Hauna Ondrey and I spoke at Willow Creek’s excellent TruthQuest forum last Friday night. A good size gathering of folks came out for nearly two hours — on a rainy night — for our session. (Hauna and I wrote Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy. It was our first public discussion of the ideas in our book.
As some of you may know, Hauna was one of my students a few years back and is now in seminary. I was proud of her presentation and know that she’s just beginning her speaking career.
TruthQuest is an excellent forum at Willow Creek. It’s theme: all questions are welcomed; no questions are banned. I’ve seen as many as 300 people out for TruthQuest, and so I’m glad Andy Martin has volunteered to head up this ministry. The next two sessions will be led by Jerry Root from Wheaton College and by Judson Poling.
Anyway, Hauna made a presentation on why it is that so many Catholics leave their heritage and make the move into the evangelical church. My presentation was on the chapter about why people walk away from the faith. We had good questions and a wonderful evening. The issues discussed in this book are not light. Yes, at a theoretical level it is interesting and challenging to map the reasons why people make the religious moves they do. At the personal level, though, families are disrupted, personal lives are dramatically changed, and the realities of loss of faith leave some families crushed.
Thanks, Andy and TruthQuest for inviting Hauna and me to share in this important forum.