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Big Questions In Small Groups (with Becci Greenfield)
38 Plays42 minutes ago
Becci Greenfield
Who did you turn to when you had big questions, even doubts, about the Christian faith? Were there individuals or groups in your church that let you explore your questions without shame or dismissal? Today on PEP Talk we discuss creating "Big Questions" small group discussions within a church setting. They could be a key ministry to help your church family too!
Becci Greenfield works in financial services but has also studied postgraduate theology specialising in the Old Testament. She developed a "Big Questions" ministry in her local church and is active on Instagram @thinkingfaithfully. She lives in Coventry with her husband and 18 month old son.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pep Talk Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. and My name is Christy Mayer and I'm one of the co-hosts for this and podcast and I'm joined today by the lovely Simon. Simon, hello, how are you doing?
00:00:23
Speaker
Thank you very much. Yeah, very well. Thank you. And thank you for calling me lovely. That's very kind. It's been great co-hosting some of these episodes with you um in lieu of ah the banister. So um yeah, it's great to have you here again, Simon. Yes.
00:00:37
Speaker
And Andy andy is is returning actually next week. So we'll see a lot more of him. So he'll be around a bit more soon. So.
Becky Greenfield's Journey and Roles
00:00:43
Speaker
Oh yeah, I saw on a Facebook that he landed to ah a littered airport terminal and felt greatly discouraged by it. So hopefully his experience will just go up from there. But speaking of kind of ah different experiences, um we are joined today by Becky Greenfield, who works for Christian Vision. I believe, Becky, you've been in charge of kind of creating some of the content for Christian Vision And you are also involved. You have lots of different roles. You're also involved in finance. ah You serve through a local church doing all sorts of things. But one of the main areas in which you work is through helping others um ask questions and think about how to best respond to those questions. Is that right?
00:01:23
Speaker
Is that a good summary of where you're at? Yeah, it's hard to find a way to summarize, I guess, because I do so many random different things. But um yeah, my main, I guess, nine to five is in the corporate sort finance world.
00:01:38
Speaker
um I look at innovation and future tech and all that that kind of stuff. um But then I've worked a lot with Christian Vision, writing some content, doing some things around big questions. I work a lot with and local church as well to kind of bring that live to life, do like videos, run groups, that kind of thing.
00:02:00
Speaker
Well, it'd be great to hear and Becky just a little bit about what brought you to thinking about big questions of life. Like why, why are they important to you? how have questions played a role in your own kind of belief formation?
Becky's Faith Journey
00:02:14
Speaker
I guess to give you like the whole story, i always grew up as a Christian um and my parents really strong Christians, have like a really lovely Christian background.
00:02:25
Speaker
But then I sort of had questions and there was sort of never any sort of answers, but particularly the really difficult ones, the ones that i would get school, like the types of things you learn about, classics. things like evolution and that sort of thing.
00:02:40
Speaker
um And then I sort of went away from God whilst I was at university. is like quite a cliched story, isn't it? But um I just really wasn't in faith. And then i started to sort of come back to faith and that was really through experience. But then I started to be like, but I'm just still not 100% because I've got all these questions in my head.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I just am the type of person where I literally can't switch it off. I can't pretend that it's okay not to have an answer. um And so I started studying. I started spending a lot of time kind of trying to understand these questions.
00:03:18
Speaker
um And it was just so helpful. I used to find it really anxiety inducing that I couldn't even face the question because What if the answer was a bad answer? But I've really found that God is way big enough to take any question that you could throw at him. So it's been really incredible, actually, to ask all these questions and find that no matter what the question is, there's a really good answer out there somewhere.
00:03:48
Speaker
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. And what is particularly interesting is obviously you took your own questions that you had, and then you actually started running big question events in churches. Can you say a little bit about, ah we've heard why ah personally those questions were important to you asking questions, but how did you go about ah doing that?
Hosting and Growing Question Forums
00:04:10
Speaker
So if anyone is listening to this and thinking, oh, that's interesting, ah perhaps I could do this. how How do you even go about sort of starting that kind of forum for people asking questions?
00:04:20
Speaker
Honestly, it was kind of like an accident, but I started looking into all of these questions. I wanted to know all these different answers, like did Jesus really exist?
00:04:30
Speaker
What about like evolution and Genesis? like Why is there suffering in the world? You know, all of these kinds of things. And then i thought no one's in like my church like really talking about these specifically.
00:04:44
Speaker
um And although there are lots of apologists you know in the world, there isn't actually, I don't think, as many. Like in local churches, people asking these kind of questions. um And so I just went to one of the pastors and I was like, I think we could just make like,
00:04:58
Speaker
just a house group like just and just we started doing it in our house um invited people if they were interested and then it just became like bigger and bigger so then we started doing different types of groups with different types of people we started doing like a video series and just very locally people have started to almost know that i um I do that. So then they just ask me questions.
00:05:25
Speaker
um Like people will just stop me, especially at church and be like, I've got this really hard question. Can you, or people point other people in my direction. um so it's sort of just snowballed, I guess, but it's quite simple to set up like a small group just to start asking those questions together.
