Emerging Scholars Blog

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Faith is Like Skydiving

Loving our Atheist Neighbors with Truth and Love: Rick Mattson at Urbana

How should Christians approach conversations about faith with atheists? At the Urbana Student Missions Conference, Rick Mattson examined common atheist arguments and argued for a holistic Christian response that includes intellect, care-giving, and friendship.

From Dec 27 – Jan 1, volunteers with our network of early career Christian academics are liveblogging seminars at the Urbana conference, a mission-focused student gathering of 16,000 Christians from across North America and the world. This post was co-written by May Yuan and Nina Thomas.

Rick Mattson speaking on loving atheist neighbors at Urbana 2015

Rick Mattson (Twitter) is a traveling apologist and evangelist who has served InterVarsity/USA for over thirty years. He attended Southwest Minnesota State University, and has been on short-term missions to Mexico, Russia, and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Mattson currently holds a M. Div. in Philosophy of Religion at Bethel Seminary. He is the author of the book, Faith is Like Skydiving, a collection of dozens of easy-to-use images to explain Christianity. In addition, he is currently an InterVarsity staff worker at Macalester College and St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and has traveled to over 50 different campuses as a speaker. [Read more…] about Loving our Atheist Neighbors with Truth and Love: Rick Mattson at Urbana

Getting started with “How Faith Is Like Skydiving” (Excerpt)

Faith Is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics by Rick Mattson (InterVarsity Press, 2014).

Many books on apologetics do well with the arguments, but have little on how to present them. Faith Is Like Skydiving combines reason with rhetoric, clarity with intellectual depth. It provides a vast array of arguments and a host of images to make those arguments clear and compelling. Intellectually sound and amazingly practical, this terrific book deserves widespread reading. – James Sire, author of The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog and guest contributor to the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) Blog.

Introduction

As you may remember, I recently interviewed Rick Mattson regarding his new InterVarsity Press (IVP) release Faith Is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics. Rick serves with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship — following the Lord’s call to strengthen and encourage Christian students and faculty in their faith, and invite seekers and skeptics to consider Christ for their lives. I particularly appreciate his commitment to compassion, reason, and respect in his interactions with both “friend and foe” on campus. I wish that I had more opportunity to talk with Rick about the great questions of life! If you haven’t already done so I encourage you to read/share his resource rich ESN Blog series Headed to Graduate School. 

Thank-you to IVP for this excerpt from Chapter 1 — where Rick engages the reader with how “faith is like skydiving”. Let’s dive in!
[Read more…] about Getting started with “How Faith Is Like Skydiving” (Excerpt)

Faith Is Like Skydiving: Interview with Rick Mattson

Faith Is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics by Rick Mattson (InterVarsity Press, 2014).

When Faith Is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics came in the mail from InterVarsity Press (IVP) I just had to drop my colleague Rick Mattson[1] an email to enable us to learn more about his new publication. Note: As you may remember Rick wrote a resource rich series on Headed to Graduate School which gave testimony to his passion not only for the life of the mind, but also for creatively engaging in dialogue with seekers and skeptics.

Tom: Rick, I am so excited to have received a copy of Faith Is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics from IVP. Please share with Emerging Scholars the story behind its publication and little bit about how “faith is like skydiving”.

Rick: Tom, Faith Is Like Skydiving is a reflection of my last five years working as a traveling evangelist/apologist to college campuses around the country—about fifty in all. Often my hosts (usually InterVarsity groups) set up events called “Stump the Chump,” where students can ask me any question they wish about Christianity. Immediately I could see that giving abstract philosophical responses to students’ questions would put them right to sleep. So I began creating images and illustrations that were easier to follow and remember. [Read more…] about Faith Is Like Skydiving: Interview with Rick Mattson