Jenny Thomson works for Scripture Union Scotland, and has responsibility for schools work in the East of Scotland for Independent Schools. She also coordinates the Equip meetings for young people in Edinburgh in school-years S3-S6. I met Jenny not long after I arrived in Scotland and HAD just begun working for Solas – and we got chatting and that led to me being invited to go and speak at their Equip night. It was actually the first event I have done with Scripture Union Scotland! I really love their work in schools, holidays, and youth groups so it was great to be able to work them a bit.
It was a really enjoyable night too. They are a fun group, there was a good vibe, and I loved being there There were about 25 folk there, but I am not sure how many of them were leaders! So it was a smaller group, but a good one. I was sharing on the subject, “How to Share Your Faith In Our Secular Culture” and perhaps unsurprisingly I took them to Acts 17 (“Paul at the Areopagus”) and drew some lessons from that.
Equip has a great little band who lead the worship, it was made up of some young Christians with a real desire to lead people in worship – along with some other young folks who are involved in the group but perhaps still exploring matters of faith.
We also did some Q&A, and the young people sent loads of questions in on scraps of paper for me to read out and address. They asked some tough questions too, such as “Did God allow slavery, and if so does that mean it is right?”, and then the age old classic, “If God is all-powerful could he create a boulder so heavy that he couldn’t lift it?” To which I suggested that God can do all things which are logical possibilities, but making square-circles or married-bachelors is nonsensical! There were loads more questions too!
What’s great is that SU are helping the young people to really think, apply their faith and relate it to the schools and colleges they go to where their non-Christian peers are asking these kinds of questions. So, in short – I loved my first evening spent working with SU Scotland!
