Thinking Matters because Stupid Hurts

We finally have a new series in place for Thinking Matters Tauranga – this one is called “Raising Kids with a Faith that Lasts” and is a 6 week series from Focus on the Family.  The format is a 30 minute DVD screening, followed by small group discussions. Download this PDF flyer for more details.

What: Raising Kids with a Faith that Lasts

When: Tuesday nights from 8th March through to 12th April 2011 (6 weeks)

Time: 7:30pm to 9:00pm

Where: Bethlehem Community Church, 183 Moffat Rd, Bethlehem, Tauranga

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He is also an adjunct Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum. In addition, he teaches for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Executive Education Centre, Said Business School, Oxford University.

His most recent book, God and Stephen Hawking, Oxford, Lion-Hudson 2011 is a swift and forthright reply to Stephen Hawking’s latest blockbuster, ‘The Grand Design’. In it John Lennox exposes the flaws in Hawking’s logic and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, Hawking’s arguments make his existence seem all the more probable. He is also the author of God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God? on the interface between science, philosophy and theology.

He will be speaking in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on the following dates:

Auckland

Sunday 27 February

9:30 – 11:00am Preaching at Howick Baptist Church on the corner of Picton and Wellington Streets, Howick, Auckland.

1:00 – 3:00pm Science and Religion Q&A at the Salvation Army East City Corps, 37-45 Wellington Street, Howick Auckland.

7:00 – 9:00pm
Speaking at Greenlane Christian Centre, 17 Marewa Rd, Greenlane, Auckland.

Monday 28 February

7:00 – 9:00pm “Christ Among the Philosophers” at St Paul’s Church, Symonds St, Auckland

Organised by Compass, Dr Lennox will address questions such as, is faith delusional? Is it reasonable? How can we live faithfully in the public square? How might one engage faithfully as a Christian in the academy?

Tuesday 1 March

12:00 – 1:00pm “Has Science Buried God?” Lecture at Auckland University (Room TBA)

1:00 – 2:00pm “Has Science Buried God?” Lecture at Auckland University (Room TBA)

7:30 – 9:30pm “So you want to change the world?” Student Meeting TSCF Offices, 441 Queen Street.

Wellington

Wednesday 2 March

7:00 – 9:00pm “Why God Loves Richard Dawkins?” or “God and Stephen Hawking” at St Michael’s, Upland Road, Kelburn, Wellington.

Christchurch

Sunday 6 March

9:00 – 10.30am Speaking at Spreydon Baptist Church, Corner Lyttelton & Cobham Streets, Spreydon, Christchurch

For any changes in his schedule – keep an eye on M&M’s post about his visit here.

Thinking Matters New Zealand would like to extend an invitation to top graduates of US theological colleges to come to New Zealand and complete a one year graduate-internship at Thinking Matters New Zealand. We are looking for someone to serve the New Zealand apologetics community by managing a number of projects, including some or all of the following activities:

• Organising an annual National Apologetics Conference.
• Organising speaking tours for international US speakers, including planning, logistics and event management.
• Producing resources to guide and support apologetics small groups around the country.
• Contributing to our online activities and content, in particular the website www.ThinkingMatters.org.nz
• Designing and completing applied research projects (such as worldview surveys) of the local church, youth and secular culture to help us better understand areas of neglect in the New Zealand church.
• Being a media liaison to both Christian and secular media outlets for the organisation.
• Compiling and managing a resource library for local apologetics ministries.
• Helping to build closer ties with other apologetics-related ministries (based in NZ, Australia and the US).

Applicants would need to:

1. Have a heart for New Zealand, in particular to help the New Zealand church become more effective in making a stand against the secular, post-modern and liberal worldviews that have a grip on the minds of New Zealanders.
2. Be a self-motivated individual with a natural gifting in administration (ideally with experience in event management).
3. Really enjoy apologetics, with a Spirit-given passion for seeing the Church loving God with all its mind.

Applicants would be expected to raise and sustain sponsorship for their airfares and a salary/living allowance from their home church and support community while in New Zealand.

The period of commitment would be negotiable – but a 1 year placement would ideally be sought, with the possibility of extending into a longer term position if appropriate.

For more information on the application process, or to register your interest please contact me at Rodney@ThinkingMatters.org.nz

I had an amazing 4 days attending four different conferences in Atlanta at the end of my US trip:

1. Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) – with names such as William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, JP Moreland…
2. Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) – with names such as NT Write, Mike Licona, Gary Habermas…
3. EPS Apologetics Conference – containing many of the same speakers as the EPS, but held at a very large church, and targeting more of a lay Christian audience rather than academic scholars targeted at the EPS/ETS.
4. Society for Biblical Literature – where I only attending the discussion panel that Matt Flannagan spoke at.

While I found some of the papers/presentations interesting, by far the most valuable (and enjoyable) time was spent endlessly networking: meeting people, being introduced to others, sharing the Thinking Matters vision, and learning about what others are up to.

There were quite a few late nights spent talking about different activities, ministries, projects, debates and ideas people had. I received almost unanimous support for my offer to host people on speaking tours in New Zealand. I wasn’t in bed until 2:30am each morning – so the time was very productive indeed!

In this photo are people from Stand to Reason, Life Training Institute, Summit Ministries, JesusU, and various others. Half of these guys have Phd’s, many have published books, and almost all do public speaking in their various fields of expertise. It was fascinating to talk to them and hear the inside story about so many of the things that are happening in their ministries:

In this picture, from left to right are Scott Klusendorf from Life Training Institute (LTI), me, Alan Shlemon from Stand to Reason (STR), Tripp Almon (Megan’s husband), Megan Almon also from LTI, and Brett Kunkle also from STR:

I spent quite a lot of time with these guys. Had a couple of hour long trips between venues with Greg Koukl and his Stand to Reason crew – some great discussions were had, they are such a great bunch of guys.

Overall – it was intense, exhausting, and thoroughly enjoyable! I can’t wait for a repeat at next year’s conferences in San Francisco…!

Our own Dr Mathew Flannagan was one of the speakers at the Evangelical Philosophical Society Apologetics Conference, and participated in a panel discussion at the Society for Biblical Literature where he presented a paper titled God and the Genocide of the Canaanites. I was tasked with encouraging him, making sure his tie was straight and reminding him to speak slowly (all the things his good wife was unable to do from back in NZ).

Matt’s morning presentation was very well received. He was speaking at the same time as five other speakers during the ‘break-out’ sessions – and yet still pulled the biggest crowd for that session according to Bill Craig. He spoke slowly and clearly – really couldn’t fault him. His power-point failed half way through (his laptop unexpectedly shut down), but he just continued on without a hitch.

This is a photo of his audience during his presentation:

Matt demonstrated a solid understanding of his material and responded to questions clearly and confidently during Q&A time. The thing that was the most encouraging was the crowd that gathered around him afterwards. It’s normal for a small handful of people to want to address a speaker after a presentation, but I counted no less than 20 people who were still asking questions a good 10 minutes after he had finished and the rest of the room had moved back into the main hall for a plenary session. People seemed really intrigued by his ideas and clearly wanted more details.

Later that evening Matt joined a panel discussion at the Society for Biblical Literature who discussed the topic Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The panel consisted of, from left to right Richard Hess, Randall Rauser, Matt and Paul Copan – and was chaired (ironically the only one standing in this photo J) by the distinguished Notre Dame Philosopher, Michael Rea:

Each speaker spoke for 20 minutes on the topic before an hour of Q&A. The audience (consisting of big names such as William Lane Craig, Mike Licona, Doug Gievet, Christopher Wright and others) was significantly more informed and educated than the more general lay-audience in the morning. The questions were solid and intelligent and Matt answered more than his share of them.

In this photo is Doug Gievet, Matt, Paul Copan and myself:

You can read Matt’s account of the conferences on his blog here.

It was a proud day for Kiwis!

On Wednesday I met up with my good friend Mathew Flannagan who is the “Other Kiwi” making a splash over here. Together we attended the Evangelical Philosophical Society Annual Conference Reception – a social event that included most of the top speakers at the conference.

It was great to talk with some of the great “hero’s in the faith” – some of the greatest thinkers in the world (not just Christian thinkers, but thinkers full stop!)

In particular I got to talk to:

Dr Alvin Plantinga: Many regard this man as the greatest philosopher alive, and equal to greats like the late Francis Schafer. He is giving the plenary keynote sessions at both the EPS and the EPS Apologetics conferences. He wasn’t interested in visiting New Zealand (too far to come), but he did give me his email address to arrange a Skype Q&A session for a future event I might want to run. From left to right is Alvin Plantinga, Mathew Flannagan and myself:

Dr Frank Beckwith: Frank, Plantinga and I got talking about a particularly nasty personal attack Frank has been targeted with after publishing a recent paper. They both commented about the viciousness of the ad-hominin personal attacks, particularly when you publish anything about Intelligent Design, and how such attacks seem to be abnormally hostile when compared with the critique of other work. I shared some of the stories about the attacks the Discovery Institute guys have faced and Alvin said it was “just part of the territory”.

Earlier in the evening I got this photo is Me, Frank and Matt:

Dr William Lane Craig
& his lovely wife Jan: I forgot to ask at breakfast if they might consider returning to New Zealand, so I raised the idea with them. They were hesitant as they found the 2008 tour very draining – with the long flights. But he was still open to joining a Talbot faculty tour if one was organised.

Dr J.P. Moreland: I shared how a friend of mine used his work to “cleanse the pallet” after being subjected to some of Rob Bell’s Nooma material – he had a good laugh. He was also keen to do Skype video call’s to New Zealand, but was reluctant to come to New Zealand due to the time investment required.

Dr Craig Hazen, Dr Paul Copan, Greg Koukl, and others: Got lots of general hand shaking and small talk with these guys – but nothing of significance discussed that I can remember.

Mary-Jo Sharp: I bumped into Mary-Jo as we were leaving – she has a popular blog I like called Confident Christianity. She also put me onto a friend of hers Nathan Hanson who runs youth apologetics events called Jesus University.

On Wednesday night I had dinner with Prof Mike Licona (Research Professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and Apologetics Coordinator at the North American Mission Board) and Abdu Murray (President of Aletheia International, which is an apologetics-based ministry dedicated to offering the Truth of the Gospel to Muslims, Jews, cult members, and sceptics).

Mike is the author of:

• The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
  
• Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science
  
• Paul Meets Muhammad
  
• The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
  
• Behold I Stand at the Door: What to say to Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses when they knock at the door (a free PDF of this is available here)

And Abdu is the author of: Apocalypse Later: Why the Gospel of Peace Must Trump the Politics of Prophecy in the Middle East

Our dinner was the usual mixture of telling them about the state of the Church and culture in New Zealand and our need for more clarity in Christian teaching. They both shared details about their latest work – with Mike even going so far as to give a 30 minute compact version of a talk he is working on at the moment on answering the apparent contradictions in the New Testament.

They are both very supportive of the Thinking Matters vision and Mike said he was happy to make himself available via Skype Video for some Q&A time with a New Zealand audience.

In this photo Mike is on the left, and Abdu is on the right:

I joined the William Lane Craig and his lovely wife Jan for breakfast this morning – the first morning of the EPS conference here in Atlanta.

This was purely a social catch up after getting to know Bill and Jan three years ago when I drove them from Auckland to Tauranga to Rotorua, and where he kindly spoke at the launch of Thinking Matters Tauranga. We chatted about Thinking Matters, my US tour and everything I’ve been doing since we last shared time together.

We also had a good laugh about his encounter with Richard Dawkins who he finally got to debate in Mexico last week. It is well known that Dawkins has refused to debate Bill for many years (to the smug snigger of the apologetics community who understand what a formidable opponent Bill makes in a debate).

Bill’s November ministry newsletter just came out today, in which he describes his meeting of Dawkins beforehand:

I extended my hand and introduced myself. I remarked, “I’m surprised to see that you’re on the panel.”

“And why not?” he replied.

“Well,” I said, “You’ve always refused to debate me.”

His tone suddenly became icy cold. “I don’t consider this to be a debate with you. The Mexicans invited me to participate, and I accepted.” At that, he turned away.

“Well, I hope we have a good discussion,” I said.

“I very much doubt it,” he retorted and walked off.

So my first encounter with Richard Dawkins was a pretty chilly one!

We had a good laugh about it!

Bill is doing such great work, travelling all over the world and presenting the gospel in such a clear way to what are often quite hostile audiences. Someone quipped to him recently that he is living out the 29^th chapter of Acts – which sounds about right! He is also building up a strong web presence, with 32,000 unique visitors per month to his site here.

They are such a lovely couple and as always it was an encouragement and pleasure to spend some time with them. I look forward to hearing him speak live sometime at the conferences over the next 4 days.

On Monday I met with John Stonestreet (Executive Director) and Jason Graham (Director of Curriculum) at Summit Ministries. They are tucked away in a peaceful little town in the beautiful hills above Colorado Springs – I left wishing I had more time to spend there as it was such a tranquil setting. This is the hotel they own where they host the students during their worldview conferences:

Summit delivers Christian worldview training in the form of 2 week long conferences, semester long programs, packaged school curriculum (for purchase by schools and home-schooling parents), and online resources.

Some of their presentations are available online here – I highly recommend you take a listen as they are delivered by some of the best in the field (Moreland, Beckwith, Koukl, etc) and they give a good taste of the good work Summit does.

They have also been strong supporters of Compass back in New Zealand for many years, with John presenting in NZ almost every year at the Compass Summer Conference.

In my meeting John gave me a good feel for the history of their involvement in NZ and Australia, and the direction they are driving the ministry going forward. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what they do and it was very encouraging to meet with John.

We talked about inviting their graduates back to New Zealand to serve in an internship. John jokingly saw a problem with the idea, as they wanted the best graduates for themselves and didn’t want to compete with the undeniable attraction of New Zealand. I’m sure we can work something out…  :)

We also discussed the possibility of John Stonestreet and John Hay coming out to present a Christian School’s Worldview conference for NZ Christian school teachers.  This is something I intend to follow up with, as there are so many things already in place to make this work.

In the same generous spirit of all my US hosts, they very kindly loaded me up with a box of books and DVD recordings of some of their presentations. This is now the 5th box of resources that is being shipped back to New Zealand for the Thinking Matters Library! I estimate we now have enough material to run Thinking Matters events for maybe a couple of hundred years… J

While the two meetings were brief, it was nice to have made the initial contact and I look forward to drawing from some of their resources in years to come.

Had a variety of meetings with different people at the US office of Focus on the Family on Friday and Monday. The first was lunch with Bob Dubberley (Vice President Content Development) who Steve Meyer kindly arranged a meeting with for me. Bob heads up multiple departments that manage all DVD, online and audio material that Focus produces – a significant chuck of the ministries 50-100 million dollar budget.

It was interesting to get an update on the three upcoming TrueU series.  The next one - Evidence for the reliability of the Bible – is in final edit and should be available in January in time for me to use it early next year for TM Tauranga. Unfortunately series 3 and 4 have yet to be started, and due to Steve Meyer’s heavy schedule next year they may be delayed further. Steve has recommended others who could front the remaining two series, and I encouraged them to get them out ASAP with or without Steve’s involvement (Steve told me about the content of these and they sound AMAIZING!).

It was exciting to hear about their latest major media project – which I won’t blog about here as I’m not sure if it has been publically announced yet. Unfortunately it’s still 2-3 years away from completion.

I then had various meetings back at the office with Glenn Stanton (Director of Global Family Formation Studies) and Leon Wirth (Executive Director of Family Ministries). We discussed various options for re-editing the TrueU material to make it more kiwi-culture friendly and they were very interested. I also suggested that they make use of media students (free labour) to get more TrueU type of material on YouTube for distribution via social-networking – aiming for much quicker turnaround of material than the 2-3 year lead-times of their current media projects. They liked the idea and are open to proposals from Thinking Matters to make these things possible.

Then on Monday night I joined Rich Bannister (Director Global Strategy Integration) and his boss Stan John (Senior Vice President of Global Ministry Development) for dinner. This is Rich on the left and Stan on the right:

This was a relaxed social chat about the various international activities Focus was involved with. We also talked about the possibility of sourcing interns from their pool of “Focus Institute” graduates coming to serve Thinking Matters in NZ on an internship. They were interested and suggested I coordinate this through the Focus NZ offices.

Overall, I was very warmly welcomed by everyone I met with, and received open offers to ask for help any time I need it.

I left with a sense that God would bring good fruit from these new connections in years to come.

In faith, I kept the middle week of my trip empty for God to fill in with a supprise – and wow, He sure didn’t disappoint!

During our late night discussions in LA after the Veritas conference, Dr Steve Meyer invited me up to Seattle where the Discovery Institute kindly hosted me for three days. Another divine appointment without doubt!

Fellows of this institute include all the big names such as Steve Meyer (Signature in the Cell), Michael Behe (Darwin’s Black Box) , William Demski (Design inference), Jay Richards (God & Evolution), Jonathan Wells (Icons of Evolution) and many other significant contributors to the Intelligent Design community.

They are responsible for great documentaries such as Unlocking the Mystery of Life, The Privileged Planet, and their latest Darwin’s Dilemma (which I’ll be showing at Thinking Matters Tauranga early next year). There is another project in the pipeline along the same lines that sounds very exciting as it takes a new approach with some of the more recent discoveries.

They have some of the best minds in the field, and are making solid in-roads into the philosophical naturalism held so dearly by the scientific community. Evidence of this can be seen by the number of scientists who are beginning to voice public decent against neo-Darwinian evolution, which is very encouraging to see.

They have offices in Seattle and Washington DC, and two research labs also in the Seattle area.

They are not a Christian organisation (they have Jewish fellows such as David Klinghoffer and secular Jew and agnostic David Berlinski). However they are friendly to the Thinking Matters vision as we share the view that Intelligent Design is a vital component in the battle to undermine the scientific naturalism that so grips the western mindset.

My time consisted of meetings at their downtown office with a handful of their key researchers, writers, public policy specialists, and legal and media relations people who were very helpful with their insights and stories about what to expect when we start to become more effective in our public facing efforts. We then spent lunch brainstorming ideas for future events which was very helpful. I also got to hear about some of their upcoming projects – and while I can’t give any details, I can say there are some very exciting projects and activities in the pipeline! I’ll certainly be watching developments with interest!

This photo was taken at lunch. From left to right around the table is Dr Jay W. Richards (Senior Fellow), Me, Dr John West (Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre for Science and Culture), Robert Crowther (Director of Communications), and Casey Luskin (Public Policy and Legal Affairs):

I enjoyed hearing about the underhanded tactics to undermine the activities of their scientists, including denial-of-service attacks on their servers during events, nasty ad-hominem attacks on their people, and repetitive and blindingly predictable straw-men arguments. We all had a good laugh, as such attacks are really an encouragement to the team as they show the scientific community cannot respond to their position and are instead running scared… “Why don’t they just engage the science?” 

A day later I joined Steve again for breakfast before he took me down to their Centre for Science and Culture research office in Redmond where his own office is based. This was especially kind of him to arrange, as it was his day off!

I meet some more staff there and we discussed some more of the current and future projects they’re undertaking.

They were interested in the Thinking Matters vision and they loaded me up with (yet more!) DVD’s and books to ship back to NZ for the Thinking Matters Library.

I also got a much needed break, heading 2 hours north up Puget Sound for a beautiful day of hiking through this beautiful state forest park:

I got in some sightseeing including a tour of the Boeing assembly plant (really fascinating!), and of course a visit to the Seattle Space Needle:

Overall – my time in Seattle was very valuable. I’m sure the connections and friendships made will be fruitful for years to come.

This was a free conference hosted by Veritas Evangelical Seminary held on Friday night and all day Saturday.

This is the second year they have run this, and numbers have grown from last year – almost filling the 2300 seat venue. This picture was taken during Steve Meyer’s talk Signature in the Cell:

You can view the program here to see who was speaking and the topics.

I spent much of this conference meeting/talking/networking with others. The main highlights were:

• Enjoying dinner (twice) with Bill Demski and a very late-night with Dr Steve Meyer.  See my post on that here.

• Meeting with Lee Strobel before his presentation. We briefly discussed the possibility of coming out to New Zealand, which he was open to.

• I spent some time talking with Dr Norman Geisler about Thinking Matters, which he was very enthusiastic about. He has been to NZ several times and said he’d be happy to return. He gave me a CD containing 180 power-point presentations of his most popular talks (this was being sold for US$150 – so a very kind gift).

Other highlights included:

• Meeting Sarah Flashing from the International Society for Women in Apologetics. Her passion was for encouraging and supporting women to get more involved in apologetics activities, something I wholeheartedly endorse.

   

• Meeting Charlie Campbell from Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry. Charlie kindly gave me a discount on some of his DVD titles.  I haven’t been aware of his work until now, so I’m looking forward to watching these DVD’s on my return to NZ.

Have just attended one of the morning services at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church – one of America’s mega-churches. They have about 20,000 people attending services each week – which is quite an impressive logistical achievement.

This was the main auditorium during worship:

The Saddleback campus is very impressive. To give you some idea of the scale of it:

• There are 3 different driveway entrances to the campus, and each is 6 lanes wide.
• The 10 different car-lots are so big that they provide electric trams to ferry people to the various auditoriums (although many people looked like they could use the walk!)
• While the main auditorium looked like it seated maybe 5000 (rough guess), they had 5 other auditoriums of different sizes – each with simultaneous services, but different worship styles. The sermon from the main venue was telecast to each – so everyone gets the same teaching.
• This was their home campus, but they have another 9 churches in California.

Their children’s program gives another indication of the size of this place:

Rick Warren delivered an entertaining sermon on the stewardship of your body, teaching from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. In true mega-church style they also ran a 50 stand ‘healthy-living expo’ at the same time to supplement the sermon topic.

As topical sermons go, it was witty and educational. The key concepts were biblical ones (no hint of prosperity gospel teachings) and Rick was a natural and entertaining communicator. The worship in the main auditorium was very polished, but I found it very dry and impersonal which I guess is expected in such a large crowd and with professionally paid musicians.

After the service I asked a couple of people at the welcome centre if there were any apologetics activities in the church I could get involved with and was met with the usual “I don’t know – I don’t think so…”

This is such a shame. If I can build an apologetics mailing list of 300 in little old Tauranga where maybe 5000 people attend church each week – then I estimate (very roughly of course) there must be more than a thousand people at Saddleback who are intellectually malnourished…

Anyway – I came away feeling that it was an interesting cultural experience – but not much of a spiritual one.

Today I went to dinner with Dr Steve Meyer (Director of the Discovery Institute’s Centre for Science and Culture, one of the key founders of the intelligent design movement, and author of bestselling book Signature in the Cell) and Dr William Demski (Research Professor in Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute, and author of The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities).

This is Demski on the left, and Meyer on the right:

We had a really nice time talking about the various science and intelligent-design focused organisations and their different approaches to engaging both the scientific and faith communities. They told me about current and future projects they’re involved in (there are some exciting developments, and one project in particular which is still several years away that sounded very interesting).

They were excited about the Thinking Matters vision and both said they would love to come to New Zealand sometime for a speaking tour.

We got to the conference where Steve spoke to over 2000 people.  His talk was based on his book Signature in the Cell (which made it into the top 10 best selling science books on the Amazon bestseller list for 2009):

After the conference Steve and I went out for further discussion and we ended up having a second dinner at 1am and didn’t call it a night until 2:30am – it was a lot of fun.

We talked about different ideas and strategies for impacting New Zealand, including some very significant ideas that could see more long-term impact than mere speaking tours. He was very passionate about helping Thinking Matters out – which was a huge encouragement. I came away very excited about what was discussed, and had a real sense that the Spirit of God had been present.

He has invited me to join him in Seattle on Monday to meet his team at the Discovery Institute’s Centre for Science and Culture (a few phone-calls still need to be made Monday morning) – so I’m really excited about that.

Overall it was a very productive night, one I’ll always remember, and one I suspect God will continue to bear fruit from. So watch this space…

I didn’t come to connect with churches, but it turns out I am staying only a couple of miles away from Saddleback Church, one of America’s most influential mega-churches. So I thought I’d go and check them out. Rick Warren (from “Purpose Driven Life”) pastors this church which see’s about 20,000 attending services each week.

I got a meeting with Pastor Abraham Mevleneerg from International Missions (I think they put me onto him because I was from overseas – as they had no-one on staff focusing on apologetics). The meeting wasn’t very fruitful – I found he had a rather blinkered, oversimplified and misunderstood perception of what apologetics was, and thus wasn’t able to appreciate my vision.

Despite having “more than 200 ministries, eight worship venues, a variety of counselling and support programs, bible studies and seminars, local and global outreach programs, and a broad network of small groups” there was a glaring lack of any apologetics/worldview/scholarly activities – which was a real shame for such an influential church.

I attended their Thursday night college-age service called Crave which I personally found very satisfying (some really great Spirit-filled worship and fantastically well-equipped facilities! I don’t think they realise how lucky they are).

I spent some time talking to random 18-25 year olds and found (as I was expecting) a strong desire for the intellectual pursuit of God. I was writing down website links and names of people and ministries and handing them out as they were asking where they could learn more. It’s a real shame the leadership there haven’t recognised and fed this passion – I guess such things take time.