Thinking Worldviewishly: Loving God with Your Mind (2-6 hours)
This seminar is a favorite of John and his audiences: worldviews made easy and interesting. An engaging demonstration of why worldview thinking is crucial for every Christian, including a complete introduction to worldview thinking and a contemporary look at the major worldviews that compete for our allegiance, as well as the basics for developing a truly Biblical worldview.
Teaching Worldviewishly: Biblical Integration for Christian Educators (1-2 days)
This seminar is ideal for Christian school teacher in-service training and for home education networks. Studies show that nearly 50% of Christian students will set aside their faith by the time they leave college. This seminar clearly shows why helping our students develop a Biblical worldview must top our priority list as parents and educators, and how to do it. Topics include: “Biblical vs. Secular Education”, “Why a Truly Christian Education is Biblical Worldview Education”, “The World of Worldviews”, “Using the Culture to Teach Worldviews”, “Building on Biblical Foundations” and Biblical worldview integration in each disciplinary area.
Tough Questions for God (3-6 hours)
Based on John’s experience working with students, this seminar addresses the toughest questions he is consistently asked by students about their faith. Topics include “Why Does God Allow Evil and Suffering?”, “What Happens to Those Who Have Never Heard? The Problem of Pluralism,” “How Can I Know that God Exists?”, “Where Do I Draw the Line: Christians and Entertainment,” “Can I Trust My Bible?”, “Was Jesus Really the Son of God?”, “Who Am I and Why Am I Important?” and “Open Forum: Questions and Answers.”
Making Sense of Entertainment and Media (2-6 hours)
Finally, a seminar for parents and students together that takes seriously the issue of entertainment and media, dealing honestly with both parental concerns and student’s questions. Not only does this seminar expose the worldviews at work in entertainment today, but it faces seriously questions such as: “Where do we draw the line?” “Should a Christian listen to “secular” music?” “What is a Christian band?” “What is going on in popular culture?” This seminar confronts these questions straight on, and provides the Biblical foundations for your family to develop a strategy for engaging the culture for Christ, right where it is the loudest.
Being a Christian in Today’s World: Understanding and Engaging Culture for the Kingdom of God (1-2 days)
What does it really mean to be in the world but not of it? Should I even care about culture, or just about individual souls? Do I have a responsibility to try to change my culture? In this seminar, John explores these questions, and more, and gives a Biblical defense for why and how every Christian can take seriously the culture in which he lives. Included in this seminar are discussions about some of the key cultural issues facing us today including biotechnology, family, identity, and evil/suffering. This seminar can be tailored to deal with specific issues upon request.
Real Leader: A Summit Student Leadership Training Experience (1-2 days)
Student leadership- everyone wants it, but is it meeting its potential? Often student leadership programs leave supervisors with headaches and students frustrated with doing “the same old thing.” Based on Biblical leadership principles and incorporating the very best ideas available from the business world, this seminar will not only give your students a greater vision for leadership than they ever imagined, but will take them step-by-step through the process of developing a mission statement and a detailed strategic plan that will enable them to make that vision a reality.
Christian Worldview and Apologetics
Why Students Walk Away from their Faith
Studies show that nearly 50% of students reject their faith in college, and 70% will no longer go to church after they leave home. Why is this happening? What can we do about it? Based on years of research and his experience working with students and parents all over the US, this seminar explores five reasons students walk away from the Christian faith. Suggestions are also made how we as parents, teachers, and mentors can keep this from happening.
The Difference a Worldview Makes
What is worldview? Why Does it Matter? This seminar is a basic introduction to the concept of worldview, with an emphasis on why worldviews matter, and how they impact our lives as individuals and as cultures.
The World of Worldviews
Worldview for beginners. An engaging, easy to understand look at the three major ways of seeing life and the world, using illustrations from history and contemporary media and culture.
Life without God: Understanding and Responding to Naturalistic Worldviews
A deeper look at the worldviews that dominate Western culture: Secular Humanism, Marxism, Nihilism, and Existentialism. A framework is given by which to understand and respond to these worldviews.
Life as “god”: Understanding and Responding to Transcendental Worldviews
A deeper look at those worldviews that begin with the claim that reality is ultimate spiritual and that “god” is the impersonal force that unites everyone and everything. Both “eastern” and “western” expressions of this worldview will be discussed.
Life from the Hand of God: Theism and the Biblical Worldview
A deeper look at Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and how Christianity is unique as a worldview from every other system of beliefs. Special attention will be given to the implications of God’s existence for the rest of reality.
Is Christianity Really a Worldview?
According to George Barna, only 10% of born again Christians hold to anything resembling a Biblical Worldview. Many Christians believe that Christianity only has implications for a personal walk with God, while in fact Christianity teaches us a framework of reality that is unique, distinct, and ultimately true. This seminar demonstrates how Christianity, as expressed through the Scriptures, provides the basis for a complete world and life view.
