Cultural Witness:

North Sound Church is excited to host a conference with Bishop Graham Tomlin, Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness in London and former Bishop of Kensington. He is a regular contributor to national media, such as The Times and BBC radio, and has written many books and articles, both academic and popular. He taught theology within Oxford University for many years before helping found St Mellitus College.

Together, we will explore practical ways to engage secular communities by sharing a witness to the Gospel through beauty, truth, and goodness.

When I was a young pastor in the 1980s the church I served would do a major Christmas production over two weekends in December. Twelve thousand people would come through the door. And the classic altar call worked. People found Jesus. I came to understand that in the 1980s people still had the Christian furniture in their minds. They had a basic Christian worldview. Even if they weren’t currently connected to a church they had been to Sunday school as a child or had a grandmother that taught them Bible stories so the distance to a Christian commitment was not large. It was more of a quickening by the Spirit in response to a meaningful presentation. Things are different now. Many people just don’t have a Christian worldview anymore. There is little response to an evangelistic appeal because people are far from the faith.
 
This has led us to an appreciation for cultural witness. It is in many ways the new evangelism. Recognizing that most of the unchurched have little Christian furniture, cultural witness is a means to woo them toward the kingdom through the witness of beauty, truth, and goodness. Some of us remember the confrontational approach of evidence that demands a verdict. Cultural witness represents soft apologetics. It is a winsome approach to engagement with those without Christ and a Christian worldview.

While we can appreciate the growing secularism in the United States, the United Kingdom is far more secular and we have followed with interest the work of the Centre for Cultural Witness.

They have developed a powerful tool in the website, seenandunseen.com, which includes articles by world-class scholars from a Christian worldview with an emphasis on beauty, goodness, and truth. In addition to preparing young leaders, they do research on apologetics in a post-Christian (and even post-truth world).

In addition to presentations by Bishop Tomlin, we will include a session on how to apply our learning about cultural witness to the local church.

Barry Crane, Senior Pastor of North Sound Church, will share his experience of partnering with the Centre for Cultural Witness and local application, and Jon Sween, pastor and Navigator missionary for 40 years, will share a reproducible curriculum for teaching cultural witness in the local church.