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“Exhilarating and Exhausting”: Andy Bannister on Six Days of Mission in Plymouth

by Editor

I’ve just got back from doing a mission in Plymouth, and it was an amazing week. I spoke 21 times in 6 days and although it was exhausting, it was incredibly exciting!
We were mostly involved in outreach and had the privilege of speaking in schools, in universities, and evangelistic settings, and also on BBC Radio Devon. On top of that, we also squeezed in some evangelism training. There are many wonderful and encouraging stories from Plymouth: here are just a few of the many highlights.
Right at the start of the week a woman came up to speak to me at one of our training events and said, “I really want to thank you and David Robertson for what you did at Creation Fest”. We’d spoken at this festival with 15,000 people earlier in the summer. She said to me, “Andy, I brought my daughter to your seminar, and during the Q&A session, there was one answer you gave which addressed what was, for her, THE stumbling block. She was almost on the verge of walking away from her faith, she was about to give it all up, but what you shared that afternoon was absolutely what she needed to hear – it just turned her life around. She is now on fire for Christ, she is witnessing to her friends… so I wanted to say a big ‘thank you’.”
I love the way that God often works through the Solas team, and we don’t even know it’s happening. So it’s great to hear those stories!
Another highlight was working in schools. I haven’t done schools work for a while, but we had some really wonderful encounters, including great conversations with RS teachers, who appreciated our work. We led lessons in which we took classes through the historical evidence for the resurrection, which was a huge amount of fun! It was exciting to see pupils beginning to realise that: ‘Wow, there are actually reasons why Christians believe these things!” In another lesson I pretended to be an atheist and fired lots of objections at a local pastor, such as: “Faith is just for those who are weak minded, and can’t think”, or “It’s just a psychological crutch”, or “No-one with any brains believes in it”. The pupils had the job of trying to argue against me and there was a fun moment when, frustrated with my attempt to claim all religious people were idiots, a year 11 kid called out, “Wait a minute! Isaac Newton, he was a Christian, and he wasn’t stupid!” So it was just great to be able to see the kids beginning to engage and respond.  Mark Oliver the local organiser, tells me that that our week there has “opened the doors for further school involvement” for the church.
On the Saturday morning at the end of week, we did a men’s breakfast. Every ticket was sold, every seat filled, and about half the audience were not Christians. The topic they had given me to speak on was “The Problem of Happiness”. I talked about the fact we are encouraged to find meaning and purpose and happiness in our job, family, possessions, bank-balance and so forth: but that those things ultimately let us down. Of course, I was able to then ‘land’ the message on the gospel of Jesus Christ and we had really good conversations afterwards. One gentleman told me that his number-one-goal in life had been to pay his mortgage off. He’d worked very long hours for years, and had finally made the last payment. He said: “I was expecting to feel euphoric, that I’d finally achieved this goal. But in fact, I felt completely empty. I suddenly realised that this thing I’d been aiming for, for the last 15 years of my life, just wasn’t what I thought it would be. Now I need to figure out what it’s about.” So we had a really interesting conversation about Jesus, and meaning and identity. This was something hugely exciting to be part of.
Another highlight at Plymouth was a smaller event in a Costa Coffee. It was informal, with about 25 people sat around tables as I answered questions. Most of the audience were Christians, but there was one lady there who had been quiet for the most of the event. Then, right at the end, she came asked a deeply moving question about suffering. She had been a Christian — had abandoned her faith — and for the next 25 minutes, it became a dialogue between me and her; honest question after honest question. After the event two or three women who she knew, continued the conversation and I even saw them praying for her. I love these ‘divine moments’. For me, the whole purpose of that Costa Coffee event, was about that one series of questions from that one lady. I’ve no idea how that story ended; but to see that she was being cared for and her questions addressed was incredible.
The week ended with an invitation to speak on BBC Radio Devon (listen to it here).  I was given an opportunity to speak about Jesus to around 20,000 people; both directly in a talk – but also to ‘share the gospel through contemporary issues’ in their newspaper review.
All this came about because we were invited by one local church, Plymstock Chapel, to come and work in partnership with them for a week. It’s exactly the sort of thing that Solas is here for, what we live for, and love doing!
So that was the exhilarating and exhausting week in Plymouth, and now I need some sleep! Thanks for your prayers and your support for Solas — they make weeks like this possible. Please do consider supporting our work for as little as £3 a month, or inviting the Solas team to your town or city to do a week like this. If one small church in Plymouth can organise a week like this, your church could too!

“I would wholeheartedly recommend a visit from Solas. People need to know there are answers that have been thought-through to questions of life and faith. Young Christians must know their faith is reliable and rational in today’s sceptical world, and we need people like Solas to give them this confidence.”
Mark Oliver, Plymstock Chapel.

Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Sapiens’ and ‘Homo Deus’ – a depressing view of our Humanity

by Editor

It was at a party that a friend told me that I should read Sapiens. It explains loads of things, he said, describing how Islamic fundamentalism just comes out of the need for a big story, and implying that he thought it explained away my faith, too.
sapiens PB9781784703936
Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli Historian, and its sequel, Homo Deus, have sold well and spread widely.  Published in 2014 and 2016 respectively, at the time of writing they are still at numbers 2 and 6 of Waterstones non-fiction bestsellers chart, and, despite their door-stop size (each just under 500 pages), both have been commended by plenty of famous names, from Barack Obama to Chris Evans. These are popular books which make provocative and significant claims about what it is to be human and how the world works. Christians, take note.

Subtitled ‘A Brief History of Humankind’, Sapiens takes the reader on a breakneck tour of human development, starting at pre-history and ending today.   His writing is as conversational and expansive as his subject, full of opinion and engaging, detailed stories as well as a few facts.  Like many other historians Harari identifies key leaps in progress which changed the course of human history: the movement of early man out of Africa; the discovery of fire; the beginnings of agriculture; the development of written language.  As an atheist he has no sense of why these changes happened.  Big leaps just happen, he seems to say.  Discoveries are made, new skills learned.  But if the why is absent, the how at times is tendentious.

