Exploring a Christian worldview

20 March 2009

At Trinity we benefit greatly from a wide variety of visitors coming to lead seminars, lecture or preach.

Last month four students organised a day conference to engage with issue of worldview and mission in today's culture: 'Living at the Crossroads: Conference on Worldview, Mission and Evangelism in 21st Century Britain'. The event, which used Craig Bartholomew's and Mike Goheen's book Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (SPCK, 2008) as a launching pad, was attended by approximately 50 people from various backgrounds - clergy, academics, local teachers, artists and young people.

Mike Goheen, one of the main speakers, showed how the Gospel is comprehensive in scope and that Christians are called to live in the biblical story. He identified the real challenge of living out the biblical story within a culture that tells its own story of the world and humanity's place within it.

Mark Roques gave a presentation entitled 'Mission, Stories and Subversive Questions'. It was as entertaining as it was thoughtful and challenging. Mark made the case that the secular worldview is hostile to a Christian worldview, and in many cases it prevails even though some of its claims are counter-intuitive among 'average' people. He advocated an approach to evangelism which engages people on the level of worldview through story-telling and subversive questions.

After lunch there were four parallel sessions: 'Worldview and Church Planting' by New Frontiers pastor Simon Walker, 'Worldview and Youth Culture' by Frontier Trust's Dave Wiles, 'Worldview and Sexual Ethics' by Trinity College's Andrew Goddard and 'Story-Telling and Discipleship' by Mark Roques. The day ended with a panel session where the audience could question the speakers on issues that had emerged during the day.

One of the organisers, Trinity research student Jon Swales, says: 'The conference was a good opportunity to explore a vision of an authentic and comprehensive Christian worldview, rooted in the story of Scripture, and the level of engagement was encouraging. It was very gratifying to hear from a local secondary school teacher that he couldn't wait to get out there and start applying the implications of what he was hearing! Equally gratifying was to see people talking, sharing stories and building relationships.'

The lectures from the conference are available at http://www.crossroadsuk.blogspot.com/