Each year the Bible Society runs Masterclasses across Australia for high school students to invest in their spiritual development and prepare them to be leaders in their school and local community. On Tuesday 8 August, students in the Year 9 Discipleship and Year 10 Leadership classes at Regents Park Christian School along with their teachers Mr Tyler Barnes and Mrs Jennifer Freixas attended the 2017 Masterclass at Sydney Saesoon Presbyterian Church. The Masterclass consisted of three speakers, Dan Paterson, John Dickson and Natasha Moore, who each spoke on their own topics and also contributed responses to a Hot Topics Q&A at the end of the event.
Dan Paterson, a speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, spoke on the topic ‘Why I am not an atheist’, answering objections that the New Atheists have to belief in God and making a positive case from science, history and human experience for the existence of God and his revelation to us in Jesus Christ.
John Dickson, Anglican minister and director of the Centre for Public Christianity, answered the question, ‘Are we better off without Christianity?’, by evaluating the ‘mixed bag’ of Christian history and urging students to follow Jesus by loving our enemies and doing to others what we would have them do to us.
Natasha Moore, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge, spoke on the important topic of free speech and tolerance in a democratic society. In light of the increasing opposition to free speech, particularly on university and college campuses in Western countries, on the topics of race, religion and gender, Moore’s case for free speech was a very important topic for our students.
Our students thoroughly enjoyed the Masterclass and were challenged to grow in their faith in Christ and to reach out to others openly and freely with the love and grace of God.
Mr Tyler Barnes
Discipleship Teacher
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