Steve Osmond from Solas went down to Glasgow to work with the University and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) Scottish “relay workers.” According to their website, “Relay is UCCF’s mission and discipleship training year for graduates who love CUs. Relay provides graduates with a unique opportunity to work on the frontline of student mission alongside the Christian Unions. Relay is all about helping people love and serve Jesus with their heart, mind and hands whoever they are and wherever he has called them to be!”
With a new intake of relay workers Steve was asked to do a day’s training with them om some foundational apologetics, at another staff member’s house in Glasgow.
Over the course of a day they looked at understanding culture, answering difficult questions, and equipping students for the task of sharing the gospel of Jesus. Steve did some teaching and presenting, but it wasn’t al lone-way-traffic, there was plenty of debate, discussion and interaction”!
On understanding culture and questions of truth, Steve begun with Francis Schaeffer who argued that in much of our culture people understand truth to exist on two levels. Christian truth claims are seen as relating only to the ‘upper storey’ of personal truth which you cling to because it you find some meaning in it. Many people do not understand that the Christian claim to truth is a claim about ultimate reality without any such separation, because the claims of Christ are rooted in reality and are objective claims. Understanding this about our culture helps to explain why we sometimes talk past each other and not to each other when seeking to engage people with the gospel. Steve went on to look at the way in Acts 17 that Paul addressed people with a similar worldview.
Responding helpfully to tough questions is a very important subject which we address regularly at Solas. Steve took the Relay workers through the ‘SHARE’ method that we often use for this. Illustrating each point of the acronym with some worked examples. SHARE works as follows, five steps to make sure are covered when responding to a hard question.
Sympathise: make sure you connect with the person behind the question, ideas can be debated, but questions such as suffering or identity have huge pastoral implications too.
Hidden Assumptions: It’s worth taking the time to probe the understanding of the question the person asking has. If the person asking the suffering question believes in karma, divine vengeance or is an atheist/materialist then these assumptions might need to be identified and gently challenged.
Apply the Bible: by using phrases such as “did you know that Jesus spoke about this issue in the gospel when he told the parable of the….” Or “The Bible has much to say about this…”
Re-tell the gospel through the question. What is it about the gospel that gives you a better story, or better way of understanding or responding to the question, or speaks to the pain.
Equipping, means sharing resources which go further. These might include a Solas Short Answer video for example. On the suffering question Steve looked at Noman Geisler’s “If God Why Evil?” which takes a logical and philosophical look at how to understand suffering and evil and Amy Orr-Ewing’s “Where is God in All the Suffering?” on actually navigating the experience of suffering.
Matthew Morrison from UCCF said:
“It was wonderful to have Steve through in Glasgow to teach the UCCF Relay Workers on apologetics! They found his seminars so helpful and they left feeling better equipped to tell of how Christianity is both reasonable and good!”