Claiming ‘wheat domesticated us’ as he describes the birth of agriculture, Harari presents an idyllic foraging lifestyle disrupted by the burden of production.  But this gloomy depiction is of a precarious monoculture,  a society depending just on wheat and hard work.   But was that the way farming emerged, was there not a variety of crops and hunting practiced alongside?  And how does he know what life really was like for hunter-gatherers anyway?  Perhaps he is guilty of anthropological romanticism here, as scant archaeological evidence is used to prop up a belief that the primitive is somehow purer than the developed. Worse still is his strange claim that prior to about the fourteenth century AD people didn’t look for knowledge for its own sake – what about Pliny or Archimedes or Galen?  Or again, that prior to the enlightenment writers weren’t interested in feelings – what of Sophocles or Shakespeare or Chaucer?   Whilst cultural shifts in attitude did happen at these times which changed western ways of thinking significantly, Harari is laughably wrong to think in such black and white categories; history is being warped to suit his big ideas.

And what are his big ideas?  Well, they are nothing particularly new (if you have studied humanities or social science in the last thirty years, you’ll think this old hat), but perhaps expressed in a more daring and accessible form than before.  Harari’s confidence in atheistic evolution leads him to conclude that we are no different from any other animal.  No God, no soul, the material is all.  But at the same time, he identifies in us a capacity which sets us apart from other life-forms, saying ‘sapiens could invent socio-political codes that went far beyond the dictates of our DNA and the behaviour patterns of other human and animal species’.  Ironically, he is saying that it is our very capacity to think beyond the material that sets us apart.  The use of language, money, law, nationhood and religion are all examples of these codes, and for Harari they are all convenient fictions.

Although convenient, Harari doesn’t find these myths benign.  They allow humans to progress and cooperate, he says, but they often result in oppression and exploitation.  He picks apart capitalism and Babylonian law, nationalism and individualism (amongst other -isms) deftly, and his observations are at times spot on.  The American declaration of independence which states, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” rests upon a Christian framework which he finds redundant, truthfully acknowledging, “there are no such things as rights in biology” (123).   Humanism is just another myth he suggests, a type of religion, and so he concludes that his beloved liberalism rests on a lie.  Tellingly he admits: ‘There is no way out of the imagined order.  When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious yard of a bigger prison’.   And yet, Harari cannot follow this nihilism through.  He expresses sympathy for human suffering (and even more for animal suffering) and wants to expose untruth, but if meaning is all fabrication, why bother?

Homo Deus, subtitled A Brief History of Tomorrow, repeats many of the ideas in Sapiens and then uses them to predict the future.  Picking up his argument that ‘human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses rather than free will’ (p263 Sapiens) he neatly and controversially summarises it – we are just algorithms, just a set of rules like a computer program.  Take a pill that increases serotonin level and you feel happy, stimulate certain areas of the brain and you will be calm.   Use an internet search engine and very quickly choices will be presented to you through an algorithim, predicting your preferences and subtly steering you to buy, or believe, or vote.
In this way the division in Harari’s world between what is human and what is not begins to look scarily blurred: robotic limbs and brain implants are just the beginning.   As technology develops, so ways of improving the human condition grow – we can be mini-gods, happy all the time, near-immortal and very powerful.  Life looks as though it is about to get a lot better.  But, says Harari we should be scared of what is round the corner.  A tiny elite which controls technology and so enslaves the rest of us?  Or a non-human super brain – the collection of all knowledge, an internet of all things?  Common to both of these, and in an echo of his argument in Sapiens, is the absence of free will.  Both options sound like science-fiction but are more technologically possible than we realise.   Having depicted these dystopias and argued for a reductive, determinist vision of life, Harari’s ending is abrupt and unexpected.  He asks us to decide the questions: What is life? What is valuable?  What is going to happen to society?  Amazingly (and illogically?), he encourages us to opt out of his conclusions, and choose a different future.

Depressing though these books often are, they do present a great opportunity for debate.  Harari asks at the end of Sapiens, speaking of humanity, “is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want” (Sapiens, 466).  When we make ourselves gods, as happened in Eden, framing for ourselves what is truth and goodness, danger ensues.  Christians know that already.   Harari’s rejection of meaning offers no hope for this chaos, but unintentionally points us in the right direction.   We humans desperately need meaning because we are cooperating and communicating persons made in the image of the personal three-in-one God.   We need to know that our values of love and justice and our feelings of pain and compassion are not part of a lifeless algorithm, or a convenient myth, but have significance beyond our brain chemistry.   We need a story, not a fabricated one, but a history, a true story, to make sense of our lives.  And wonderfully the gospel gives us a story that spans past and future as it takes us to the true sapiens, the true homo deus, Jesus Christ.

What is Wrong With the World?

by Solas

Ask somebody “What’s wrong with the world?” and everybody has an opinion. Everybody thinks *something* is wrong with the world—but what if most people have mistaken the symptoms for the diagnosis? The Christian faith has a lot to say about what the real cause of the world’s problems might be—and also a unique take on what the solution would be. Check out the latest episode of Short Answers, where with unusual help from one of the world’s most famous atheist writers, Andy Bannister explores this question.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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Believing, belonging, speaking: how true community commends Christianity

by Editor

It appears that our world is retreating into tribalism, that there is an inexorable shift towards unhelpful varieties of identity politics. Whether it be our carefully selected followers and exemplars on social media, or the increasing polarity between left and right in political and cultural discourse, it seems that ‘them’ and ‘us’ is increasingly the order of the day.
In this article, I want to think out loud about the formation of identity groupings, some of the dynamics which inform them, and where the entity of the local church fits or fails to fit within this mindset. The reflections here are at an early stage of development, and it may well be that I will revisit these themes as my thinking further matures.
For now, here are three observations about identity politics and local ministry:

