How Did the Vikings Become Christians?

  I recently took a class in Christian History and one of the things in the class caught my attention and really inspired me and made me feel excited.  I was learning about how the Vikings became Christian.  I grew up as a kid thinking the Vikings were super cool and I have vivid memories of running around the school with sticks pretending to be a Viking and playing with my friends.  So finding out that Viking history is a part of Christian history was an amazing fact for me and added to my strong belief that it is so exciting to be a Christian.

  At this time the Vikings called Scandinavia home and during this time they went through a drastic and rapid religious change.  At the time the Vikings were polytheists.  Which means they were pagan and believed in many gods.  They began to attack and raid Christian monasteries along the coats lines mainly due to the fact that monasteries were wealthy and they were not very heavily defended.  When they Vikings plundered these monasteries they also took Christian monks with them as slaves.  From what I know of Christianity, isn't that exactly how you would expect Christianity to change the heart of a Viking?  Through humble slaves.  From what we can see the Vikings started converting to Christianity quite rapidly.  One of the ways we can see this is archaeologically.  We can see pagan burial practices disappearing and Christian type burials appearing.

I would really like to explore this topic further in my blog in the future but for today, I am happy to know that Vikings are in my Christian family history, and I am so inspired that with their rapid conversion we can know the same thing can happen today.

Should I Invite My Friends to an Event?

  A little while ago there was an Apologetics event in my city that I was excited to go to.  It was put on by an author that I had read one of his books and I was happy to go see him and meet him since I was very familiar with his arguments.  But I didn't know of anyone else who was interested in going with me.  I asked a few of my Christian friends and there simply wasn't any interest.

  So I started inviting my atheist friends.  I have spent a lot of time engaging with friends and have put the work in that my friends know we can be open and honest about our beliefs or lack of beliefs and it won't get aggressive or intimidating.  We always keep it friendly.  To my surprise two of my friends said yes right away.  Then there was one other friend who I was going to invite but was a little worried.  But I took the plunge and invited him.

  He laughed at first and asked why would I invite him to this.  I replied with that he had invited me to many things this year.  Things like night clubs, bars, movies, restaurants, parties etc.  So why wouldn't I also invite him to something I was going to?  I don't think we should just invite people to things that we know they will say yes to.  Why not just invite them to everything.  It is OK to say no.

  So he laughed and said alright.  Wow!

  When we got to the event it was going well.  It was an hour long lecture and then a question period.  During the lecture my two atheist friends were engaged and took a few notes for the question period.  My third friend, he just was playing on him phone.  I was just glad he was there.

  But after a half hour I looked down again and he was still on his phone but he was looking up the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.  I was shocked and pretty happy.  I was happy to see some engagement and some interest.

  The rest of the event was fun, my friends asked some tough questions of the speaker.  But the best part was we all went out for some fried chicken and sodas afterwards which I was happy to buy.  We chatted about a few of the issues but mainly we all just had a good time as good friends.

 So my message to you today is, go ahead and invite your friends to church events and apologetics events.  What is the worst thing that will happen?  They might say no.  That's pretty much it.  But what if they laugh at me or make fun of me?  Yes that is a very real possibility and I have experienced that myself quite a bit.  But people who do that are not your friend.  If people are going to make fun of you and your life they are not your friend simple as that.