Making Sense: The Role of Worldviews and How We Can Engage with Them

Many Christian leaders are familiar with the idea of worldviews. However, our understanding of worldviews can sometimes be superficial or narrow. The word is often used in a vague way. Some people see ‘worldview’ as roughly equivalent to ‘culture’. Some use the term to mean political outlooks – a liberal or conservative worldview, for example. In some contexts, ‘worldviews’ means values; in others it means views of God; sometimes it merely indicates attitudes towards life. That all becomes very confusing. Yet these uses of ‘worldview’ are all connected to the basic meaning: a set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality by which we make sense of everything, and which form our patterns of thinking and living. Worldviews are not simply philosophical ideas, though they include them – whether people realise it or not; they also include the big stories in which we locate ourselves. They have psychological and cultural aspects. Worldviews are not just the lenses through which we look at the world, they are the maps by which we make sense of our experiences and with which we navigate life. This webinar will explore what worldviews are, how they function in our lives, and how we can engage with the worldviews around us more constructively. Recorded 27 November 2019.