00:05:44
Speaker
Well, yeah, just on that, I mean, what do you have any like top tips as to how you could go about starting a group like that or any things in particular that we should perhaps avoid as you do it?
Strategies for Open-Ended Discussions
00:06:00
Speaker
I definitely think it's to avoid ending up being really like this is the one answer to this this question because I think the whole point of it is if you're setting up a group like this is to be able to have that sort of discussion and to be able to talk about these are all the different perspectives all of us have these are different things that you could sort of read or I always try to make it so that there's things you could read watch or listen to so that if you don't like reading there's like
00:06:34
Speaker
YouTube links or podcasts. um And then you almost say, let's just have a discussion about this and think about what all the possible answers to this question are and particularly why and almost...
00:06:48
Speaker
Even with all these different sorts of answers, they're all pointing towards God, which is the main thing, I guess, to remember. and I think other than that, it's just really to keep it relaxed. Like we would just do it as you would any other home group. And that's how we've continued to do it.
00:07:06
Speaker
um i literally did it at youth. ah like just this Friday just gone. um And it was the same really, just to make sure that people felt like they could be heard and they could discuss. That's always how I would prefer to do it.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting you say that, as I think actually one of the churches I used to go to did a similar thing. And I remember thinking, actually being interested at how different people's takes were on certain subjects, even within a church that I thought where people were quite similar.
00:07:38
Speaker
I'd be interested to know what what what sorts of questions were people asking, or are you saying it's just very, very different from group to group or person to person? It is different from group to group.
00:07:49
Speaker
At youth last week, bear in mind they're all under 18. Someone was asking me about Constantine and I was like, okay, this is an interesting. I'm going to have to take this one away. and But I think one that comes of really often is why is there suffering? That's probably the most common one.
00:08:07
Speaker
um If God is good, why is there suffering? um But also... Genesis and evolution comes up a lot of times.
00:08:18
Speaker
um And then there there are other ones that people are really interested in, but they're maybe not so like deeply bothered by. So things like, what's the historical proof that Jesus exists? I find that generally Christians are so they're not so vexed by that question. They're interested to know so that they can talk to friends.
00:08:38
Speaker
But then there are those questions like suffering and evolution. Those are more like... things that people get quite emotional about as well. and i mean, that's, that's a lovely broad range of questions to be asked.
00:08:50
Speaker
How do you, if you don't mind me asking Becky, how do you, and this is something I think about for myself as well. And I would love to to hear your wisdom. Like, how do you remain sharp and rooted ah in God's word as you engage with all of these kinds of questions?
Balancing Theology with Personal Faith
00:09:06
Speaker
Like, how do you how do you stay on top of them? I guess is what I'm wondering.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's taken a really long time to build up like the question set. um And I've got just like pages and pages and pages of notes and links to different things. And it took a really long time for almost me to work through them.
00:09:30
Speaker
um But then I've also gone through a process of, so I did my master's in theology in like my free free time um whilst I was also working.
00:09:41
Speaker
And I've then had to go through a process of like linking together the real like intellectual theology side of things with like the experiential side of faith and just being on fire for God and just just reading the Bible just for reading the Bible rather than really trying to...
00:10:01
Speaker
but obsessively understand every single thing like and I think I've found some balance with that now but I think you do just have make sure you're not getting too over intellectual and not not really connecting to like just that relationship with God I think you have to keep that balanced
00:10:25
Speaker
thank you for listening to the pep talk podcast we hope you're enjoying today's episode Did you know that as well as talking about evangelism on Pep Talk, the Solas team also does a lot of evangelism. Our speakers are at work every week in cafes, restaurants, pubs, and other places like university campuses sharing the gospel. If your church would like a speaker to come and help you to share the gospel with your community, get in touch with us through the Solas website.
00:10:50
Speaker
And now, back to the program.
Teaching the Old Testament
00:10:53
Speaker
One thing you mentioned is you are you' you've studied the Old Testament in depth, and I suppose that can be a subject that can be quite difficult to introduce to people, particularly in a day where people know less and less about the Bible. I wondered if you had any tips for if someone has questions about the Old Testament. We we actually just ah last week had someone emailing in saying, I'm starting a group with new believers, but they're actually struggling with parts of the Old Testament, particularly ah the violence in the Old Testament. And the so I suppose i I wondered what you would say in terms of how do you introduce the Old Testament specifically to non-believers? Do you have any top tips there?
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah. um So yeah, I did ah Genesis a few times, so the flood and the creation story in my master's. I also did some of the passages from Judges, which I think people would say are like some of the most difficult passages.
00:11:47
Speaker
um And couple of things. One is, i think it's really good to look at what else was happening in the region at the time, um because then you get a sense of how much Israel was was set apart in a really positive way. So for us, it looks like really bad because we live in the modern West, but actually like the comparison is incredible as to how different God is from how the gods are depicted elsewhere. For example, um I would highly recommend John Walton. as someone to read for that.