1. Community versus Coalition: Not all social groupings are the same:

This point is not as obvious as it may appear on a first pass. The varieties of groupings in modern society are not only predicated on what their beliefs are, but on what their basis, their raison d’etre, truly is. German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies famously divided social ties into two main groups, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and these distinctions exercised a huge influence on political and social theory throughout the twentieth century. In rough terms, Gemeinschaft are social ties which are based on community, family, true fraternity, whereas Gesellschaft are more mercantile social bonds which exist for mutual advantage or the advancement of a shared external cause. While Tönnies did not necessarily intend all that his terminology has come to represent, we might helpfully transpose and simplify his thinking in terms of our own contemporary contexts.
Modern society abounds with Gesellschaft, and these are often mistaken as being centres of true fealty and belonging. We might anglicise our terms, and describe these groups as being ‘coalitions’*, gatherings or collectives of people who are engaged with one another and with their world for the sake solely of propagating a cause, or producing capital. Co-operation and co-belligerence are the order of the day in coalitions, and the connections which they forge are by no means organic. In fact, coalitions can (and at times must) straddle other, deeper, associations and dogmas, in the name of achieving a shared end.
By contrast, Gemeinschaft might be transposed to describe true community*. In Christian circles community is an overused and under-defined term which can cover how a church talks about small groups, coffee meet-ups, and conversely the world outside of the church which they are seeking to reach. Churches appoint community workers, do community evangelism, but also talk about living in community with one another. For the purposes of this article ‘community’ is a much deeper and more profound connection than any of the uses outlined above. Community in terms of Gemeinschaft more resembles kin than kirk, family than a shared interest group, true belonging rather than simply identifying; a sense of fraternity which transcends common ideals and works its way into a common life, a common love for one another, and a common concern for the welfare of those within (and outside) its bounds.
Distinguishing these two kinds of grouping is vitally important for the rest of what is shared here, but it is important at a much wider level too. If we understand groupings in our society via the wrong category, or we understand our own life and witness in a misguided way, our ability to share the gospel with confidence will be greatly weakened.

2. Coalition can lead to legalism, community should work from love:

Coalitions are extraordinarily attractive to us as human beings. To ‘sign-up’ or ‘turn-up’ for the sake of a cause which a coalition is championing has a certain frisson, a certain social excitement and currency. Marches, protests, petitions, social media picture frames, wristbands, bumper stickers, rallies and so on give the illusion of cohesion and belonging to those who buy into them, and can provide the husk of community without entailing the hard work of truly relating to one another. At times coalitions are needed, and history proves the power for good that they can be (think of the American civil rights movement for example), but they can also breed nominalism and legalism in frightening measures. My concern here is with the church, so an illustration of how these polar responses look in real life might be helpful.
A coalition mentality which embodies nominalism, means that people can identify with causes and issues which the church propounds without really thinking through what belonging to Christ entails, or what belonging to a church requires. This nominalism might be expressed by identifying with a church because of its stance on pro-life issues, or its understanding of marriage, or its concern for social justice, or any number of other contemporary, hot-button issues. For the nominalist the church provides a handy forum wherein they can have their views voiced by a bigger group, or have the edges of their social beliefs shored up, with little effort or true engagement on their part. In this instance the teaching and reception of the gospel becomes secondary to a perception of having a ‘team’, having a group of people who think and act in similar ways, and believe roughly similar things.
A coalition mentality which embodies legalism, is expressed when people make the cause their gospel, and may even be willing to die for it. The cause du jour becomes the central tenet of the individual’s belief system, and issues of the heart, issues of true agape, of ministry, of speaking the truth in love, of truly committing to other Christians are readily jettisoned. There is nothing biblical nor is there anything edifying about a legalistic coalition mentality, but sadly this can be a socially acceptable way to express one’s ‘faith’. The recitation of the shibboleth, the waving of the flag, the wearing of the team uniform are strictly adhered to with no true thought of the deep soul work which the gospel brings.
Community, on the other hand, is predicated on the true bonds of peace that the believer shares with other believers. Fraternity in the Christian church is not some imagined ideal, or some purpose statement bullet-point, but an objective reality which exists between those who enjoy union with Christ. The entry point to this community is not on the grounds of social issues, or co-belligerence, but solely on the gospel of Christ Jesus alone. Community is formed among Christians when the literally crucial elements of Christ’s incarnation, atonement and resurrection are believed on with sincerity, when these tenets are the indicatives which power all of the other imperatives of how Christians relate to their world and to one another. Under these terms Christian community is not a social construct, but a soteriological consequence of becoming a believer, it is something which is not generated by Christians so much as organically enjoyed by them. This is fellowship, this is the communion of the saints, and it is beautifully captured in the early chapters of Acts where those who had repented of their sin and trusted in Christ were devoted to the marks of being a church, and devoted to the members of that church in deep and sacrificial ways. Community outstrips coalition because it has in it a Spirit-given life principle which energises its expression internally, and vivifies its expression externally in evangelism.

3. Believers must speak to their world through community rather than coalition:

The biblical pattern of the church speaking to its world is through local assemblies of believers who live with one another in love, and speak the truth of the gospel with love to their world. If Christians speak to their neighbours and address the public square via the model of coalition then they will be understood as activists in a cause, rather than participants in Christ, and that is a tragic misunderstanding. There is a place for Christian coalition on important public issues, but this was never designed to be our default way of communicating the core message of our faith. Churches which are composed of believers from the same vicinity, which embody the love of Christ which transcends ethnicity and social class, which set themselves to understand the gospel biblically and dogmatically, and who are determined to express the gospel sacrificially and with integrity, are God’s chosen instrument for winning people to the gospel.
As we listen to much of the uncivil discourse that changes hands on social media, as we watch the gradual disengagement of our contemporaries from face-to-face, person-to-person interaction, the church has a powerful opportunity to show what true gospel community is. This might mean that we need to stand down some of our frankly sinful posturing on social media which we have indulged in with the hope of getting some kudos in a virtual coalition. This will certainly mean starting to view the local church not as a network which you are plugged into, but a body which you belong to and which you are fully invested in. This will mean coming to terms with the depth to which the gospel must go in our hearts, and the true ramifications of our union with Christ and, by extension, other believers.
A coalition is easy for our world to reject as just another special interest group. A true Christian community might be despised by the world, but it cannot be ignored or explained by it, and that can be a powerful first step in people coming to Christ themselves.
*I have borrowed the terms ‘coalition’ and ‘community’ as exclusive terms from Jonathan Sachs’ Radio 4 documentary ‘ Morality in the 21st Century’. The terms were cited by an astute sixth former who participated in the programme.

