About

We are a group of Evangelical Christians interested in Christian apologetics – that is, understanding and defending the Christian faith intellectually, through reasoned and informed discussion. Some reasons why you may want to join with us can be found in the About Apologetics section.

We meet every month to learn and discuss how to defend the Christian faith (see Meetings links for more details).

MCAS is run by the following:

Name: Rob
Age: 30s
Family: Married with two daughters
Employment: Student
Interests: Apologetics, philosophy, theology, science, reading, technology, family..

Name: Chris
Age: 30s
Family: Married with three daughters and one son
Employment: Science
Interests:

Our goals are:

• To meet regularly with people with an interest in apologetics – help them – learn from them – encourage them.
• To encourage the preparation of short or long talks, book reviews or other items with the goal of learning and presenting them to others. This will encourage reading and studying of material with a definite goal in mind.
• To better understand the world as a unified work of God and develop a solid reasoned coherent consistent Christian worldview.
• To be more effective as an evangelistic Christian.
• To encourage Christians to become thinkers and thinkers to become Christians.
• To help equip the next generation of Christian leaders to lead.
• To train Christians to enter the ‘marketplace of ideas’ with a clear Christian message.
• To initiate, promote and advertise meetings by those within the society and visiting speakers.
• To act as a hub for apologetics resources such as books, DVDs, journals, MP3s, websites and more. We have many resources available listed under Recommended Resources on the web site as well as non-listed materials.
• To challenge wider society to consider the Christian faith.
• Run prep-courses for college/university entrants?

Why should I use my mind ?

1 Peter 1:13 : Therefore, prepare your
minds for action, keep sober in spirit,
fix your hope completely
on the grace to be brought to you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Membership

Membership means you are committed to our Doctrinal Statement and is required if you wish to have voting rights or to speak at any of the meetings.

Members could receive other as-yet unknown privileges.

A membership form is available in MS Word format or PDF format (***on old website still***).

Doctrine: Why do we need a doctrinal statement?

Simple – because doctrine defines what we believe. Those who don’t know what they believe are likely to believe anything.

This should not be the way of the Christian. We have the greatest teacher ever to walk the earth as our founder and Master and our goal should be to follow His teachings. Primarily this is through the inspired Word of God, otherwise known as the Bible or the Scriptures.

But don’t Christians all disagree with each other?

Christians do often disagree over the meanings of various biblical texts – this has led to the creation of various denominations. However Christians do mostly agree on a large set of fundamentals such as: (i) there is only one true God, (ii) God exists as three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and (iii) Jesus Christ is both the Son-of-God and God-the-Son.

If you pick a denomination, any denomination, you can generally describe quite well what this group of people believe.

The great Apostle Paul (who wrote much of the New Testament) told us that presently “we see as through a glass dimly, but one day we will see Christ face-to-face” (paraphrased). Simply rendered, we do not know all the answers this side of the grave but when we meet Christ on the other side, face-to-face, we shall see things clearly.

So, we Christian believers ought to learn to disagree agreeably and charitably and get on with the tasks at hand that all Christians agree on.

So what about this apologetics society – is it another denomination?

No – generally those involved in apologetics take a ‘broader road’ than a single denomination would.

Apologists may deal with specific doctrines. E.g. they may talk about the trinity or defend the deity of Christ but generally the topics are broad enough to encapsulate most major denominations.

These topics could be (for example) the origin of life, the historicity of the resurrection, other religions or cults, young or old earth creationism, or the Moral Argument for the existence of God.

This does not mean that people involved in apologetics are not interested in solid well-defined doctrine – most often they are – but apologists tend to deal with a different set of issues than those covered during a Sunday worship service.

What do you mean – a different set of issues?

Churches are to teach their congregations the Scriptures, lead their people in worship of the Creator and provide a place for Christians to meet together each Lord’s Day for worship and fellowship and much more.

A Christian apologetics society exists to encourage Christians to understand and intellectually defend the Christian faith. Emphasis would be on developing our minds and understanding so as to provide our churches with a foundation of defensible and intellectually rigorous beliefs.

Ok, so what is your Statement of Belief?

Thanks for asking. Here goes:

• The divine inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. The Bible comprises the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament.
• The eternal, everlasting, self-existing nature of the Godhead, Who is Maker of the universe, which is separate from, but being finite is completely dependent on Him; Who is both transcendent of and immanent within His creation; Who is the great I AM and Immanuel of the Christian scriptures; Who is Creator and Savior, Judge and Lover of humankind.
• The unity of the individual Persons of the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead; and the full divinity and full humanity of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
• The universal sinfulness of human nature and the universal guilt of humankind since the Fall, rendering all subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.
• Redemption from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death on the Cross (as our Representative, Substitute, Victor etc.) of the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.
• The bodily (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:44) Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead understood as an actual event, subjectively experienced by Jesus Christ and presenting objective evidences open to observation and evaluation; as an event integral to God’s saving and cosmic action in Jesus, revealing and completing the victory of the Cross.
• The necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about God’s purposes in Jesus Christ, which are: to bring salvation to people and to establish, sustain and perfect God’s Kingdom.
• The indwelling and work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.
• The return of the Lord Jesus Christ, with His saints, to raise the dead, both the righteous and the unrighteous. The righteous shall enjoy everlasting life with God and the wicked shall endure everlasting, conscious punishment away from the presence of God’s Glory.
• The completion of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.