00:12:25
Speaker
um Really like quite easy to read, quite accessible. um But also like things like Bible Project, which are really accessible, just small videos and stuff that really help.
00:12:36
Speaker
um But then also just trying to understand... um what the actual passage is saying, what what type of literature it is, which sounds, I think, more complicated than it actually is. Like, we all have Google.
00:12:53
Speaker
um I always think as long as you are sort of generally checking your sources, so if you Google something and you sort of just like explain this to me, like why is this judge's passage really difficult – As long as you're sort of checking what those sources are and whether they would generally line up with other things you believe, um I think then you can sort of avoid some of that like confusion and you can access information so easily.
00:13:22
Speaker
i also would recommend um Phyllis Tribble does a book called Texts of Terror, which is a really good um read if you're like really struggling with the those books particularly difficult passages um that's a good read as well This is great. Thank you so, so much, Becky.
00:13:43
Speaker
i guess I guess this kind of takes us a little bit into thinking about how how you go about presenting answers to questions and that you've wonderfully just highlighted a range of sources for people who want to think more about it.
00:13:57
Speaker
But in like the small group kind of context with a few people who are asking some of the questions that you mentioned earlier, how do you go about communicating yourself the person of Jesus or the Christian message, you know, to two people?
Facilitating Faith Discussions
00:14:13
Speaker
So I think the main thing that I would do is try to make sure that everyone can discuss people. that we're not actually answering the question, i would barely ever seek to sort of like specifically answer the question.
00:14:29
Speaker
If it's something quite straightforward, like did Jesus exist? Well, yes, Jesus did exist. There's super obvious evidence and and sort of everyone agrees that most atheists and scholars would say the same thing so in in instances like that but where there are like totally valid christian views that are in lots of different spaces like genesis i would say um or like where there's not ah there's not any kind of easy answer like why is there suffering it would always be based around
00:15:01
Speaker
discussion and letting people bring their own, um like what they know, what they've experienced, their understanding of the Bible and things they've read. um And then just allowing the discussion to flow. we usually do give like some information, like so these are some different things you could think about.
00:15:20
Speaker
And then usually ill follow it up with these like almost like pages that I do that have like These are things you can read. These are things you can watch. And these are things you can listen to that i sort of just gather together so that if people want to refer back or they want to like look into it more, then they can do that in their own time sort of thing.
00:15:42
Speaker
Great. And and have have people come to faith through this? was if you could share any stories of if you've done this with many different groups, what what are the results that you've ah you've seen? And I'm sure there was all kinds of different people along the way. So i wondered if you could share a little bit about that.
Overcoming Doubts through Dialogue
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah. So one in particular that I like really love. So we my me and my husband were at church once and and one of the pastors was was like, there's this guy, he really is, he's scientist, like engineer, he's got some really like questions, big questions that he wants to know the answer to He's kind of interested in knowing more about God, um but like he can't, almost like he can't get past these.
00:16:30
Speaker
um So we literally just sat with him, just in a few armchairs for lot ages and just talked about like his questions. um you know particularly for him because he's an engineer things like evolution and that kind of thing um and he just really was like oh okay so I actually think that I could like this this is something that doesn't like almost go against my like logic and and that the way that I think and all the science that i know and um so then he went on alpha and
00:17:05
Speaker
and became Christian, his family come to church, been coming for a few years now. um We really love them, really close with them. I just built a really good relationship from that. And I think that that was like exactly the kind of thing where if someone's in that space where they just can't, they just can't quite like get over those questions. It's a really good thing to be able to do.
00:17:28
Speaker
Brilliant. Thank you so much.
Starting Your Own Discussion Groups
00:17:30
Speaker
and it's It's wonderful to have had you with us. Can you let us know where where can we find some of these resources you mentioned and anything more if people are interested in seeing some of them there the ways in which you've helped people think about the big questions?
00:17:43
Speaker
um So I can send a link to the video series, which you can link below the podcast. um And then you can find some really good resources on Christian vision, et cetera.
00:17:55
Speaker
um Or you can find me um on Instagram. I can send you the handle as well. um i have one for more like the theology questions.
00:18:06
Speaker
and So you can put that below the podcast too. Great. Well, thank you so much for being with us, Becky. It's really great actually to to hear you encourage people just to sort of not only study the Bible in more depth, but actually just keep asking those questions. And what I particularly liked is, of course, you're not in full-time ministry and you're doing quite a lot of ah ministry ah in your own time. And it shows you actually what what all of us can do actually. and And starting a group like this is something that ah we can all do in our groups. And as you say, it's actually led to many more exciting things. we We had John Lennox speaking to us recently, and he encouraged us just to keep asking questions. So it fits in with that. He said, it actually, as a way of sharing your face, just keep asking those questions until they ask you a question back and then hopefully opening up those conversations.
00:18:58
Speaker
So thank you, everyone, for listening. do tune in again in a couple of weeks for another inspiring guest on the Pep Talk podcast. And it's bye from us for now. Thank you for listening.