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Andrew Roycroft is pastor of Millisle Baptist Church in Co. Down. N. Ireland

 

God is a ‘Father to the Fatherless’: Phil’s Story.

by Editor

I’m Phil, and this is my story.
I grew up in the most beautiful Christian family. You know, when I was young, I’d come down in the morning and find both my parents reading their Bibles, that kind of thing. So I was aware of the Christian faith from the very start.
But for me personally, there were various key moments in the development of my own faith. The first of these was when I was six years old, in a big tent somewhere. I remember being told that Jesus loved me, that he had died for me and that I was a naughty boy (I knew I was a naughty boy!!) and that I could go to heaven. And I decided that that was something I wanted to do.
In teenage years you then have to decide whether to keep doing that, keep believing that; and in those years, I kept deciding to follow Jesus.
But the ‘rubber really hit the road’ for me, at University, aged 21. I was studying Law at Sheffield, and during my final year, one Saturday lunchtime, my phone rang; and it was one of my Mum’s friends. And she said words I’ll never forget: she said, “Phil, your Dad has died.” These words just ripped my world apart. But it was a real choice-moment, a faith-defining-moment. I had to decide between angrily rejecting God, for allowing this to happen, or saying “God, I really need you right now”. Our whole family’s story is that we chose the latter and that God’s faithfulness to us has in fact been extraordinary.
I had been a Christian since I was six years old but the closest I have known God was in those first few weeks after Dad died. The words, “When your heart is broken, God is close to you” (Psalm 34:18) really resonate with me…..
My sister was 18 years old and on a gap year, and my brother was just 13; and it was actually my young brother who had found my Dad after he’d died from a heart problem. And that night, my Mum read Psalm 68 “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.”
Knowing the Bible, and having it in your heart is life-giving. From the age of 11, my Dad used to drive me to Birmingham, from where I’d get the bus out to school, and he used to encourage me to learn Bible verses on the way in the car, which was fantastic! Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….” etc etc , all the way through. But for Mum it was that verse in Psalm 68 about God being “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” that was so significant.
But you know, reflecting on what I have been through. I would rather have had the Dad that I had for those 21 years, than some other Dads that I’ve come across, who are still around.
A living faith in Jesus is a precious thing to pass on to your children. Christian faith came into our family through my Grandfather. He served in the war in the Isle of Islay – on the West Coast of Scotland (which has since become a lovely holiday haunt for us). He was led to faith there by the Army Chaplain where he was working in a U-boat tracking station. In those days everyone went to church, but the Army chaplain said to him “If it was illegal to be a Christian –would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Those were the words that lead him to faith . Now my Grandfather was a big personality, a real ‘force of nature’, so when he came home on leave – he lead his whole family to Jesus. So that’s my heritage, rooted deeply in a deep love for the Bible.
Life is full of suffering, suffering is everywhere. I’ve just heard yesterday that someone close to me, has less than four years to live. He’s 36 – and he might be dead by Christmas and he has two young children.
This question of suffering is so important for all of us because comfort has become a ‘god’ for so many of us today. Life contains so many things which are just beautiful, but life’s also really hard. So many people today have a complete lack of resilience. I think that comfort is the real enemy for many people, and when suffering comes it completely floors them, because they have no resilience. Romans 5:3, says “because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” But people who have managed to avoid all suffering and confrontation their whole life, who have managed to be constantly comfortable can fall apart when it suddenly arrives.
The next chapter in my story, is about the extraordinary things which faith in Jesus gives you. Jesus has given me real purpose, meaning and guidance; which are things we don’t talk about enough, but are things we should intentionally discuss. Because if you don’t believe in God, then the best you’ve got is ‘the pursuit of happiness’ and you’re left with some vague sense that the meaning of life might just be to ‘do good and be nice’.
However, for the Christian, there is just so much more than this, which is why I have always been an evangelist. Since the age of six I have wanted to tell people about Jesus. When I was in junior school, I got every boy in my class to come to Boys Brigade. Actually it was every boy in my class except one; and I wept the day that he left because I thought I had missed my opportunity. But my Dad said to me, “you’ve done alright!”, and from then until now – I’ve always just wanted to share my faith.
I finished University a term late, because of Dad dying, and graduated with a law degree, and began looking at jobs and careers. At that point, a director at Youth for Christ, Gav Calver, asked if I would consider joining them. So Gav famously wrecked my promising legal career! If I had followed that route, I would have been a lot richer, but a lot more bored and a lot less fulfilled, I think! I loved working with them. I had an amazing time – on so many weekends away, giving young people fantastic holidays. Over the years we saw thousands of young people give their lives to Jesus – and that was the best bit. We had so many great things, but when you see a kid say yes to Jesus – well, that’s the best bit! So God guides our paths, gives us meaning, purpose, and direction.
But the final part of my story is really that, in the last few years I’ve been having medical tests (because Dad died so young), and it turns out that I have the same heart condition that he did – a dilated aortic root, (if you want the technical term). My brother’s got it too; it’s just one of those inherited conditions. Where having Jesus really makes a difference is this. There are times when I have woken in the night, with my heart going at a rate, and I’ve wondered if I was about to die – and I can’t tell you the difference it makes to know that God is with me in those moments. But also, if my heart does ‘go’, I know where I’m going, and that makes a huge difference too.
The reality is that 14 years on, the Bible’s claim that God is “the father to the fatherless, the defender of widows” has been proved in my family; in our experience. We have been outrageously blessed and protected – and that is the story.

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Phil Knox is the Head of Mission to Young Adults at The Evangelical Alliance: www.eauk.org

What is the Gospel? Part Two

by Solas

What is this “gospel” that Christians get so excited about? In this episode of Short Answers, Andy Bannister shows how to answer that question in just three words. Whether you’re an atheist, skeptic, agnostic, or seeker baffled about the whole thing — or a Christian who’d love to be able to explain “the gospel” more clearly — we think you’ll find this video helpful.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

Watch “What is the Gospel? Part One” here

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

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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.

 

The Advocate: CSW’s Mervyn Thomas

by Editor

For 38 years, Mervyn Thomas has worked with Christian Solidarity Worldwide in the pursuit of justice for the oppressed; especially the persecuted church. Gavin Matthews spoke to him for Solas, about CSW, religious liberty, justice and the UNITED NATIONS.

