September Update

I wanted to send a short note on a few topics:

1. Finished teaching The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus for the adult Sunday School class
2. Mark your calendars for the lecture by James Walker on October 8^th for his talk on “From Mormonism to Christianity”
3. Six-week class on “Christianity Contrasted to Mormonism” starting early November

Update on Summer Happenings

I hope everyone’s had a great summer so far! I’ve been able to enjoy a lot of quality family time this summer but still have been busy with apologetics studies. Specifically I’ve been engaged with three main apologetics efforts:

1. Taught the Fallacy Detective with middle and high school youth group
2. Preparing material for course on Christianity vs. Mormonism
3. Started teaching to Case for the Resurrection of Jesus with the adult Sunday School

"Case for the Resurrection" Updates

[Below is an email I sent out to the mailing list on June 30, 2016. Sorry for posting this so late!]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

I recently got around to updating the website with the remaining Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (CRJ) material. I've posted the remaining "recap" emails that were sent out to the blog. Also I added links to the PowerPoints if you'd like to check those out here. Finally, I've posted my personal outline of CRJ. You can use that as a concise reference of the book's main points.

CRJ: Class 5 Recap

Thursday April 7, 2016 we met for our final study of “Case for the Resurrection of Jesus”. Overall our study of this book and topic went really well. There were a lot of thoughtful discussions at every meeting, we learned a lot, got better equipped to make a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus, and bolstered our faith in the truth of Christianity! Before a recap of Thursday’s meeting, I want to say thank you to everyone who supported this study. Thank you to everyone who came out to the meetings, thanks to those who provided much prayer and encouragement, and thanks for the opportunity. Thank you!

So Thursday’s meeting consisted of two parts: 1. Final cumulative quiz 2. The challenge of naturalism

Recap of Resurrection talk with J. Warner Wallace

On Thursday March 31st we got together to hear J. Warner Wallace's argument for the resurrection from his cold case detective perspective. Unfortunately we had issues with Skype and weren't able to connect with him live so we called an audible and watched a YouTube video of his presentation. We all really enjoyed it and everything still went well!

At the end of his presentation was an offer to receive the video and other resources of his for free! But, you need to type in a special URL into your web browser, this site can't be found through Google. Below is the URL, just sign up to receive all his materials for free! http://coldcasechristianity.com/resources/ Also I'd highly encourage everyone to browse Jim's website,ColdCaseChristianity.com. He has a lot of really great resources and material available on a wide range of Christian apologetics topics.

CRJ: Class 4 Recap

Our fourth meeting was on March 25th, 2016 at Mt. Zion UMC where we did went over six things: The quiz Class changes Who did Jesus think he was? Heavenly vision or bodily resurrection? The Trinity (spontaneous discussion) The Resurrection hypothesis

CRJ: Class 3 Recap

Thursday March 17th, 2016 we had our third meeting to study “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.” This session consisted of four main parts: The quiz The discussion of chapters 6-7 A debate rebuttal A case study The Quiz Everyone did very well on this week's quiz but there was one question that kept a few folks from acing it. Out of the nine questions the average score was 7.1 and this week MIT has taken to cumulative quiz score lead with many close behind!

CRJ: Class 2 Recap

Thursday March 10th, 2016 we had our second meeting to study “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.” This session consisted of a quiz on last week’s content, a discussion of the last three facts, and then an assessment of a few theories proposed to explain the facts. The Quiz The quiz was made up of eleven questions: some true/false, a couple multiple choice, and a few fill in the blanks. Every person has been given a secrettesting name to conceal actual names when posting scores. You’ll get your name at the next class.

CRJ, Class 1 Recap

The first meeting of our study of "Case for the Resurrection of Jesus" (CRJ) went really well. We had about 15 folks in attendance and every single person contributed to the discussion throughout the class! We started off the class by going over the classsyllabus (you can check that out here). Our class objective is to "to prepare everyday believers to defend and articulate a case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus."

"Investigating the Resurrection" Recap

We had a great night on Friday’s “Investigating the Resurrection” event. About 80 people came out to hear Chad do a fantastic job speaking about how the resurrection of Jesus holds up to historical investigation. He presented the minimal facts to be explained - the evidence that critical and non-critical scholars all agree on – and then evaluated popular proposed explanations. He concluded by showing that the hypothesis that best explains the evidence is that “God raised Jesus from the dead!” Lots of discussion after the talk

Upcoming talk on "Investigating the Resurrection"

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's. To start off 2016 we will be hosting a talk and follow-on study on the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus.  Before studying apologetics I always considered the resurrection of Jesus something you simply believed on faith or not. But, as a historical event, it is open to investigation like any other event of history.