I had a wonderful weekend partnering with the CS Lewis Institute in Belfast for several events. It was such a joy and privilege to partner with them as a ministry, and to get to know their city Director, Stuart Horner.
I was invited to speak at their Fellows Programme training on cultural apologetics – which forms part of their wider year-long discipleship programme (although there were several other ‘Inklings events’ throughout the weekend too).
Stuart had very encouraging feedback, posting the following reflections:
Steve Osmond from Solas skilfully set out how we can defend our faith, giving a reason for the hope that we have, but doing that with gentleness and respect. At the afternoon workshop he gave our Fellows, mentors and guests the opportunity to put this learning into practice… On Friday evening we returned to T3 conference centre near Lisburn to hear from Steve on whether Belief in God is just blind faith, turns out it is not! Steve clearly and persuasively set out many of the reasons for belief in God. “
One of the things that really stood out for me, and encouraged me, is the hunger that people had to learn more and then to put what they’ve learned into practice, not just keeping it as knowledge but giving it legs. I was even more encouraged by the number of people asking what next steps they could take to equip their churches to defend and commend the faith better, and particularly how to equip young Christians well, and how they personally could keep growing in persuasive evangelism using the tools of good apologetics. Given the challenges of secular culture, sharing our faith can sometimes feel very daunting. But again and again I’ve seen that apprehension lifted when people learn good, simple conversational tools, and also come to see the reasonableness of Christianity – these things not only help to build our own faith, but can be a great catalyst to motivate us to share the hope that we have in the Gospel.
It was good to continue Solas’s partnership with the CSLI in Belfast, building on work last year, which will be continuing soon when both Andy and Gavin will be speaking at CSLI(B) events! Here’s a little gallery of photos from the trip!