Why Evil and Suffering? Answering a Common Challenge to Christianity
The #1 question that students have for God often leaves them (and us) speechless. John provides clear teaching on a tough question. This is one of the most impacting talks that John gives.
Is Jesus the Only Way? The Problem of Religious Pluralism
What happens to those who have never heard? What about sincere believers in other religions? This session deals with a tough question in age that finds religious exclusivism intolerable. John deals with the contemporary myths of religious beliefs, while addressing the tough questions that surround this issue.
How We Lost Our Minds: The Challenge of Postmodernism (1 or 2 sessions)
Everyone has heard that we live in a postmodern culture, but what does that even mean? This is a clear concise session on the basics of the postmodern worldview from both a historical and ideological perspective. Includes teaching on the key figures of postmodernism.
Is Christianity True? (1 session, or 1 session for each topic)
How can we know that God exists? Why should I trust the Bible? Did Jesus Really Rise from the dead? How do I know that I can trust the church? This session seeks to offer a case for the truth of Christianity, while clarifying that what it means to embrace the truth must go beyond “proof.”
How Can I Know that God Exists?
A survey of the basic evidence of God’s existence.
Preparing Students for a Life of Faith & Impact
Education
The Biblical View of Education: Why Students Must Have A Christian Worldview
Christian education is more than education in a Christian environment. In fact, it isn’t a Christian education unless it confronts students with a Christian worldview. This seminar provides a model for education that is distinctly Christian, beginning with Christian assumptions, governed by Christian methodology, towards Christian ends.
Why a Secular View of Education is Doomed to Fail
A secular view of education is not only based on a faulty view of reality, but specifically a faulty view of what a human is. This session exposes these false views, and where a secular education necessarily leads.
Using the Culture to Teach Worldviews
Rather than trying without success to teach students to avoid our culture, or be intimidated by it, why not use culture to help them develop discernment? Avoiding culture is not only impossible, it’s unbiblical. Methods are offered during this seminar to teach discernment, and to keep up with culture as an educator.
Vocation: What it is and Why We Must Reintroduce this Biblical Concept
What should I do with my life? A better question is “Who Am I?” A secular education teaches students to make a living. A Christian education teaches students to make a life. The long, lost concept of calling is explored here, including clear Biblical teaching of how the concept applies beyond occupational ministry. Unlock a student’s vision and watch him change the world!
Cultural Issues
In, but Not Of: Clear Teaching on Christianity and Culture from Acts 17
Should we withdraw from culture? Should we become “relevant” to culture? What does it mean to live as a Christian in today’s world? Using Paul’s teaching and actions, in light of the overall message of Scripture, John looks at our responsibility to culture and the individuals in it.
The Brave New World of Biotechnology (1-2 sessions)
Cloning, stem cells, artificial intelligence, abortion, euthanasia. Biotechnology is the social issue of our times, and is moving at pace that leaves any ethical consideration way behind. Christians simply MUST address this issue, but many have no idea what is even going on. These sessions provide an introduction to the emerging technologies, and clear concise teaching on the key foundational issue of personhood and what makes humans valuable.
The Cultural Identity Crisis: the key question of our times . . .
Biotechnology, international relations, perverted sexuality, gender confusion, the crisis in the family, fashion . . . The key question that faces our civilization, at every turn, is what does it mean to be human. Inevitably, a culture that forgets God will forget what it means to be themselves. This session looks at that question in light of current cultural issues and gives Biblical answers.
Boys to Men: The Biblical View of Masculinity (Optional additional session with Sarah Stonestreet: Life-Givers: The Biblical View of Femininity)
Fundamental to bearing God’s image is what we do with our masculinity and femininity. But, who is talking about it? The main voices in our culture on gender either deny or pervert it. These sessions, among the most popular at the Summit-East conferences, approach the issue from a constructive perspective- how did God create male and female?
Understanding Youth Culture
The most powerful culture shaping force in America is entertainment. It literally changes not only what we think about, but how we think. This seminar presents a fresh, and Biblical, understanding of entertainment as well as strategies for helping students understand this cultural force and respond Christianly, without being irrational or afraid of it.
Christianity in America Since 1850: How We Have Been Shaped by the Past
Understanding the past is key to understanding where we are. In this session, John surveys the fundamentalist/modernist controversy at the beginning of the 20th century as a key to understanding where we are today in the relationship between church and culture.
What Really Happened at the Scopes Trial?
The Scopes Trial was the most important single cultural event for Christians of the 20th century. Yet, few historical events have ever been more poorly told than what happened in 1925 in Dayton, TN. John clarifies what really happened and draws contemporary lessons out for today. (NOTE: For interested groups, this session can be offered as part of a tour of the courthouse where the trial happened, and actually in the courtroom where the trial took place!)
Marriage and Society: Where it Fits in God’s Plan and Why It’s Worth Defending
In this seminar, John talks about the ways in which the traditional view of the family is best for society and individuals alike, about God’s original plan for marriage and family, and about the consequences a deteriorating image of marriage and the family are having on our culture today.
| 
http://www.summit.org