3.

1 In terms of the ministry you do, who is your audience, and what has most helped you to get to know them? I feel as though my audience has always been children and teens. What I feel has always helped me the most in getting to know them is a sense of empathy. Putting myself in their shoes can go a long way. Trying to view their world from my own eyes helps so see a person for who they are and not someone I want to minister or preach to, it helps me love them. God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ is the ultimate form of empathy. 3.2 Which of the six points of contact described by McGrath do you think is most real to your audience, and why? It would have to be the first. I sense of unsatisfied longing. I believe is a hotpoint for our society in general. Christianity and religion as an institution has been able to satisfy. So, alternative religions are on the table, but are those satisfying? McGrath cites some amazing passages from Lewis on longing. The promise of our desires fulfilled is the mantra for our emerging generations today, but to when these desires are satisfied they only leave the person still hungry. McGrath and Lewis claim is not that God fulfills our desires, but he will satisfy that hunger. 3.3 How does this description of a Christian worldview impact you emotionally and intellectually (try to include both reactions)? Fit the word grandeur into your response in some way. My emotional response, outside of Sire being dead on to his theological description of Christianity, but also that there is so much to God that we fail to see, even has Christians. God is so simple, yet at the same time, so vast and complex. We cannot fathom the grandeur of his glory, yet he has revealed so much. Intellectually, he gave a concise review of systemic theology, which I enjoyed. 3.4 What apologetic problems, issues or concerns do you think arise within this Theism camp? Which of them touch you most personally? The primary problem is the trinity, of the three main religions prescribing to theism. Christianity is the only one that claims the trinity as the nature of God. There is also the notion of grace. Of Christianity, if youre reformed, you prescribe to salvation through faith, not works. Islam and Judaism believe in salvation by ritual acts to please God. Of these it saddens me how we as humans constantly yearn the law. Even in Christianity we tend toward

creating a system by which we can please God and earn our way to heaven. This is just not the way of the cross.
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McGrath, Alister, Intellectuals Dont Need God & Other Modern Myths (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Publications, 1993), 29.