The first time I ever spoke at New Life Church, East Grinstead was 17 years ago. At that time they were a church of around 150 people who met in a school hall. Since Simon Elliott has been leading the church it has grown steadily, but this morning was remarkable.
They have recently transitioned from one Sunday morning service at the Jubilee Community Centre to two, and both services were full today. There were 7 people baptized across the two meetings. There were probably about 80 to 100 more people there than on any of my previous visits.
Seeing as it was Easter Sunday, in my talk, I followed the approach of Dr Gary Habermas and Dr Mike Licona (who helped me with the research for my book Aftershock) in defending the so-called “minimal facts” approach to the resurrection. I sought to establish four facts that are agreed by the majority of scholars: 1. Jesus was crucified and died as a result. 2. Jesus’ tomb was empty. 3. Jesus disciples believed that he rose and that he appeared to them, and 4. The conversion of the anti-Christian persecutor of the early church, Saul of Tarsus.
I then ran various theories to see how they accounted for these 4 facts, and then looked at how the resurrection explanation does, when compared to the competing hypotheses.
I then sought to present the good news about Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection with various visual aids and there were 7 people who publicly responded to know Christ personally. It was marvelous to hear some of their stories afterwards and to learn about people coming to trust in Christ for the very first time.
I so enjoyed worshipping with a church that has such momentum; that has such a great bunch of teenagers who so participated in the worship and to hear tremendous testimonies from those who were baptized. All in all, a very joyous occasion!