I spoke at the Canterbury Christchurch Christian Union mission earlier in the year, where I met Luke Barrs who is the pastor of Canterbury Baptist Church (CBC). The CU hosted a series of ‘international dinners’ that week, and Luke contributed a really good short devotional talk at these events, which is where we got chatting.
Luke then invited me to come and preach at Canterbury Baptist Church, on my next visit down to Kent. So I spoke on ‘Confident Faith’, partly drawing on some of the conversational tools found in my book “How to talk about Jesus without looking like an idiot”.
After the service there was a church lunch and I had thought it was aimed mainly at their many students – but it was a whole-church lunch with people of all ages, older folk, families and, of course, students in search of a free lunch too! After the meal, I was invited to lead a Q&A session, primarily about evangelism with the 70 or so people who stayed.
As it was the start of term, there were an unusual number of students about who are surfing around different congregations looking to see which church they would settle in. Apparently one of the Iranian student leaders suggested bringing a crowd of students to CBC to catch up with me, which was lovely too. And it meant a lively Q&A with lots of younger folk in! There were students from Christ Church CU, Kent University and the University of Creative Arts (USA).
One of the questions asked was, “why should students get involved in things like mission on campus?”, so that was great! There was a warm response to the Have You Ever Wondered? book too. A youngster asked, ‘Why does God give us pets and then let them die?’ and ‘Will all pets be in heaven?’ The final question I was asked was rather poignant, as the issue of sharing the faith in the context of a harrowing story of suffering was raised by a church member. So it was good to be able to think through some of those sensitive issues with them.
The minister at CBC, Luke Barrs, added, “Andy’s encouragement particularly blessed the students, and each of them heard that they could be surprised at the impact they could make to others through sharing their faith. It was highly practical and we will be highlighting his three questions in our church magazine: “What do you mean by that?”, “Why do you think that?” And “Have you ever wondered?” We’re also looking forward to getting Andy back next year for an event for many of our local Baptist and other mission-minded churches to attend.
Andy’s talk at CBC can be watched here:
