The Fairhope Truth Encounter

Posted on May 5, 2010
Filed Under Personal, The Truth Encounter, The Truth Project | 10 Comments

I’m on the plane returning home from a wonderful time at Eastern Shores Presbyterian Church, in Fairhope, Alabama.

What a jewel of a place!

I can understand why it was picked as one of the top best places to live in the United States. It sits right on the shore of Mobile Bay and the streets are lined with an abundance of flowers.

This was a full trip of eleven “sessions” that included the Truth Encounter conference, a Truth Project Leader Training conference, meeting with home-schoolers, Sunday worship messages, Q&A with small group attendees, senior youth Sunday school class, etc.

I’m washed out, but loved every minute of it.

There is something phenomenal about the body of Christ. No matter where you go, there is an immediate closeness with other believers even though you have never met before.

Here are some tidbits that may be of interest:

During the day on Friday, I got to meet with a homeschooling co-op and some parents. We talked about the challenges facing them as they prepared for college. One particularly interesting interaction dealt with how to handle a hostile professor. They are out there! This came up because a professor gave one of the students a zero on a paper he wrote on homosexuality. Up until this point, he had been getting “A’s” from her. When he asked for a reason, the professor said it was for plagiarism.

When he made an appeal to her for specific examples, she pulled up an online document where another Christian writer had expressed similar views. When she could not show any specific instances of plagiarism, he tried to explain that he was expressing a view from a Christian worldview that he and many shared. She wouldn’t relent and he eventually had to drop the course. It was clear that she was merely hostile to his point of view.

So much for “tolerance” and “academic freedom”, eh?

Although it was obviously too late to help in this instance, we then talked about some practical things he could have done to try to salvage the course.

On Friday night, a full house of Truth Project leaders and attendees gathered together for a Q&A session. I really love these for it gives me the opportunity to interact with “students” that I have not yet had the privilege to meet. They had a lot of great questions!

One question that I get all the time is about the classroom and whether or not the Truth Project was a real class with real students. The answer is yes. Although the classroom was built especially for the filming, it was filled with “real” students. Essentially we just held class and simply filmed it.

Saturday was primarily dedicated to the presentation of some portions of what I have been nominally calling “The Truth Encounter”. We began by talking about the fact that truth is ultimately personal, stemming from the very character of God and that it has a deep personal effect upon us all. We spent some time trying to get our hands around a good understanding of the heart and the mind and found that we were brought back to the centrality of truth.

We then talked about the transcendence of truth, the difference between a contradiction and a puzzle, logical fallacies, the pervasiveness of relativism, etc. We then talked about our responsibility to be “prepared” to make a defense as we find in 1 Peter 3:15.

“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…”

We emphasized again and again how the Scripture calls us to be attractively winsome when we engage the world around us and it is repeated here: “do it with gentleness and respect”. But, we must make the defense and in order to do so we must be prepared.

Some time ago I conducted a survey requesting folks to list some of the greatest challenges that have confronted them with regards to a biblical worldview. I summarized those into twelve categories. Most of the attacks and challenges to our faith will come in the form of specific questions that fall under these twelve categories.

Here they are:
1. Absolute truth & relativism
2. Evil and suffering
3. Exclusivity & pluralism
4. Faith & reason
5. Free will & God’s sovereignty
6. God’s existence & character
7. Goodness of man, judgment & Hell
8. Hypocrisy & crimes of the past
9. Claims of Christ
10. Reality of miracles
11. Science & evolution
12. Veracity of the Bible

I challenged those in attendance to take the time and effort to learn basic answers to the issues represented in these 12 areas. This is part of what the Scripture means when it calls us to be “prepared”.

In a world of relativism, where truth is merely one’s own personal beliefs, no one has anything to say to anyone else. If there is no transcendent truth, then who cares what your version looks like?

We all are simply wearing a different colored hat.

But if there is absolute truth, if there really is a rock to stand on, then we find that we not only have something to say…we MUST say.

I then listed seven general “tactics” that are critical as we engage:
1. Pray (God has to work in them)
2. Prepare (1 Peter 3:15)
3. Season your speech (don’t pound them!)
4. Define the terms
5. Recognize logical fallacies
6. Admit ignorance (if you don’t know, say so!)
7. Be attractively winsome (always! Col 4:5-6)

The latter part of the day was spent training Truth Project small group leaders. The emphasis was on fervent prayer, discussion time, loving people, small groups in the home and praying that their group will “multiply”.

After the training, I “knighted” them and it appears they were ready to “go forth”!

I am continually amazed by what I hear from people as to how God has worked in their lives through the Truth Project. I also, as I have many, many times, heard again from someone who tried to use the Truth Project as a product in Sunday school. It failed and they are now thrilled with what is happening in a small group in their home.

See?

It isn’t about a magic DVD set!

That’s why we haven’t followed the traditional marketing approach and just “sold” it as a retail product.

It’s about what God wants to do in the lives of His people.

That is worth way more than a gazillion bucks!

Soli Deo Gloria!

P.S. Please pray that the oil will not devastate this beautiful place. Mobile bay is so rich in aquatic life.

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