A new town, a new church, new opportunities and new friends to be made! Solas had the joy of taking the Confident Christianity conference to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland recently. It was an early start for me, heading westwards from Perth, and it was good to be joined for the day by our old friend and gospel-collaborator Michael Ots!
Helensburgh Baptist Church were our enthusiastic and generous hosts who welcomed us with coffee and baking as we set up the logistics for the conference. They had advertised the event widely and people from a range of churches on the north Clyde coast came to join us. Pastor Neil Allison explained to us that his aim in inviting us was to make sure that evangelism remained top of the church’s priority list, when there are so many other important things vying for our time and attention.
After Neil’s welcome and explanation of the event, Michael Ots kicked off with the first session of the day: How to talk about Jesus without being weird. Michael has had countless conversations with non-believers about Jesus and in this talk he shared with us his wisdom for having fruitful conversations. I took the next section of the programme in which we looked at “The Great Objection” to our faith: “If God, Why Suffering?” We looked at what the Bible says – (and doesn’t tell us) about the problem of pain, the problems with different worldviews and the comfort Christ offers sufferers.
“The Gospel is good news for our cultural moment” was Michael’s next talk. He investigated the so-called Quiet-revival and encouraged Christians to step boldly into the current context in which people are bewildered, but open to considering Jesus. I closed the main sessions with a talk entitled, “5 Steps to Answering Tough Questions” – which is designed to help Christians feel less intimidated by hard questions.
The Q&A had some really great engagement from the folks in Helenburgh, who asked us to work through issues of human sexuality and gospel, the differences between grace and Karma, as well as a range of insightful questions about practial evangelism.
Michael and I thoroughly enjoyed our time in Helensburgh and are looking forward to heading back there in 2026! We say this a lot, but one of Solas’s aims is to take our training and resources and evangelistic speakers to all parts of the country. Jesus famously called the Apostles to take the gospel out in concentric circles: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Helensburgh isn’t the ends of the earth exaclty – but the point is that we are delighted to go out to wherever the churches want to partner with us.
