beautiful products and is also founder of ‘David’s Tent’, a three day annual Christian worship event in the UK (www.davidstent.net). Dominic is married to Thea and they have two 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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University of Oslo: “Why I Am Not Convinced by the Qur’an”

by Andy Bannister

Andy really enjoyed lecturing at the University of Oslo on 25 October 2021. Below, you can find links to Andy’s slides and some other resources.

Download copies of Andy’s slides here.

You can also read a short version of Andy’s academic work on the composition of the Qur’an here.

And a longer version of the lecture that Andy gave today is here.

Have a read (or a listen) to a free sample chapter of Andy’s new book, Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

Other helpful books to read around today’s themes are:

 

The Hypocrisy Gap

by Editor

There is a popular Christian meme that does the rounds on social media every so often. It reminds us that amongst the Biblical heroes involved in God’s work are some pretty dodgy characters. It usually begins “Noah was a drunk, Jonah ran away, Sarah laughed at God, Thomas doubted (etc etc); and you think that God can’t use you??” It’s a simple point, well made. If God included such a cast of rogues in his word; then why do we think that we can’t be in on his plans because of our sin?

Yet – many of us back off from evangelism out of a sense of unworthiness. Apart from the obvious fact that our deepest spiritual and psychological issues are not fixed by memes (!!), what is going on here?

The first thing to note is that we instinctively know that while that popular meme is undoubtedly true, and nothing but the truth; it’s not quite the whole truth. Anyone who has read the Bible will also know that God also demands radical holiness from us and urges separation from people who claim to be Christians but practice things such as sexual immorality, idolatry, slander, drunkenness, fraud, and greed. Jesus himself taught the necessity of quite extraordinary standards of holiness in conduct, speech and attitudes too.[1] And of course hypocrisy is hardly a great advert for the faith…

Reading these texts we all often experience a profound sense of our own sinfulness before God, and need for forgiveness. It also makes us very, circumspect about claiming to be God’s ambassadors here on earth, and putting ourselves in the position of calling others to be reconciled to God, when we know that there are stubborn lumps of our old nature which continue to reside in us; which are not in line with that message.

If you think Paul’s teaching about church discipline in Corinth is hard; then read Jesus’s battles with the Pharisees and Sadducees – the religious hierarchy of his day! Jesus’s main bone of contention with them was not that they sought to uphold the law (although they did often miss-apply it) but that they were religious hypocrites; who brought the message of God into disrepute by having attitudes and lifestyles that did not embody their teaching. When Jesus called the religious leaders ‘whitewashed tombs’[2] he was utterly scathing in his denunciation of outward shows of religiosity which were not matched by an inwardly sincere spiritual life. Or as my Solas colleague Gareth Black wrote, “your character should never be playing catch-up with your calling”. Religious hypocrisy stinks no less today, where it occurs in the local church or amongst the public scandals of televangelists, than it did in the gospels.

So, should we read the teaching of Jesus and keep our mouths firmly closed in the knowledge that sinners like us can never adequately represent Him? Or should we look at the flawed folks in the Bible God used in His work, take heart and get on with mission regardless? Are we inevitably locked into this conundrum – or is there a way out?

The answer, I think, lies in the gospel of Jesus itself.

The texts in scripture which tell us about the holiness of God and His righteous requirements for our lives are supposed to help us see our sinfulness.  “The law was our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ” is how Paul phrases that in Galatians. It’s God’s perfect, exacting standards of inward and outward holiness which drive us into the arms of Christ where we find forgiveness.

There is a critical step that we all have to take as we receive that grace and forgiveness though. Because in order to receive forgiveness of sin, we must come to God in confession. 1 John 1:8-9 tells us that denial of sin, is a fatal condition; but that confession opens the path to receiving forgiveness from God. Confession is the humbling business of agreeing with God about our sinfulness, and no longer seeking to explain or excuse that which we find within ourselves that falls short of his standards.

Confession is also the essential key to answering the question about how sinful people like us can represent a Holy God by proclaiming His gospel. Imagine, if you will, two people sitting alongside each other in church who have committed the same sin – they’ve embezzled £10,000 from church funds. They are equally guilty of an identical offence before God. However, while the first person thinks she has got away with it, the second has confessed their sin, and sought forgiveness. Obviously although they are both sinful, the latter person has stepped into integrity before God, by confessing her sin; while the former remains in the stench of religious hypocrisy. Confession is the step into integrity.

