HTB: Focus 2015 (audio)

How do we talk to our children about pornography? How do we monitor what they see online? Romance Academy has been working with teenagers in schools for many years. They see the damage that our sexualised culture imposes on young people today, and the vital role of parents in protecting and equipping their children.

The heretics who concentrated on faith as knowledge are usually called ‘Gnostics’. If Jesus is the revelation of God’s truth, we have to understand why God chose to share that truth not just as ‘knowledge’, but as a human life to follow. What does it do to our understanding of God and of ourselves if we think of faith as essentially about having all the right answers? How does our physicalness form and shape how we live and act as Christians?

In the Old Testament God commanded various wars. In some of these he appears to have condoned the wiping out of entire groups of people. Is God genocidal? In this session we look at how we can understand war in the Old Testament.

Paul Cowley and Jonathan Aitken invite you to grapple with one of the most pressing issues in our society – how we meet the spiritual and practical needs of the 77,000 men and women leaving UK prisons every year and make our society a safer place to live in. Through mentoring, the church has the power to put kingdom love into practice and you have the power to change one person’s life for good. Are you up for the challenge?

 

Some follow. Some reject. Some can’t decide. If the gospel is good news, why are so many put off? Jesus claims to be the only way to the Father and in the process becomes a hindrance to so many who might otherwise want to know God. Our multi-faith pluralistic world demands less exclusivity, so how do we respond?

 

The Internet is a wonderful and powerful tool that is changing the way we learn, but how do we ensure that this virtual world is safe for our children? Paul Lufkin, Headteacher of Wimbledon Park Primary School in London and a parent of four children aged 14–22, shares some strategies for protecting your family online.

 

The problem of suffering is one of the most intimidating objections a non-Christian can raise. This session looks at how suffering can open up gospel-directed conversations rather than shut them down.

 

St Swithun’s Bournemouth was launched at Focus in 2014, with fifteen people subsequently moving from London to Bournemouth. Since then there has been an explosion of life, with hundreds of people coming to worship and transform the area. Tim shares stories of mistakes and mayhem, through which God is moving in great power.