Response from S.U.

The following is the response from S.U. - in the person of Dr Andrew Smith.  I am grateful to Andrew for his prompt reply that came as a comment on the original post.  However, I am never sure how many people (apart from the authors!!) look at the comments that are made so, in fairness, I am 'posting' it as well.   My only continuing concern is that the Muslim young people might end up having a greater influence on their Christian counterparts - even if they are already youth workers!  To that end, I would encourage all of my Christian readers to uphold these young disciples of Jesus in prayer - and to visit the website for additional information!  http://www.scriptureunion.org.uk/YouthEncounter/41589.id

Dear Brian

I'm writing to you in response to your post about the Discipleship and Diversity training day. My name is Andrew Smith, I am the director for Youth Encounter and am running the training day. Firstly can I thank you for alerting me to the fact that it was mentioned on Radio 2 - I missed that programme. Also for raising these important questions which many people have, and with which I am always happy to engage.

Youth Encounter is a Scripture [Union?] project which has the clear aim of 'Helping Christian young people live out their faith amongst their Muslim friends', an issue which is important for many young people across the country. The Discipleship and Diversity training day is part of this project and is designed to help Christian youthworkers in their discipleship of young people. At the day we will be looking at:
• What issues does living amongst Muslims raise for young people and how can we speak into this?
• How can we help them build friendships with Muslims?
• Can they share their faith with Muslim friends? If so how?
• How do we help them deal with conflict?
• What kind of events could they invite Muslim friends to?

As you can see this is not about assuming that we all believe the same, but aims to help young people love their Muslim neighbour with a genuine love whilst also loving the Lord their God. It also equips the young people to 'give the reason for the hope they have within them. With gentleness and respect'.

The other main work of Youth Encounter is the bringing together of Christian and Muslim young people to build friendships and to understand and explain what they believe. Once again this is not about claiming that our faiths are the same. At every event we run (and you can see many examples on the Youth Encounter website)we look at an issue of interest to young people and look at how Christianity and Islam speak into the issue. We then clearly identify the similarities and differences between the teachings of the two faiths. In doing this we challenge the young people to discuss difference peacefully.

I hope you can see that this work strives to be faithful to Scripture and relevant to the lives of young people.

Finally you raise the challenging passage in 2 Corinthians, with Paul's injunction that we must not be yoked to unbelievers. I believe this passage is a real challenge to the whole church. I'm not sure that in our work we are 'yoked' with Muslims. In fact in many ways I am yoked to other non-beliers not least through the fact that I have a mortgage with a bank with no Christian basis. I'm also aware that there are churches up and down the country doing very good work in conjunction with local authorities, the police and others. These partnerships could be considered ‘yoked’ as they carry contractual obligations. In the light of this I think it is important that people like yourself keep asking these questions so that the church more widely can wrestle with these important issues.

Thank you, once again, for asking these questions and for taking an interest in the work of Youth Encounter.

Yours,

Dr Andrew Smith
Director of Youth Encounter