Conference offers teens tools for defending faith
KINGSTON, ON—Canadian and American youth groups are joining together on October 3 for a live simulcast conference on defending their faith.
Titled "The Big Dig" and hosted by Focus on the Family, the conference features Lee Strobel and Mark Mittleberg. It aims to help equip teenagers and their parents to tackle tough questions on Jesus, the Bible, relativism and science—and also help them learn to handle tough people.
Carol Tomalty wanted her teenage sons to be able attend the conference, so she approached her church, Bayridge Alliance, about hosting the event.
"Both of my kids are in high school," Tomalty says, "and I think they need to know how to defend their faith in a way that makes sense. When people think of apologetics they think of something that is boring and confrontational, but it's not that at all. It's just being aware of the amazing way we can use the same rules of evidence that scientists do to defend our faith."
This is the first year Focus on the Family will run a simulcast of the event, which originally took place in the summer. Bayridge is one of three Canadian churches showing the simulcast, along with churches in Sault Ste Marie and Halifax.
"If one has a belief, they are responsible for defending it," says Tomalty's 16-year-old son, Chris. "While we are taught to live by faith, reason must be employed to show that this is not merely superstitious nonsense, but a clear and intelligent view on the world around us."
His brother Garrett, 14, says he hopes the event will answer the question, "What is the point of being a Christian in this day and age?"
"People always concentrate on being defensive about things," he says. "Christians are still thought of as weak and desperate to share. If we defend our faith, people may change the way they think."
Leon Wirth, director of youth outreach at Focus on the Family, says, "It's never too early to start preparing young people for spiritual independence. We don't want to neglect it now and then clean up the pieces of their spiritual journey later in life.
"This generation has a great reverence for questions. But when they are void of any good answers they will either fill in the blanks themselves or throw up their hands in the air and say, 'There must not be any answers.'
"Sometimes the ill-equipped Christian can be just as harmful as the opposition. Like Job's friends got some things right, but they were no help to Job, because they grossly misapplied those facts and wound up hurting the relationship instead of helping.
"We all encounter questions and pain points in our lives that just throw us for a loop. We want to equip young people to withstand the challenges, pains, and doubts that others will throw at them, and that they will go through themselves in life.
"It is about how we equip people in relationship to have conversations that are effective – to give them reason for hope, reason to believe, and reason for faith, that is practical, solid and dependable."
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