Jerry Root

Jerry Root is Associate Director of the Institute of Strategic Evangelism at Wheaton College, Illinois, where he is also Associate Professor of Christian Formation and Ministry and Evangelism and Leadership. He has served on the Adjunct Faculty at Biola University since 1991, teaching courses on C.S. Lewis. Jerry’s lecture tours have taken him to over 31 countries on three continents, and he has pastured three different churches over twenty-three years.  He has published several books, their subjects ranging from friendship evangelism to examinations of confessional literature in the medieval world. His most noteworthy work continues to be The Quotable Lewis. Jerry holds the PhD from British Open University and the MDiv from Talbot Graduate School of Theology.

2012 Forum Sessions

Afternoon Workshops

Pre-Forum Seminar

Post-Forum Seminar

Afternoon Workshops

C. S. Lewis and the Religions of the World

C. S. Lewis abandoned the early Christian faith of his childhood because he believed it insufficient to account for the complexities of life; it lacked the capacity to account for the “roughness and density” of life as it is actually lived. In time Lewis would come back to a far more robust and helpful understanding of faith; but, his pilgrimage demanded he sift through the various religious claims before he made an actual commitment to Christianity. This seminar seeks to set forth what Lewis discovered on his own journey and is presented in the hopes that the various ministries of apologists and evangelists might benefit from Lewis’s observations.

C. S. Lewis and the Problem of Evil and Suffering

C. S. Lewis rejected the Christian faith of his childhood because he thought it lacked the capacity to give an answer for the pain and suffering one will encounter in this world. In time, he discovered that his materialist assumptions were more lacking still. Over time he made his way back to Christianity. This seminar describes Lewis’s approach to make sense of suffering after his conversion. The outline is drawn from Lewis’s first book of popular Christian apologetics, The Problem of Pain. Lewis’s argues coherently, and what he says is helpful; but, like all apologetics, his claims are incomplete. This seminar seeks to set forth both the strengths and weaknesses of Lewis’s theodicy benefitting from the good elements of his argument and looking for ways to buttress the weaker elements.

Spiritual Formation: What does it mean to grow in Christ?

We define ourselves by means of the love of God. Having been recipients of his love we are also ambassadors of his love and forgiveness to others. Though out the history of Christian spiritual formation, maturity has virtually always been conceptualized as, union with God and His mission for the world. This workshop will explore those areas of life that can possibly prevent maturity in Christ. Time will be invested in discovering in what way our wounds tend to be deeper than our convictions, and why. It will also explore how God can work through our human weaknesses and recycle them into assets of empathy in order to reach others for Christ and His Kingdom

Relationships Built on Authenticity and Humility

Christians believe that all proper understanding of authentic relationships must be based on the doctrine of the Trinity. It is an ontological fact that God is love. It is in light of God’s love that an idea of what it means to be an authentic person begins to merge. We use the word authenticity unthinkingly, almost as if having said the word we have the quality. Only one person who ever walked this earth could truly say he was an authentic person. So the real question for each of us is, “How does an inauthentic person begin to approximate authenticity?” Certainly humility and honesty must be part of the equation. This seminar is about the cultivation of that form authenticity that is displayed in humility and honesty and cultivated in the love of God.  

Pre-Forum Seminar

If C. S. Lewis Were Here Today, What Would He Say?

To say what Lewis would say requires an omniscience that escapes me. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say: What did Lewis once say that still has great relevance today? In his day many things that Lewis said and wrote were noteworthy; today some of these same things come to us with a prophetic clarion call. Among these were: his arguments on behalf of objective value (or, what he called the Tao) in The Abolition of Man; his teaching about the dignity of man (“there are no ordinary people”) and the depravity of man; and, his injunction to those preparing for ministry “Woe to you if you do not evangelize”. This seminar will focus on these important ideas in Lewis with a view to their timeliness today.

Post-Forum Seminar

How Do We Practically Grow?

TBA

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