NYMC #13 – Graham Stanton

Graham Stanton is the Dean at Youthworks College. On Friday morning I went to Graham’s workshop on ‘Answering Difficult Questions’. It was brilliant! There were some guys sitting nearby that were expecting him to go through a list of tough questions and then give the answers. What they got was much better! Rather than giving the specifics of different questions, Graham gave a Christ-centred framework to help think through how to answer difficult questions. Here are some of my notes:

Understanding God’s Drama (Vanhoozer):

• Creation
• Fall
• Israel
• JESUS
• Church
• New Creation

We live in the 5th Act of the drama. Understanding the drama will help us to understand how to live in this Act (and therefore answer questions).

Principles for answering questions:

1. Directed by God – therefore study scripture
2. Does your answer point to Christ? – magnify Christ

A BIBLICAL RAFT TO NAVIGATE THE WATERS OF CONTROVERSY

• How does the doctrine of creation help me to answer this question?
• How does the doctrine of the fall help me to answer this question?
• How does the doctrine of redemption help me to answer this question?
• How does the doctrine of eschatology help me to answer this question?
• The mast of the boat is CHRIST.

Being from similar tribes, we had fun hanging and chatting with Graham over a couple of meals…I also scored a free lift back to the airport – thanks!

NYMC Live Blog: #1 – Live Blogging; #2 – Getting here, #3 – Josh Griffin, #4 – My Place on MySpace, #5 – Thanksgiving, #6 – Josh Griffin Podcast, #7 – Tim Hawkins and trusting God, #8 – The danger of assumptions, #9 – Forge and the emerging church, #10 – The Skit Guys, #11 – Duffy Robbins,#12 – Tony Campolo.