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Forward in Christ’s newest Bible study author is James Borgwardt. Borgwardt serves at Redeemer, Fond du Lac, Wis., where he’s been for nine years. Prior to Fond du Lac, he was a home mission pastor for 14 years in Savannah, Ga., where he started a congregation and school.
In his six-month Bible study series, readers will have the opportunity to explore the relationship between faith and science, diving into topics such as how science and Scripture are different kinds of knowledge and if Christian faith inhibits scientific discovery (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).
Borgwardt says that despite how society portrays science and scientists, many great scientific minds in history were Christians. “There’s this misrepresentation people have of Christianity—that when you walk into a church you’re supposed to leave your brain at the door. And, honestly, that’s a completely wrong caricature of the Christian faith,” he says.
This topic fits in well with another of his interests: apologetics and defending the faith. “The largest demographic group right now at Redeemer is college-age students. To equip them to face challenges to their faith in the college years and beyond, I wanted to dig into apologetics a lot more than I ever had before,” says Borgwardt. “I’m more of a math guy than a science guy, but I felt I didn’t have enough knowledge as I could have when people asked me questions about when science and faith, at least apparently, contradict each other. It’s just one area of apologetics that I’m interested in.”
Borgwardt comes from a family filled with called workers. The importance and blessing of being in God’s Word every day was instilled in him early on, passed on from a grandfather to his father to him. As his two oldest children, both students at Martin Luther College, New Ulm, Minn., prepare for full-time service to God in the ministry, his simple advice to them is, “Speak the Word and love the people.”
Borgwardt has been married to Heidi for 25 years, and they have four children. “Definitely my biggest blessing to my ministry has been Heidi,” he says. “She has worn probably 20 different hats in the two places where we’ve served. If there’s anything about my ministry that I could say is that the congregations where I got called got a two-for-one deal in the fact that Heidi came along with me.”
Read Borgwardt’s first installment “Faith and the thinking Christian: Science as servant.”
Volume 108, Number 1
Issue: January 2021
