January 22, 2018

Live Q&A at Stonebridge Church (2 of 2)

51 minutes

Josh spoke at Stonebridge Church in Charlotte again last November after they finished going through the Equipped for Life Course, to answer their questions.

The topics are listed below in case you want to jump around:

1:00: "Tell us a little bit about who you are and who ERI is."
3:59: "So you've talked about relational apologetics. Let's say I'm pro-life and I hate conflict. I don't want to offend people, so I basically end up never talking about my pro-life convictions. I'm pro-life, but I don't talk about it because it's a very controversial topic. How do I get over that fear? What do I do?"
14:21: "How do we make conversations about abortion more common and less weird?"
18:32: "In your opinion, how can we as a pro-life group at a large church, more effectively stir up passion for pro-life advocacy within our walls?"
22:59: "How can we have a greater impact in our community? In your experience and convictions, assuming that the foundational call is to love God and our pro-choice neighbor, what do you think are the most effective ways to turn the tide of our culture toward valuing the life of the unborn more?"
31:52: "I'm going into professional counseling and have been learning about not imposing values onto clients. So if a client came up to me and said that they want to have an abortion, how should I approach that without imposing my values?"
37:14: "If I'm buying a whole lot of baby diapers or something to give to the pregnancy center, and just by chance someone from Walmart or wherever strikes up a conversation, I think I'd probably keep it real short and sweet, but that was an idea that came to me."
39:08: "I didn't attend the [Equipped for Life] course classes and I don't want to cheapen your 35-hours of course material, but is there 60-seconds that you could give...?"
42:10: "I hear you saying that most pro-choice people believe that an [unborn] baby is a human being, but the woman's right to choose trumps that."
44:51: "In your opinion, if you were to give a state of the union address on the status of the pro-life movement in America and the culture, what's the wind of the culture right now when it comes to this? 60-second state of the union address. Where are we culturally? Is abortion going to end in 2017?"

Josh asked Eric to read the email he sent his friend to initiate a series of conversations about abortion. With Eric's permission, here is the full text of that, and you can feel free to copy any part of it if it would be helpful to you:

Awhile back I had mentioned the idea of the two of us sitting down to discuss our thoughts about abortion. I'm writing you now to tee that idea back up and hoping that you'll say yes. I've been taking a class that has been geared toward having great conversations with people who think differently about controversial topics, and one of the assignments is to literally have at least one actual conversation with someone about a controversial topic. All too often, people on different "sides" of a topic like abortion spend all their time defending their own view and criticizing opposing views without actually listening to and learning from people who have differing views. I want to be a person who listens and learns. Will you help me do that? I'd like to buy you breakfast, lunch, or just a cup of coffee sometime and learn from your views on this. What do you say?

At one point Josh talked about the idea that we don't change people's minds, but that people change their own minds. He neglected to cite him in the moment, but he owes that insight to Timothy Brahm.

Live Q&A at Stonebridge Church (2 of 2)

51 minutes

Josh spoke at Stonebridge Church in Charlotte again last November after they finished going through the Equipped for Life Course, to answer their questions.

The topics are listed below in case you want to jump around:

1:00: "Tell us a little bit about who you are and who ERI is."
3:59: "So you've talked about relational apologetics. Let's say I'm pro-life and I hate conflict. I don't want to offend people, so I basically end up never talking about my pro-life convictions. I'm pro-life, but I don't talk about it because it's a very controversial topic. How do I get over that fear? What do I do?"
14:21: "How do we make conversations about abortion more common and less weird?"
18:32: "In your opinion, how can we as a pro-life group at a large church, more effectively stir up passion for pro-life advocacy within our walls?"
22:59: "How can we have a greater impact in our community? In your experience and convictions, assuming that the foundational call is to love God and our pro-choice neighbor, what do you think are the most effective ways to turn the tide of our culture toward valuing the life of the unborn more?"
31:52: "I'm going into professional counseling and have been learning about not imposing values onto clients. So if a client came up to me and said that they want to have an abortion, how should I approach that without imposing my values?"
37:14: "If I'm buying a whole lot of baby diapers or something to give to the pregnancy center, and just by chance someone from Walmart or wherever strikes up a conversation, I think I'd probably keep it real short and sweet, but that was an idea that came to me."
39:08: "I didn't attend the [Equipped for Life] course classes and I don't want to cheapen your 35-hours of course material, but is there 60-seconds that you could give...?"
42:10: "I hear you saying that most pro-choice people believe that an [unborn] baby is a human being, but the woman's right to choose trumps that."
44:51: "In your opinion, if you were to give a state of the union address on the status of the pro-life movement in America and the culture, what's the wind of the culture right now when it comes to this? 60-second state of the union address. Where are we culturally? Is abortion going to end in 2017?"

At one point Josh talked about the idea that we don't change people's minds, but that people change their own minds. He neglected to cite him in the moment, but he owes that insight to Timothy Brahm.

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Live Q&A at Stonebridge Church (2 of 2)

Live Q&A at Stonebridge Church (2 of 2)