Secrets

Last year in our home group (small groups that meet locally through the week to discuss the Bible and their faith: the idea being one of Wesley's) we worked through John Dickson's The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission. Sub-titled "Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips"

Meeting fortnightly we have not completed it, and may do so this year. We used the study guide by Simon Smart, which was quite helpful.

The book was a good springboard for discussion. It covered a number of topics that do confront the Christian in everyday conversation, but it failed on a number of grounds, and its object is undermined by the failure of public Christians (those who get media time, whether in general or church media) to speak the gospel!

One doesn't need to go into a long discourse on these dimensions of disappointment, because they are captured in the author's appearance on the ABC's discussion program Q&A. If you've not viewed Q&A, it is typically a forum for jeering at the range of views not held by half-baked socialists. This includes Christian faith, of course.

Dickson, who is also associated with the self-styled Centre for Public Christianity, (I would think more of such an organisation if it was connected with a theological college, for example) was on a panel with a well known and outspoken atheist, Lawrence Krauss (mentioned in this article). Dickson failed at every opportunity to deliver an aggressive Christian critique of the fellow's empty world view. Not only that, he even endorsed its basic premise in materialistic evolution. So if the atheist's basic claims about the structure and content of reality are right, in Dickson's assessment, the gospel has no point!