A little more info on Ultimate Questions...

Above: A picture we may use in the promotional campaign.

The Ultimate Questions outreach is something that I have been praying about and working on for a few years now. Many of you may be familiar with the title from past emails and news letters. I am excited to see this concept finally come into reality after a few different versions have been proposed. The original version had to do with video and audio Podcasting. I made a video pilot series for it in the summer/fall of 06. Even though my directors liked it, we didn’t have the manpower to pursue it at the time. Now I am excited to retool the concept in a way and it is looking better than the original ideas already.

As Ultimate Questions is an apologetics based outreach one might ask the question; Why create more apologetics resources? Isn’t there a lot of good books and web pages out there already?

I would say yes, good question, there are a lot of apologetics books, websites and resources out there, such as Lee Strobel’s “The Case for … “ series or Josh MacDowel books. The challenge that I have found in giving a student a book like Strobel’s “The Case for Christ” is that someone has to be pretty motivated to read a book like that. Even if they got it for free. Students are busy, often overwhelmed by their readings and assignments. When I was a student, I personally only read what I had to as I had more than I could keep up with any way. If someone gave me a copy of the Case for Faith, I may be interested, but I probably would flip through it a little then shelf it as I had homework beckoning me.

The concept behind “Ultimate Questions” is to break the common misconceptions/faith barriers down through being very engaging and concise. We will have 12-18 excellent arguments for the existence of God written by the many of the best Scholars in the country. Many of these Scholars are the ones who originally created the arguments.
The arguments will be proposed in a form of a question that everyone will identify such as: “Why Evil?” Is God Dead? Can chance turn out a Universe? Isn’t spirituality just an illusion of the mind? 7-8 of the answers will be compiled in a very concise giveaway booklet that will have many functions; One being a booklet that a believer could share with a non believing friend in 20 minutes or less. It is also something that will be use full to boost the assurance of Christian who doesn’t have a good foundation or understanding of why they belief what they believe.

Another goal of the booklet is that it will be as visually engaging as intellectually engaging. Each article will be no more than 450 words so it can be read from cover to cover within 15-20 min. The contents and contributors of the booklet are as follows:

Intro (inside cover) Can faith and reason co exist?

1. The Kalam Argument (Dr William Lane Craig)

2. The Fine Tuning of the Universe (Dr Robin Collins)

3. The Privileged Planet argument (Dr Guillermo Gonzalez)

4. Information Argument. DNA (Kirk Durston)

5. The Moral Argument. (Michael Horner)

6. An argument regarding Consciousness (JP Moreland)

7. The Resurrection of Christ. (Dr William Lane Craig)

8. Experiencing God/The Christian Experience (Michael Horner)

Why it matters and the Gospel.


Additional articles/arguments that we will be including on the initial launch of the website are:

A) How can a loving God send some to hell?

B) An argument regarding Confidence in our Sensory and Cognitive Faculties (Trusting our reason)

C) The Ontological argument

D) Does religion poison everything?

E) Why is there Evil and Suffering in the World?

F) Is there any evidence for life after death?

G) Tolerance


The website will be a key component of the outreach tying the promo campaign questions, and the main content of the arguments together. It will also feature a variety of resources regarding the arguments such as video, downloadable text content, an open discussion forum and direct links to other relevant sites and resources.

The site will also be used in the future for other basic apologetics based topics and outreaches that will fall under the brand and genre of Ultimate Questions (UQ).


We have a lot of work to do between now and it’s launch date at the University of British Columbia on Jan 15th 2008. It will be part of a campus wide campaign including a "Does God Exist Debate" featuring Christian Apologist Dr. William Lane Craig. We will then release it to use on our other campuses across Canada.

We would really appreciate your prayers for creative wisdom and favour with the few contributors that we are still waiting to confirm their participation.

God Bless you and thank you for your prayers and support. I will be ahppy to send you a copy of the finished booklet when it is ready. Be sure to share it with one of your atheist friends!

Sincerely,

Gary

A few fresh Pictures

A few fun Pictures from a day at Bear Creak Park in August.



We had a very encouraging start to the new semester as over 120 students joined us for our "Welcome Back BBQ" at Burnaby Mtn Park.



We have many more family pictures available on our facebook accounts if you would like to be our friend! If you are not already!

Please pray for my drug addicted brother.

For the past 24 years my older brother Michael has been in bondage to a drug addiction since he was 16. As of the past few months his addiction has caused him to loose everything, his family including 3 kids,and his house as he is not able to hold a job.

Recently, last week he lost is Abbotsford apartment and has been living on the streets. I have been doing my best to help him through tough love and trying to get him into detox and rehab.I took him out to two rehab centers this week, Wagner hills and King Haven. However he still seems to be resistant to the idea of investing anything into rehab and come clean.

Please pray for him. Pray that he would confess his drug addiction (he is addicted to crack among other substances) and that God would give him the desire to change and get clean. A friend told me that the average addict only survives for around 5 years once they hit the street. Our prayer is that he would go through rehab, come to faith in Christ, and put his life back together. His addiction and actions have been really difficult on our family for over 20 years now.

I will keep you posted with updates on his progress on our blog,

God Bless you and thank you for praying.

Sincerely,

Gary

Join Our National Prayer Chain

Jesus changes the world by changing lives. Prayer is essential in this process. Two years ago in Ontario, our staff and students prayed that God would do a miracle on our campuses. We asked for him to double the number of students (65) who came to faith the previous year. He answered with 143 students indicating decisions for Christ! We are now going to pray for a miracle again. Our desire is to gather together 2000 staff, students, alumni and ministry partners to pray for a breakthrough. We are praying, that by God's grace, He will bring 500 students nationwide to a new relationship with Christ, doubling the number of (250) students coming to faith last year. Specifically, we are praying for a breakthrough in two groups that have been difficult to reach: Muslims and Québécois.

We pray with the assurance of His Word: the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost1. We have the assurance of answered prayer because we have the confidence in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us-whatever we ask-we know that we have what we asked of him. And we know that God can do the impossible, because nothing is impossible with God. Therefore, we rally together and ask God for a breakthrough across the campuses of Canada.

Will you join us? Will you give 15 minutes to pray once per week? Will you consider taking a day or the week to fast and pray that God will grant this breakthrough? Sign up here for a spot.

Let's eagerly anticipate what God is going to do across our through the youth of our nation!