Handling controversy in our fields as Christian scholars

With the close of the recent faster-than-light neutrino debacle, I find myself contemplating how Christian scholars can responsibly respond to other Christians' questions about controversial events/findings in our fields. In particular...

1. When other Christians ask us questions about these controversies, how can we tell if they are genuinely interested, or simply tapping us for information?
2. How do we caringly but fairly defend our field if other Christians seek to use these controversies in attacks against the mainstream incarnations of our fields?
3. How do we explain our qualifications to judge these controversies?

For example, in response to the claims of faster-than-light neutrinos, I as a physicist faced the following issues:

1. Should I attempt to re-explain the findings in response to questions, or simply point the askers to the already-existing (and very well-written) popular documentation of the claims?
2. If a young-earth creationist sees this as a "failure" of physics that would justify his challenge to the estimated 13.7-billion-year age of the universe, how do I lovingly put the claims---and the likelihood of their accuracy---into perspective?
3. In such conversations, how do I humbly but accurately describe my experience with related matters, and mark out the boundaries my understanding of a sub-field of physics that I'm not terribly familiar with?

The one who gets the learning

A theme in studies of student learning in higher education is that the one who does the work is the one who gets the learning. This is the main impetus behind the push away from lectures and toward interactive engagement: If the professor is the one who creates the outline, completes the sample problem, and derives the important conclusions, then the professor gets the learning, and the students get to watch. If the students are to learn, they must be the ones to do the work that leads to understanding.

I am convinced that the same is true in the setting of Sunday morning at church. If the pastor spends all week outlining and cross-referencing the text, examining applications, and drawing the important conclusions, then the pastor has received the learning, not the congregation.

This is not to say there is no place for lectures. Lectures can (and I emphasize "can") be motivating and can lead to initiative on the learners' part. But to have lecture be the only mode of learning that takes place is to fall short of setting up the learners for success.