Had the joy of hearing my 'old' colleague Chris Sinkinson today, on preaching Old Testament narrative. Chris pastors Alderholt Congregational Church, lectures at Moorlands Bible College in Apologetics and (apparently) serves as part-time heart-throb there, too. His lecture/seminar/fraternal was stimulating, as always. BUT the purpose of this little blog entry is to introduce his new book on apologetics, which he brought along today. Called 'Confident Christianity', it's a whistle-stop tour through history, philosophy and theology ('from ancient Greek philosophers via Enlightenment thinkers through to the worldviews of twenty-first-century thinkers' says Steve Brady's blurb) - with the aim of making Christians more confident in their faith.
Sounds heavy, eh? But that's the brilliance of Chris - it's not heavy at all. Chris is a brilliant communicator with an ability to make complicated things not just simple, but interesting too.
So easy, even a dog could understand it.
Whenever I think of Chris, I'm reminded of an old story about Billy Butlin (the founder of Butlins) and Fred Pontin (the founder of - well, have a guess). As a young man, Pontin worked for Billy, before striking out on his own. Later in life, Sir Fred had to introduce Sir Billy to someone and did so like this: 'Billy Butlin taught me everything I know about this business, didn't you Billy?' To which the older man apparently replied 'Yes, Fred. But not everything I know!'
I can't say anything like that about me and Chris - but we at MBC did give him opportunity to practice for a while.
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