Drinks, pancakes, bacon, blueberries and maple syrup. Loud music, soft lighting and a warm welcome. Half-a-dozen tables covered with lining paper, felt pens to doodle and draw with, card games/Lego to play with and wrapped sweets for extra energy!
All these things set the scene and made a great start to our special youth day entitled God, Darwin and modern science – Who Do We Trust?
We were excited to see around 30 young people from a few local churches gathered together on a Saturday at ACC along with their youth leaders, giving up a precious day off to come and learn and grow together. This was promoted as a special day looking at the supposed conflict between science and faith that they may hear about from their school teachers or friends or through the media in general.
Inspired by challenging questions from our own young people we subsequently met with Ben Willmott and, harnessing his passion for all things geological, came up with the idea of a day which would inspire, equip and enable 11-18 year-olds to think and learn about science in the context of faith and what the Bible teaches.
Ben is part of an organisation called God and the Big Bang which visits primary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities around the UK. This is a group of dedicated Christians from different scientific backgrounds who have devoted their spare time to travel about seeking to debunk the idea that science and faith are always opposed. Using their knowledge and experience they share from their own fields of expertise combined with their own personal testimonies and faith journeys to communicate an important message for people to hear.
For our day at ACC Ben was joined by Paige – a palaeontologist from Liverpool, and Jonathan – a medical student from Cardiff. These very clever young adults were perfectly well qualified and spoke with great intelligence, clarity and passion about their science and their faith.
Their morning and afternoon sessions were packed with practical and interactive discussion and application plus time for questions at the end of the day. It was lovely to see young people chatting through such important topics with each other, their youth leaders and our special guest speakers. Ben, Paige and Jonathan each had quite different views on certain topics but were so clearly united in their love for Jesus and for each other. This in itself spoke more loudly than any scientific theory or doctrinal viewpoint and we pray that the young people who attended the day will have not only learned but also seen what it is to have a genuine and reasoned faith.
– Andy Clark