My first contact with Lossiemouth Baptist Church came from Liam Morton, one of their pastors who reached me through the Solas office because was keen to get some more evangelism going in the town. His colleague, Rab Donald had done some work with Solas in his previous church down in Stirling, and obviously took the word about our ministry up to the North East with him.
The event I did with Lossiemouth Baptist was significant for them, I think – because it was the first major outreach event they had done in the town outside the church premises for as long as anyone can remember. It had the feel of a new, exciting project in its early stages of development; but I think it went really well.
In preparing for the evening, I had a brilliant conversation with the pastors about the context in which they are ministering in Lossie, and in response to that I carefully selected a topic; and they did a great job in finding a location. They found a wonderful place called the Stottfield Hotel in the middle of the town which was actually a really good venue for this type of event. The hotel was well used to doing events such as weddings, and had a really good tech set-up in situ which was ideal. They had the guests sat in tables of eight around the room, for the great buffet dinner – which was good, and not too expensive, making the price-per-head feasible.
About 55 people came, which I think was less than the church had hoped for, but as a new venture it was a good start, I thought. Numbers may have been small, but encouragingly there was a spread right across the age ranges, and the church estimated that between a quarter and third of the people who came were not professing Christians, but people who came to find out about the Christian faith.
I spoke on “Where can I find hope for now and for the future?” and that was designed to help people outside the church to explore faith, but also to speak to those who have been perhaps brought up in and around church, but are not committed to Christ, and who perhaps are not sure it’s true. So it was intended to show them what real faith in Christ has to offer. Then we had some opportunities for Q&A after a coffee break.
Most of the questions came from the younger end of the audience (High School and University Students). One question was ‘when I read something in the Bible I disagree with, what should I do?’ – which is a great question. Another one was about given all the different versions of Christianity that are around, what do you actually have to believe in order to be a Christian?; which again was a very perceptive question from someone outside the church.
One of the reason the church held this event was to help launch their Christianity Explored course, and it was really encouraging to see that five people signed up to do that and really explore the Christian faith more deeply. I really enjoyed meeting the folks at Lossie Baptist, and working with them at this event. I really hope that Solas has the opportunity to work with them again as I’d gladly jump on the train and head North again.