Solas: What is CSW and what do you do?
Mervyn Thomas: Christian Solidarity Worldwide is a religious freedom organisation, working through advocacy and human rights in the pursuit of justice. So we are an advocacy organisation.
77% of the world’s population live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religious freedom; according to the secular International Society for Human Rights, 80% of those are Christians. We travel to countries, and compile detailed reports of persecution, then we disseminate that information. We tell the church what is happening, so that they can pray and protest, we tell the media what is happening so that they can advise the rest of the world, and we tell the politicians. I sit on the Foreign Secretary’s Human Rights Advisory Group, we’ve got contacts with various government ministers, with the European Parliament and the United Nations, and on Capitol Hill. We are able to raise awareness, bring policy recommendations, here in the EU, the USA and UN.
Solas: Is Religious Liberty the forgotten liberty?
p8_MT talking to Prime Minister & Bishop AngealosMervyn Thomas: Yes, and no. I think more people are aware of the curtailment of religious freedom than 38 years ago when I started this work. Over the last seven years, we’ve had more debates in the British Parliament on persecution, specifically on the persecution of Christians, than ever before. We’ve got an all-party parliamentary group which focuses on freedom of religion, and there’s now a world-wide group of concerned parliamentarians. So, it is the forgotten liberty, but it is less forgotten than it once was.
Solas: How do you prevent CSW getting caught up in other disputes, in which freedom of religion is a factor – and getting ‘played’, by one side or the other? So, say you do some work on Cuba, someone will say, you’re are taking a line from America which is ‘anti-Cuba’. How do you maintain your independence?
 
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Mervyn Thomas: Simply by going to the countries and meeting the people ourselves, so that all of our testimony is authentic. We are not swayed, and maintaining our independence is really a discipline. People say, “I’ve just come back from holiday in Cuba, everything’s fine.” And you’d have to say they have fallen for the line of the Cuban government! Although some churches are functioning, many are not, many leaders are not. Certainly those who speak out about human rights are not. So we are fiercely independent of all governments. We take a little money from the Foreign Office, or the State Department, but I would never want it to be too much, because I would never want to be accused of being a puppet of either. Whenever we take money, it is only for specific projects that we want to do. Sometimes they might suggest we change our proposal to fit their agenda; but unless it’s in keeping with what we want, then we would rather lose the grant, than compromise our project. If they want to help fund what we want to do – fine, but we are fiercely independent. We make up our own minds, and are actually respected for it, not least by those very governments who might want us to tow their line.
Solas: CSW started during the Cold War, supporting Christian believers; but it has grown and changed, with more of a global focus, and now also supporting people of all faiths who are persecuted. How has change come about?
Mervyn Thomas: OK. Big question!
We started supporting Christians, in the old Eastern Bloc, but when communism fell we questioned our role. Supporters wrote to us saying ‘there’s no need for CSW, persecution has gone away’. Nobody then knew much about persecution in Islamic Countries because, while there was plenty of information from organisations like Keston College about Eastern Europe, there was little else available. So we looked beyond and saw what was happening to the church in other countries.
We first started reporting persecution of other faiths in Burma, as we realised that alongside the problems for Kachin and Karen Christians, the Rohingya Muslims of Rakhine State were suffering. Did we ignore them and say, “we’re only here for the persecuted Christians”? I don’t think you can do that. If you had two groups of people in desperate need of food, you wouldn’t say, ‘Christians over here, others over there – we’re only going to feed the Christians’. Of course you can’t do that. So we began to speak up for the Rohingyas. We sort of fell into, speaking up for people of other faiths. Initially I worried about what our supporters would think. I thought, ‘are evangelical Christians going to understand why we are speaking up for others?’ ‘Are they going to think we’re a syncretist organisation, a Liberal inter-faith thing…?’
Solas: And that’s not where CSW has gone?
Mervyn Thomas: No, no, no.. not at all!
IMG_7102Personally I understood the strategic reasons for speaking out for all. If we were to speak to a parliament, or at the UN, and speak about one persecuted group, but not the other, we would really not be authentic. Initially, I understood the strategy, but didn’t really get the theology. About two years ago Joel Edwards, did some of his doctoral research with us. I asked him to take us through the theology of speaking out for other people. Galatians 6:10 was important, which says, “Do good to all, especially to the household of faith”, which we try to do. When Proverbs 31 talks about “speaking out for those who are unable to speak for themselves”, it doesn’t say, speak up for believers, or ‘God’s Covenant People’, it says speak up for the vulnerable. Of course the greatest story about looking out for your neighbour is The Good Samaritan. The guy came to Jesus and said “Who’s my neighbour?” He hoped Jesus would narrowly define ‘neighbour’, so that he could easily tick the box; but Jesus insisted that everyone was his neighbour – and therefore ours too.
So, we speak up for all people, because we are Christians, not despite that! Now, I absolutely believe that Jesus is the only way to God the Father, but I believe that everyone else has got the right to believe what they believe. We are now being much more open about that, because speaking up for people of other faiths is actually missional. People we defend who are not Christians keep asking, “Why would you do that for me?” It’s very unusual. Many faith groups talk about a belief in Freedom of Religion, but don’t actually put it into practice. When we help others, their first reaction is always, “Why would these Christians do that?” We visited an atheist in prison in Indonesia, and he said, “Why would you come and see me?”. We’re able to say, “It’s because we are Christians. We’re speaking out for you because it’s what Jesus told us to do. We’re looking out for you because you are our neighbour.”
Solas: One significant thing in CSW has been gaining official UN recognition which was quite a struggle, ..
Mervyn Thomas: Yes, we started trying to get NGO recognition in 2001. Application goes through the ECOSOC NGO committee. But the ECOSOC committee is made up of a majority of countries who abuse human rights.
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Solas: So they weren’t very pleased to see you…
Mervyn Thomas: No they weren’t!!
The rights-abusing countries kept deferring our application, until eventually we got the Greek government to force a vote, knowing that we would lose. We lost the vote, but could then appeal to the main ECOSOC committee. It’s made up of between 40 and 50 members, who weren’t all abusing human rights, and they upheld our appeal.
Now we’ve got that status it enables us to speak at the human rights council at any time, at the General Assembly, to hold side-events, and to have access to the all the UN mechanisms. We’ve always contributed from the margins, but are able to influence things now.
Solas: Some Christian commentators like Barney Zwartz have been very critical of the UN and said that its’ work is sometimes a cover for horrible human rights abuses. Is that fair?
Mervyn Thomas: The United Nations leaves a lot to be desired but it is the only worldwide mechanism that we’ve got. North Korea is a case in point. First we pressed for a ‘Special Rapporteur’ on human rights in North Korea and we got that. Then, called for a Commission of Enquiry into Crimes Against Humanity there, and we got that. An extremely good report was produced which said that there was no parallel on earth to the abuse of human rights going on in North Korea. It also said there was ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Christians. The UN General Assembly has endorsed that, but no further action has been taken. Kim Jong Un should be in the International Criminal Court, but the UN cannot refer him, until the Security Council agrees, which I doubt it will with China and Russia as permanent members. So the statement you made is probably a bit unfair, but still the UN is all we’ve got to work with on an international level.
Solas: What are the key issues at the moment and where is CSW working?
MT: We have between 25-30 ‘focus countries’, from The Middle East; Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Iran to North Korea, Eritrea, and Laos.
Oppressive governments are realising that the international community doesn’t like freedom of religion cases, involving ‘apostasy’ charges, so people in places like Sudan and Iran are getting charged with ‘national security crimes’ instead. Then we’ve got countries like North Korea and Eritrea where there is total abuse of religious freedom, and utter disregard to what the rest of the world is saying. Most countries do care about their reputation, and have some kind of conscience about being exposed, but Eritrea and North Korea do not.
Some countries place governmental restrictions on religious freedom. These are typically communist countries like China, Cuba, Laos or Vietnam. Then you have countries where societal violence is the problem, in places like Northern Nigeria where the Fulani Militia, and Boko Haram, are attacking Christians and inciting violence. Thirdly there are places which have got a mixture of the two, where there is societal violence, but the government turns a blind eye to it. This happens in Pakistan, and in India.
Obviously, political Islam is a huge threat throughout the world.
IMG_7101Solas: Christians often want to do something, but don’t know where to start….
Mervyn Thomas: The “P’s” !
Number one is Prayer. When you ask what you can do for the persecuted, they always say, “pray”. The second thing is “Protest”, by joining in a campaign. The third thing is “Provide”. But I don’t want people giving a fiver, thinking that that absolves them of their responsibility to pray and act! Another way to provide is by writing letters of encouragement. We publish “Connect & Encourage“, which is an address book of the persecuted. Finally, “Proclaim”; people are often completely ignorant of what is going on. When I speak in churches, people say, “I had no idea”. We need to tell them so that they can Pray, Protest and Provide too.

CSW’s Pray, Protest and Provide information is at: http://www.csw.org.uk/

Redeeming an Unmentionable Word?

by Editor

Rugby League player and writer Dave Hadfield recounts a bizarre series of events during his team’s trip to play ‘Sevens’ in Italy in the 1980s. The end result was that he was transferred between clubs during the interval and played each half for a different team – wearing shirts of both Oulton Rangers and and Hemel Stags in the course of the match. How his erstwhile team-mates treated him on the pitch after his radical switch of loyalties, he does not record! When Wayne Rooney first went back to Everton to play against his former team – but now earning Manchester United-sized wages, it would be fair to describe the Goodison Park atmosphere, as at least er… ‘inhospitable’. Changes of loyalty, purpose and identity always provoke a reaction..

This observation isn’t just limited to the realm of sporting conflict either. People who change sides are routinely hailed as heroes by the new team-mates, while their treachery is denounced by those they have left behind. A politician in my region is still often reminded of her previous party-political affiliation – with some bitterness. The truth is that like Dave Hadfield, she changed identity, purpose and direction of play.Essential to the Christian view of the spiritual life is just such a transition. The problem is that the word which was once routinely used to describe it, has fallen into disrepute. So poisonous has this word become that it is often suggested that we drop it altogether. I have some sympathy with the view that the word might be so toxic that its real meaning is obscured by its use, because people recoil from it without pausing to consider what it might actually mean. However, I am also wary of the fact that sometimes, refusing to use a word that Jesus himself was happy to deploy, might be something akin to being slightly embarrassed of my new team-colours – and that if Jesus used it, so should I! Jesus, of course, warned quite solemnly about people who are “ashamed of me and my words.”[note] Luke 9:26 [/note]The dodgy word, is of course, “repent‘! This dirty word in Christian discourse, is no longer considered to be the standard stuff of the spiritual life; but the domain of swivel-eyed loons yelling at people in shopping centres; usually with Gandalf-length beards, and swivel.jpgalarmist sandwich boards. The oft-appended ‘for the end of the world is nigh’ only goes to enhance the sense of disconnection from reality with which the word has become synonymous. The comic-actress Tamsin Greig performed a hilarious little impromptu routine on the Graham Norton show, in which she talked about her atheist neighbour who dog-sits for her. The story goes that she gives her new dog a mad-name which her neighbour will be required to yell in the park in order to call it back to heel. The name of the new dog? Of course, it was “Repent!”
Is it possible to rehabilitate this most awkward and embarrassing of words, and deploy it for good? Or is it irredeemably lost to us as a useful and helpful description of the transformation we experienced when we became Christians; let alone a credible way of commending this change to those who are yet to experience it? While the cultural and linguistic tide may have turned, in this article I am going to suggest, (perhaps Canute-like), that the word still has much to commend it, and that we are poorer without it.

One of the issues around the word is that it is routinely misunderstood. Monty Python fans will remember the chanting monks who march through The Holy Grail movie, beating themselves over the head with wooden planks. Indeed, during the Great Plagues in England in the Middle Ages, there were flaggellists who did just that. Believing that The Black Death was an outpouring of the wrath of God, they sought to punish themselves, in order to deflect this wrath from the populace. While this might have been well-intentioned, it betrays a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus and the other biblical authors meant when they called people to “repent”. But this is a parody; and a parody of a misunderstanding at that!

