Eikon Church - Little Rock, AR

Loading...

Archives > death penalty

point/counterpoint week 2: death penalty audio Posted by Ryan Byrd 04.21.2010 7:57 am

point/counterpoint

last week, we kicked off our new series called point/counterpoint. in it, we’re tackling some hotly-debated topics: homosexuality, the death penalty, war and politics. the format consists of two speakers who present opposing viewpoints of a topic. each speaker uses the bible as their primary starting point to present their viewpoint. ultimately, our goal isn’t to “tell you the answers”, but to present two thought-out, bible-centric options to guide your own thinking. it isn’t a debate or an argument or a one-up kind of thing, but rather, a healthy, balanced presentation of the issues.

sunday, two speakers engaged in a great conversation about the death penalty. on the affirmative side of the the issue was chris abrams, a husband/father/christian from north little rock, and on the oppositional side was me (ryan byrd).

the conversation was really great and, at minimum, got a lot of people thinking, examining their inherent viewpoints and engaging in conversations after the gathering. i was glad to engage with an intelligent, well spoken person like chris and we were all able to engage in a helpful question-and-answer time.

we hope to have our podcast up and running very soon, but in the meantime, we thought we’d just post it here. you can listen to it in the player or you can download it by clicking here.

our apologies for the poor sound quality. at the last second, we had some technical glitches with our sound board and it led to unfortunately low volumes.

so, if you missed this past sunday, there’s always this week! we’ll be engaging a conversation about what the bible says about war. as always, we meet at 6 pm on sunday nights at the r street community church’s building (more info). see you there!



point/counterpoint: voting results Posted by Ryan Byrd 03.24.2010 8:07 am

point/counterpoint

a couple weeks ago, we announced our upcoming series (that will begin april 11) called point/counterpoint. in it, we’ll be tackling some hotly-debated topics. the format will consist of 2 speakers that will present opposing viewpoints of a topic. for example, if we do a week on homosexuality, one speaker would present “homosexuality is a sin’ and the other would present “homosexuality is not a sin.” each speaker would use the bible as their primary starting point to present their argument. ultimately, our goal isn’t to “tell you the answers”, but to present 2 thought-out, bible-centric options to guide your own thinking. it won’t be a debate or an argument or a one-up kind of thing, but rather, a healthy, balanced presentation of the issues.

in addition to announcing the series, we presented you an opportunity to actually choose the 4 topics by voting in our poll. we had a great response and we’re excited to reveal what the top 4 vote-getters were. here’s a graph showing the vote tally.

you’ll notice that the top vote-getters are the following (in descending order): homosexuality, death penalty, war & politics. it was a close race several days for nationalism, abortion & sustainable food sources, but they just missed the cut.

we’re really excited about the series & we think it will be a great time to get a variety of viewpoints that all, ultimately, center around what scripture has to say. in other words, one of the things we affirm at eikon is that the bible isn’t necessarily a book full of singular answers, but rather, a guide that helps us plot out ways of engaging in hard-to-understand topics such as the ones you all have chosen.

so, mark it on your calendars! the series begins april 11 and will conclude may 2. as always, we meet at 6 pm on sunday nights at the r street community church’s building (more info). see you there!