Growing up a conservative Southern Baptist, Mike McHargue loved science.
He would drive his youth pastor and Sunday School teachers “insane,” he said, with difficult questions in his quest to reconcile his faith with science.
Eventually, his youth pastor handed him a book, said McHargue, whose questions led him to embrace atheism before he returned to a more progressive Christianity.
But what he needed, said McHargue — host of “The Liturgists” and “Ask Science Mike,” podcasts — weren’t necessarily answers but a listening ear and an ability to assume a less defensive crouch: “I needed someone to help me lower my guard.”
Getting comfortable with questions was a theme shared by many speakers at “Jesus Rode a Dinosaur and Other Silly Tales,” a youth ministry conference aimed at talking to teenagers about science held earlier this month at Colonial Church of Edina outside Minneapolis.
About 200 people attended the conference, the capstone of a four-year Templeton Foundation grant for Science for Youth Ministry, administered by Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., to get Christian youth leaders to take science more seriously.
It started with a hunch — that youth pastors in America weren’t ready to talk about faith and science with the students in their churches, said the Rev. Tony Jones of Science for Youth Ministry….
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