Solas is a Dundee-based Christian ministry – which works alongside local churches and student groups across the country in evangelism and evangelism-training. Our director, Dr Andy Bannister leads a small team of evangelists/apologists/trainers who travel the country, sharing the gospel of Jesus and encouraging and equipping Christian to do the same. While we work across denominations, a large amount of our time is spent with Scottish Baptist Churches, from the Borders to the Highlands.
Evangelism:
In student unions, café’s, hotels, restaurants – and even church buildings, Solas speakers explain the relevance of Jesus, spend time answering people’s questions and objections, and invite people to follow Christ – or join the local church’s Alpha or Christianity Explored course to find out more. Many people today know little of Jesus, or have misconceptions about Christianity, and so persuasive pre-evangelism is often needed. In other contexts serious dialogue with people of other faiths or world views is what the local church asks Solas to bring to their evangelism.
In the last few weeks we have been working with the inverness Passion for Life events, led by Culduthel Christian Centre – part of the Scottish Baptist family. At a café outreach in Kinross recently a lady rushed up to our speaker who had spoken about forgiveness and said, “I’ve lived in Scotland all my life and have never heard this message before – this was what I needed to hear.” In Scotland today the opportunities are enormous. The thing we love doing most is talking about Jesus with people who don’t know him yet.
Evangelism-training:
Christian people across Scotland love Jesus and want to get better at talking about him with friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. Solas has developed a range of training resources which help Christians to develop the art of conversations which lead naturally to Jesus. We also help Christians to make their evangelism a little more persuasive, by helping them think-through helpful, gracious responses to the objections to faith that are common today – drawing on a panel of speakers with specialisms in fields as diverse as science, sexuality, suffering, Islam, culture, truth, atheism, and the Bible.
Every month, Andy Bannister and the team deliver this in churches, seminars and Confident Christianity conferences around the county. Solas has done this kind of work with Baptist churches from Dumfries, Dundee, Perth, to Inverness and Aberdeen. Rev Gordy Mackay said, “From Perth Baptist’s point of view, we are increasingly outward-looking, it is on my heart to equip people in our church to do that well. The Solas event was a really helpful opportunity for us to actually do that in a very practical way.”
Connect with Solas:
If you’d like to see if Solas might be of use to your church do get in touch. All our details are available at solas-cpc.org as well as many free resources, written, audio and video. I’d like to invite friends across the Scottish Baptist Churches to pray for this work and get our prayer letter here: solas-cpc.org/subscribe . Thanks!
Gavin Matthews – for Solas
(Gavin has been a member of Perth Baptist Church since 1998!)
Main website www.solas-cpc.org
2 minute intro video: https://youtu.be/UyLdQ0yWACc
