The evening before our major Confident Christianity conference in Riverside Church, Ayr – I was invited to speak at a Friday night youth event. At Solas one of our ambitions is to do an outreach event every time we do a training event for Christians, and Riverside wanted something for their young people. Combining those two aims, made for a very enjoyable Friday evening youth outreach.
The title I was given was “Is Belief in God Just Blind Faith?”, a topic I looked at from various scientific, philosophical, historical, and biblical perspectives. Around fifty teenagers were there, from several churches around the town, because the churches seem to have good relationships with one another in Ayr! Judging by the questions and conversations I had, most of the people who were there, were already Christians, or at least in churches. One or two responses were definitely from young people who were still in the process of checking-out the Christian faith for themselves.
We had a good and very wide-ranging Q&A session with the young people, which lasted about 25 minutes, following my 20-minute talk. It was interesting to see that they focussed in on the ‘science’ ‘part of my talk more than anything else. One young man then asked a very deep and profound question, which was a real challenge – but a joy to respond to. I tried to directly engage his question, but also to weave the gospel into my answer as it’s really the framework which it provides which is a ‘better story’ in these contexts. It was really encouraging to hear from several people on the Sunday how much that young man had appreciated having his question taken seriously and responded to in depth. This is a reminder, that we really must engage with people’s genuine heartfelt questions, and not dismiss them – and that it is vital that we address the mind as well as the heart. We are often told that young people want things ‘dumbed-down’, but it isn’t true. They have serious and important things to say, and big questions which are worthy of thoughtful responses which they invariably appreciate. It certainly mattered a lot to this one young man.
We’d love to come to your church and your town to do some evangelism and some evangelism-training too, like this event in Ayr. We work all over the country – and no church is too small! So please get in touch if you’d like to find out more about what we can offer.
