Lecture Series Opens Door for Community Dialogue

When you are trying to communicate the gospel message, however, it is often a good idea to get an expert's help.

Valley Covenant Church and Church of the Servant King hope to challenge Christian and non-Christian thinkers in this community through a series of Church and Culture lectures. Thus far, a host of internationally respected biblical experts in various fields have taken part in conferences, with noted teacher/writer Stanley Hauerwas keynoting the October 1999 conference at Valley Covenant Church.

Hauerwas is professor of theological ethics at the Duke University's Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. He has also authored numerous books, including Prayers Plainly Spoken and A Community of Character. He also co-authored (with William Willimon) Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony.

When Steve and Beth Bilynskyj arrived in Eugene seven years ago, they found one of the most educated communities in the United States. However, according to Beth, it was "with ears that don't hear (the message of Christ) and eyes that don't see God's work."

Steve Bilynskyj (who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame) became intrigued with the non-Christian mindset of his neighbors. The Valley Covenant pastor also felt a responsibility to articulate a Christian worldview to the community.

Bilynskyj began discussing the idea of a lecture series with John Stock, pastor at Church of the Servant King. The two churches were motivated not by just evangelism, but by being faithful to Christ's command in Luke 10:27 to "love the Lord with all your heart and soul and strength and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself."

"We pietists do a good job at loving the Lord with all our heart and soul and strength, but we've also got to remember to love them with our mind," Beth said.

In the fall of 1999, Rodney Clapp, a former editor from InterVarsity Press and Christianity Today, keynoted the opening lecture series at Valley Covenant. Since then, the churches have been blessed not only by consistent attendance, but also by the openness of quality speakers who have appreciated the mission of the series.

Church of the Servant King was mainly responsible for procuring Hauerwas, having modeled much of its church structure on his writings. And the Bilynskyj family both had interactions with Hauerwas when they were students at Notre Dame. When the opportunity to get Hauerwas to speak became available, the churches were ecstatic.

The previous speaker in the lecture series, Dr. W. Jay Wood, gave the Eugene audience much food for thought as he challenged them to think of faith in a unique way. His last of three lectures during a spring series was prompted by an experience he had speaking to an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) group at the University of Chicago.

"They surveyed the campus and asked students why they didn't believe in Christ," Wood said. "Then they wrote all the responses on huge sheets of butcher paper and posted them on the walls of the room in which we were meeting."

Wood had expected to see responses focusing on the problem of evil, or on the relation of science and religion, or other similar objections. To his amazement, "nearly 80 percent of them said, "How can anyone think that Jesus Christ is the only road to salvation?"

In responding to the question posed by the college students, Wood then sketched three possible positions people have taken to the question, "Jesus Christ is the only way to God."

"We've got many people in Eugene who are appalled at the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to God, the exclusiveness of that claim," Beth Bilynskyj said. "They see that as intolerant, narrow-minded, bigoted. But, for the more rigid, they saw the liberality of the position that God might want to save everyone," she continued.

"Wood got us going back to the scriptures to see what the truth really is," she said. "He gave us three different options to consider. We had people coming away from the lectures saying that they had gotten a theological framework to locate ourselves in relation to others, both Christians and non-Christians. And it sharpened our minds so we could be Christ to the community."

For more information on the Church and Culture series in Eugene, visit www.valleycovenant.org or contact pastor Steve Bilynskyj at 541-744-9343.

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