Apologists in Church

Tuesday Pastor/Teacher Focus

I made a new friend over lunch today, the missions pastor at the church my brother attends, about half an hour from our home. Among other things we talked about the up and down sides of dealing with apologists in church. There are both.

The Apologists' Vocational Hazard…

I was the one who stated the down side, ironically enough. Shawn kept coming around to why it was important anyway. The problem as I see it is not with apologetics but with how it's presented. We apologists like to have answers. It's a vocational hazard of our business. And that's okay when it's connected with the right questions.

What's annoying, in contrast, is the person who comes along and tells the pastor, “I have the answer to your problems — and by the way, I know what your problem is, too: not enough apologetics.” I asked Shawn if he had encountered that, and sad to say he had to say yet.

… and the Pastors'

Where this approach goes most obviously wrong is in forgetting that every pastor has as many bosses as he has church members (maybe even more!), and most of them think they know his job better than he does. It is a hugely difficult task, probably even impossible, to tailor a message to the wide range of people in most congregations, or youth groups, or whatever part of a church any pastor may be responsible for. Compare that to how easy it is to criticize, and to tell a pastor something is missing, and you get an idea what a pastor's job must be like.

So for someone else to come along with some bright idea for apologetics isn't likely to impress most pastors — especially if that person has been inflicted with that other great apologists' hazard of thinking he's smarter than others.

Working To Help One Another

Still, as Shawn insisted (and of course I didn't disagree!) apologetics must be part of a church's ministry. It's crucial to members' strength of faith. It's vital to youth. Presented rightly, they love it! I don't recall exactly how he put it, but the idea was that if we put good questions before them, they're all over it. Parents are key to students' growth in this area, too, he said, and I strongly agree.

I asked him whether there was anything I could do to help in his church, and he had some ideas that we worked through together.

A Word of Encouragement

This is the kind of conversation I could wish were going on in churches everywhere. It's not that apologetics is some universal cure for what ails Christianity; far from it. Rather it's that every Christian expresses different gifts and callings, whereas every church of more than just a few members ought to have ways to express many of them. That means it's okay for someone other than the senior pastor to offer deep teaching. It doesn't mean it's okay for that someone to come in as a know-it-all.

This Tuesday space is for pastors and teachers, and here I am mostly telling you how I wish the would-be apologist in your church would approach you. If you have such a person around, you might be wishing the same thing already! Or maybe you've been blessed with a teacher who can help you help your congregation become more confident in the faith. If so, I pray you'll give them all the room to maneuver you possibly can, because your people need that kind of help.

I guess if there's any message I would want you to glean from this, it's that even though I've never held your job, I think I can appreciate something of its challenges and frustrations, including those difficulties as they relate to apologetics. I hope I can be some encouragement to you.

 

Tom Gilson

Vice President for Strategic Services, Ratio Christi Lead Blogger at Thinking Christian Editor, True Reason BreakPoint Columnist

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6 Responses

  1. Steve Kozak says:

    This is almost the exact conversation you and I had on Friday. I am meeting with a few pastors in the few weeks. I plan to approach much the same way. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  2. Maryann Spikes says:

    This is great, Tom. Will this be every Tuesday? 🙂

  3. Tom Gilson says:

    Sure enough — in fact it has been for a while. Thanks for the encouragement!

  4. Maryann Spikes says:

    Oh yes I see the posts on marriage. I liked your post on unanswered questions! Looking forward to more posts on pastors and apologetics in church! 🙂

  5. bigbird says:

    Our church has a long established apologetics team of 8-10 people that has a good relationship with the senior pastor. This relationship is incredibly important – you won’t get into the pulpit if you aren’t trusted, and you shouldn’t expect to. We preach at all three services about three times a year, so many people in the church are very familiar with apologetics – and it is common (and encouraged) for people to bring sceptical friends along to these services.

    As an aside, I’m not convinced the pulpit is always the most effective way to train people in apologetics. It doesn’t lend itself to questions, and very often people want to ask them, and discuss things in more detail. We recently presented some seminars at a conference run by another church, and that seemed a successful way of doing things.

    For people wanting to share their apologetics knowledge in their church, it might be a better approach to offer to run an apologetics course on a Saturday or something like that – the senior pastor is a lot more likely to be agreeable. Naturally if you do not know the pastor very well (and even if you do), he (or she) is going to need to know what your credentials are. And of course you should be well prepared with details of what you hope to cover.

  6. This is exactly what I try to do in my ministry. I think of apologetics as a support to a pastor rather than coming in as a know-it-all, as if the pastor wasn’t doing a good enough job. With The Bible Can Be Proven, I have tried to do some of the research that the pastor may not have had time to put together, and therefore to be a resource for him.