If repentance is to be rescued from swivel-eyed loons and flagellists, it is important to try and define what we do mean by it. Perhaps the best way to do that is not through complex semantics, but with reference to Rugby player Dave Hadfield, with who we began. When Dave joined his new team, there were certain things which changed. Firstly his rugby shirt was swapped – he publicly identified with his new team, and left something of his old one behind. There’s something ‘repentance’ like about that, but it isn’t quite the heart of the matter. Implicit with his transfer to his new club, was the understanding that he would completely change his direction of play. That, perhaps, begins to tease open the definition of repentance. There is nothing self-flaggellating flagelabout the transfer. After all, the Bible is insistent that entry to the Christian-faith is entirely founded upon the grace of God and doesn’t require either self-denigrating acts of flagellation, any more than it does self-enhancing acts of charity. In fact, the picture is that passion of Christ, has completed any necessary flaggellation for the whole of humanity; and that as a result, our entry into the Christian life is a free-transfer. Consequently, repentance is received as a gift; not performed as a meritorious task.

Nevertheless, this free-transfer has immediate and life-changing implications, which we should be fully aware of before we commit to it. That is, nothing less than a complete change in our goals, aims and direction of play. This essentially involves heart-felt changes in patterns of behaviour; using the objective criteria of The Bible as the standard. In the West today, these typically involve a change to the way we relate to the big-beasts of the human-psyche, (money, sex and power); how we regard stuff, ourselves and others. Clearly this is a long process of refinement we commit to, not an instant or magic re-wiring of the personality. Christians make no claim to being ‘good-people’, let alone approaching perfection, rather in contrast we would claim to be people who need the forgiveness of God for our faults. Indeed, many of us carry profound and deep regrets for sins committed in the past, and attitudes or desires with which we still wrestle. If our extended sporting-metaphor can be deployed again (without breaking!), we still make errors on the pitch, we sometimes score dreadful own-goals, and give away penalties to the opposition. However, pursuing those things is no longer part of our identity, our purpose, or intention; we are deeply committed to a new direction of play.

If the flaggelists have distorted repentance; we have equally been mislead by the assumption that repentance is essentially a great show of emotion. Now, repentance can be a very emotional thing indeed. It certainly was for me. Some folks reduce repentance to a purely intellectual move; when for many of us it was more of a life-defining change of trajectory, undertaken with great feeling. I was an older teenager, wrestling with sin, doubt, and questions of purpose. What stung me into repentance was the strange realisation that despite my rule-keeping adherence, and desire to please; at a heart level I was not at peace with God. My ‘religious activities’ hadn’t compensated for my sins, changed my sinful desires, produced peace in this life, or the promise of hope for the next. Rather my outward ‘christianity’ was more like a facade than a matter of life-deep substance. Repentance, in contrast, is the life-deep change of direction which springs from the deep work of God in the soul.

Properly understood then, repentance is both required and life-giving.

It is required, because Jesus demands it. In fact the very first words the New Testament records Jesus as preaching are ‘Repent for the Kingdom of God is near” [note] Matthew 4:11 [/note]. Attempts to remove the notion of repentance from Christianity have been common throughout history; and continue to plague the church today. Some have wrongly thought that repentance is an affront to the idea that God saves us by his grace, not our efforts. They have suggested that saying that repentance is necessary, is to put a form of human work in the place where only God’s grace must be. This is fraught with problems, because the Bible makes it abundantly clear that while we are saved entirely by God’s grace; when applied to us, that salvation changes us completely.
The problem of minimising repentance is tragically illustrated in one very high-profile Christian family. One of their members produced a book which sought to diminish the idea of repentance, creating a false-dichotomy between it and God’s grace. The fact that not long after publishing it, he was found to have been committing long-term adultery, is as startling as it is revealing. Now, while there can of course, be free forgiveness and grace for this man; a heartfelt-returning to God and His ways, must be part of both the path home, and the evidence that change has really taken place. Likewise, placing the subjective standards of our own feelings of what might be acceptable to God, with what the Bible reveals as His standards is a damaging dilution of Jesus’ message. The trendy wireword for this is ‘wiring’. The Bible, it is claimed, cannot contradict my ‘wiring’. The problem with this is that it reduces everything to the subjective; and if my ‘wiring’ is itself damaged, then I am measuring everything with a faulty gauge.

The kind of repentance that is a deep-level recalibration of life on a Godward course; a complete change in the direction of play, is essential.
Repentance though, when grasped fully; is life-giving. For me, the issue was that trying to manage my behaviour; without asking God to change my heart, and my soul, and giving me a new identity; was like the deliberately infuriating arcade game, whack-a-mole. As anyone who has ever attempted to play the game will know; wherever you are ready to strike with the mallet, the mole will inevitably pop-up somewhere else! Adding a facade of religious behaviour over my sinfulness neither brought me peace, nor controlled my behaviour very well. In fact whenever I tried to control sin in one area, it infuriatingly popped-up somewhere else. Something deeper was required, which allowed me to be honest about who I was, allowed me to have integrity, and brought me peace with God, and began the process of long-lasting change. Faith in Jesus Christ, was one side of the coin. The other was inviting him into my life, acknowledging his authority over it, and asking Him to begin changing me – from the inside out. This repentance meant heading back out onto the pitch, in new colours, and ready to begin to play for a different team. Repentance is then, the moment at which the love, grace, joy and transforming power of God flows into a person; and the business of making them more like Christ begins. As Chrislikeness is our aim, purpose and destiny, repentance is not some self-flaggelating ritual, nor an optional-extra; it is the departure-lounge for eternal life.
Don’t expect your former team-mates to welcome your change of loyalty though. It can be rough out on the pitch.

What is the Gospel?

by Solas

Short Answers 35: What is the Gospel? What does it mean, and why does it matter? In the first of a two part series, Andy Bannister unpacks the term and explains why its meaning is important.

Watch part 2 here

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Is religion the cause of most wars?

by Solas

Religion is the main cause of wars, isn’t it? Some atheists certainly claim so. “Look at Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, ISIS, 9-11!” they say. In episode 34 of Short Answers, Andy Bannister asks whether it’s true or not and explores an alternative solution that could get to the real heart of the problem.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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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.

