Sharing the Gospel on Campus
In April 2016, Dr. William Lane Craig was invited to speak at the Meyer Lectures at St. Mary's on the Lake Catholic seminary in Mundelein, on their spectacular wooded campus north of Chicago.
The topics given Dr. Craig for his lectures were "What Philosophy Offers to the 'New Evangelization'" (available here) and "Methods for Sharing the Gospel on College Campuses". The "New Evangelization" refers to Pope John Paul II's call for a re-evangelization of traditionally Christian countries which have become secularized, as in Europe and North America.
After talking about the unity of Christians across the denominations in a common purpose of sharing Christ through evangelism, Dr Craig shares two ways in which apologetics aids with personal evangelism, particularly in university contexts:
- Training in apologetics helps make Christians more confident in evangelisation.
- Training in apologetics helps make Christians more effective in evangelisation.
He closes with some practical suggestions:
- Don't allow the arguments to distract you from sharing the Gospel.
- Start simply.
- Have a list of arguments memorised.
- Memorise the premises of the arguments.
- Have some awareness of the evidence for the premises.
- Stay focused on the premises - don't get distracted by red herrings.
- Never forget that our goal is to win people, not arguments.
© 2016 William Lane Craig