That’s why the Bible doesn’t just say that we need to confess our sins to God, but also that there is a place for confessing our sins to one another.[3] A Christian student I knew very well had a really difficult conversation with his non-Christian mates in the halls of residence we lived in. He hadn’t really been living in a way that commended the gospel of Jesus to his friends. So he decided to confess. He said to them, “I owe you an apology. I’ve invited you to church and CU stuff, and told you about my faith, but I have completely let you down by the way I’ve behaved in the last couple of weeks. Please don’t dismiss Jesus, because of my mistakes.” His mates stared blankly back in incredulity, as this was not what they were expecting to hear. Yet – he was able to share more of his faith later that term, because he had chosen the path of integrity.

We’re all sinners, who have traded away our ability to speak adequately for Jesus, but confession restores integrity.

This point actually drives us to the very heart of the gospel. Christian author Tim Chester has pointed out that our job is not to present ourselves as flawless adverts for Jesus, because the message that we would present with our lives would be, “I’m good, and Jesus can make you good like me.” And that is categorically not the gospel message (nor is it true!). The message that needs to ring out from us is, “I have been forgiven for all my sins by Jesus and you can be too!”. The famous image which captures this thought is that in evangelism we are not millionaire philanthropists who are feeding the world, but one beggar telling another beggar where we have found bread.

That means that while hypocrisy is a barrier to evangelism, forgiven sins are not. It means that when we share the gospel we do so admitting our mistakes, doubts, sins and shortcomings. The more we take God’s call to holiness seriously, the more some of these flaws seem to matter in fact. It means we can share the grace of God with a humility that is attractive to people who are also flawed; rather than with a self-confidence which will crush those who are aware of their sin; and a hypocrisy which will alienate everyone.

The late Dominic Smart, wrote a wonderful little book about Peter in the New Testament. It details Peter’s spectacular fall into sin and the way in which Christ restored Him. One of Dominic’s astute observations is that Peter’s fall was an essential element in his preparation for future ministry. Bold, garrulous, overly-self-confident Peter had to be broken in order to be more useful. Jesus used Peter’s crushing failure in order to re-forge a close-discipleship based not on Peter’s own determination; but in dependence on Jesus.

For you and I that means that the message of our lives and our lips need to be consistent. That should look like a humble recognition that we need forgiveness that we speak about. And, we should be people who are (certainly far from perfect), but making progress in the Christian life – visibly before others. The acts of the sinful nature should be in retreat, and the fruit of the Spirit growing in us; with the knowledge that confession is the step back into integrity, with every failure.

So, our Christian meme with which we started is right – up to a point. God can and does involve sinners like us in his work. In His grace he has both saved us and prepared good works for us to do. He has called flawed people to transmit His flawless message. Yet – not because those sins, flaws and failures don’t matter or have no consequences; but because that very gospel message we transmit is the medicine for our own condition. So humbly, and with the integrity of confession, we can step forward in evangelism. God uses people like us.

But I leave the last word to Dominic Smart, who wrote this about Jesus’ restoration of Peter:

“We do a pretty good job, with the devil’s help, of writing ourselves off. We kick ourselves when we are down; we’ve learned to do it when we are young. Many of us have picked up from the world, or our parents, or our siblings, or at school that we are sub-standard. So we adopt that position in life. We need to be reminded by the physician of our souls, when we have fallen, that the love which he has placed in us – a love for himself, has not been eradicated by our sin. It is actually true that where sin abounds, grace abounds more.”[4]

Jesus then, when he had restored Peter’s relationship with him, gave him valuable work to do. No less, are flawed people like you and I, invited into partnership in the work of God.

[1] 1 Cor 5:11, Matthew 5:20-48.

[2] Matthew 23:27-8

[3] James 5:16

[4] Dominic Smart, “When We Get It Wrong: Peter, Christ and Our Path Through Failure”, (Authentic, 2002) p89

Exploring Your Questions

by Solas

Your Questions

Thanks for submitting great questions to the live Q&A session with our speakers! Gavin Matthews from our team (you may have met his smiling face at the Solas stand) has compiled some extra resources for you to explore based on all your questions. We hope this is helpful for you to explore some of them further.