 

How can I trust the Bible?

by Solas

When you look at the Bible, are you tempted to think of God’s laws as unreasonable demands or gracious guidance? If we isolate the commands of God from the character of God, do we run the risk of warping our view of what the bible is actually revealing? In episode 33 of Short Answers, Andy Bannister explores the difference that the context of relationship might be making to how we interpret God’s word.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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Support

Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Joined Up Mission

by Solas

Apologetics, evangelism and mission – at their best when intertwined

For those who believe in the power of preaching, or who love the life of the mind, it is common to believe that evangelism consists of first and foremost, a clear verbal or written presentation of the gospel. While I do not disagree with this overall statement, I believe that evangelism works best when connected with action. Jesus is crystal clear in Matthew 5:16 ((“In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”))

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

[note]Compassionate service or good deeds[/note] are essentially a window into the kingdom and a demonstration of the character of God. Within Jesus’ ministry there was a commitment to living and proclaiming the gospel. Too often, we, the church, try to separate the good news of the gospel from the good deeds of the gospel. But why separate out things that Jesus joined together? He, himself, went “around doing good” (Acts 10.38) and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. If anyone could have merely used words to preach the kingdom, it would have been Jesus. He, however, demonstrated the good news through his compassion and kindness as well as the miracles he performed what the kingdom is. Wherever churches seek to only do word-based ministry or only deed-based ministry we have a problem – we create dualism. Our ministry, like Jesus’, should be both word and deed.

We can do this, for example, by caring for the most vulnerable. By doing so, we point to God the Father, the “protector of widows and the fatherless.” ( Psalm 68)  It is through serving in this way that we can publicly demonstrate the love of God. When we live out the Lord’s call it provides opportunities to explain why.

Personally, my wife and I have experienced what this can look like. We have seven children between 19 years old and 11 months of age, three of which were born to us, the others are either adopted or fostered.  Our life and our family choices are conversation openers. When people ask about why we choose to adopt or foster, we will often share about the gospel, especially the idea that we have been adopted into God’s family and how we want to pass on the grace and compassion we have received from God on to others.

1 Peter 3:15 is probably the most famous proof text used to talk about persuasive evangelism, or what is sometimes called “apologetics”, when we are told to always “be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in you.” But the context of the passage is that we must repay evil with blessing, be eager to do good and set apart Christ as our Lord. In other words, following Christ’s example we will live provocative lives of service and blessing towards our non-Christian neighbours and colleagues and that will prompt them to ask us about our hope—and then we will be able to share with them the reasons why we believe what we believe. On a daily basis, I will meet someone who asks me to explain who is in my family. As a Christian I have experienced incredible hospitality and grace from God and all I am doing is passing that on. The opportunity to do so is never far away. Apologetics is part and parcel of evangelism and needs to be rooted in every-day life, not become inaccessible theory.

As people ask us why we do what we do, and as we tell stories of amazing things that Christian families around the UK are doing it helps the charity I founded: “Home for Good” gain a hearing in front of people of influence. The incredible hospitality Christians are providing to vulnerable children opens doors to talk to political leaders, cultural influencers, academics and social workers, people who might otherwise not come to a church-based event. We are to demonstrate social good as Jeremiah says (Jeremiah 29:7) ((“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”)) We need to live radically generous and hospitable lives in front of a watching world. In 1 Peter 2:12 the apostle urges his listeners to “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” We must speak the truth, but we must live it as well. The two are not exclusive, rather they are complementary.

“Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”

I was walking my daughter home from school a while back and she said to me: “I am double adopted, aren’t I, Dad? I have been adopted into the Kandiah family but also into God’s family.” Let’s work so a world that a world in need can see and taste the love of God right here and now and hopefully turn to God and be part of His Kingdom forever.

Krish Kandiah will be leading a seminar at the Keswick Convention 2018 on “Sent to the public square” on Thursday of week three. The Convention runs from 14 July – 3 August 2018. The event is free of charge. For more details go to: www.keswickministries.org.

About Krish

Krish is the founding director of ‘Home For Good’, a young charity seeking to make a real difference in the lives of vulnerable children by finding loving homes for children in the care system. He is an advocate for fostering and adoption. He writes regularly for Christianity Today, Christian Today and has recently been published in the Times of London. Krish is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2 and is demand as a speaker at both national and international conferences he recently spoke to a full house at TEDxOxford on the topic “Can Hospitality Change the World?” 

Krish has published a number of books including:

  • Home for Good
  • God is a Stranger
  • Paradoxology

His latest book, Faitheism unpacks the idea of life-style apologetics and how we, as Christians, can collaborate with society will be released in July 2018 and will be available at the Keswick Convention.

Solas Evangelism Network

by Solas

Launch Day

Here at Solas, we are all about sharing the gospel and empowering you to do the same. To those ends, we recently launched the Solas Evangelism Network with an event in Stirling. We were delighted to hear Steve Clifford, the General Director of Evangelical Alliance UK, speak on lessons for evangelism from John’s Gospel chapter four.
Our goal was to create a space for church leaders in Scotland to come together and think about how we can reach our communities for Christ. To that end, it was encouraging to see people from many different church backgrounds come together and share with one another the challenges they face in their diverse contexts.
Our Director, Andy Bannister, also spoke about the opportunities for evangelism we are finding in our ministry. Have a listen to Andy’s presentation here:

Download the talk
As a ministry, we want to develop a great listening ear concerning the needs and ideas coming from local churches. Solas can then focus its resources on meeting those needs in new and effective ways. This Network is designed for us to listen to you, but also for you to become better equipped with gospel-sharing ideas, tools and passion.
We plan to continue similar events over the coming years and months. If you are based in Scotland, we would invite your church to participate in this Network. Keep an eye on our website for the next meeting, or drop us an email to find out more.

Why did Jesus have to die? | Andy Bannister

by Solas
You’ve heard that Jesus died. The question is why? Why does it matter? Why does it make a difference? Following on from the last episode Andy Bannister explains more in this episode 32 of SHORT/ANSWERS.

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God is love? What does that mean? | Andy Bannister

by Solas
Some people think that all the great faith traditions of the world teach that God is love. We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve heard said or seen written that all religious people believe that God is a god of love. Like many things that you’ll hear commonly or that are shared on social media, it simply isn’t true.  In Episode 31 of Short Answers. Andy Bannister explains what why it only applies to the God of the Bible and why He is unique.

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