“The Thrive Conference” is an event based in Scotland, designed to help Christians live out their faith in the workplace. Solas Director, Andy Bannister, spoke at Thrive last year, and was invited back to speak again; but this time inevitably the event was exclusively online.
Andy was involved in an interactive conversation alongside Ros Loaker from Transform Work UK. Their ministry focuses on connecting Christians in the workplace and getting them to pray for and support each other their; while at Solas, out focus is in helping people to share their faith. Dr Tharaka Gunarathne, a Christian psychiatrist and motivational speaker interviewed them around the theme of ‘inclusion’. Inclusion is of course a really significant cultural value, enshrined in countless workplace policies as well as in shared cultural assumptions.
Many Christians feel awkward in that context talking about their faith, not least because Christian faith is in one sense exclusive. Jesus famously said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me”. So there is a potential conflict there between gospel and culture which opened up the whole conversation.
The conversation was wide-ranging and fascinating, exploring the whole way in which while Jesus’ truth claims are exclusive; He and His church are radically inclusive; attracting people from almost every sector of society, background, socio-economic, religious, cultural, linguistic background. The session ended with a discussion on how to extend this welcome to more and more people in workplace by allowing them access to the gospel through all manner of workplace events. All the participants agreed that providing a space for non-Christian folks to ask questions was really important especially at the moment.
The Q&A that followed was incredibly wide-ranging – one of the most expansive Q&A sessions that we’ve ever been involved with at Solas at least!
The whoel seminar is available here:
Or click here to access all the sessions on the Thrive YouTube Channel.
