thinking matters

1. To provide biblical philosophy, apologetics and worldview training so you can more effectively engage an increasingly sceptical culture in your day-to-day life.
2. To equip Christians to confidently respond to increasingly hostile challenges to their faith.
3. To build faith and confidence by providing answers to the hard intellectual questions while showing the reasons why we believe what we believe.
4. To have fun while doing it!
5. But most importantly: To allow us to better love God with all our minds, giving Him glory through our knowledge of Him.

It’s open to Christian and Non-Christian alike – anyone who is seeking the truth in philosophy, science and scripture.

Come to be transformed by the renewing of your minds (Romans 12:2)
so we are better able to love God with all our minds (Mark 12:30)

Fortnightly on Tuesday nights from 7pm until 9pm. Please see our Events and Announcements page for a list of coming events, and subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up-to-date. We also encourage you to join our mailing list so you can be kept informed of events as they come up.

Bethlehem Community Church Centre, 183 Moffat Road, Bethlehem, Tauranga, New Zealand. We are very grateful to Bethlehem Community Church for the use of the venue.

• How to share and defend the Christian faith in our culture today.
• Evidence for the existence of God.
• The nature of Truth, Knowledge, Belief, Certainty and Reason.
• The formation, transmission and reliability of the biblical accounts.
• Moral relativism; "That’s true for you, but not for me…"
• Worldview analysis and how our worldview affects us.
• An introduction to logic, argument and logical fallacies.
• An introduction to Intelligent Design, and problems with the theory of evolution.
• What it means to ‘Think Christianly’ in our culture.
• Who was Jesus? His claims and the historical evidence.
• Biblical history; archaeological and anthropological evidences for the claims of Christianity.
• And more... (Please contact us with your suggestions!)

Any one of these topics could be an entire course of study, but we hope to make the material accessible and interesting to the lay-person. We hope an introductory grasp of these subjects inspires people to do more in-depth study.

• DVD screenings of documentaries and presentations, followed by discussions.
• Live presentations delivered by local pastors, academics, teachers and experts who can contribute material from a chosen field.
• Special events with national and international speakers. Dr William Lane Craig will speak at the Thinking Matters Tauranga launch on the 18th June. We are also arranging a meeting with apologetics author Steve Kumar.
• We will also be seeking potential international speakers to see if they are interested in a New Zealand tour – this will depend on the formation of a national network of people and help from the NZ Apologetics Network who can help to pull together the right people to organise, promote and host such events in all the main centres (please contact us if you think you can help out with this).
• Professionally prepared small group courses such as ‘Tactics in Defending the Faith’ by Greg Koukl and ‘How now shall we live’ by Chuck Colsen & Nancy Pearcey.
• Bite-sized You-Tube screenings and follow up discussions from presenters like Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason.
• Bring your I-pod for take-away podcasts from great Christian thinking such as William Lane Craig, Greg Koukl, Ravi Zacharias, and a wide variety of speakers on the Veritas Forum and B-Thinking sites.

We are also looking for local presenters (pastors, teachers, academics, etc…) who are willing to deliver content that is consistent with the objectives of the group. Please contact us if you think you can help out.

Don’t forget to click here to join the mailing list to get email reminders for coming events!