A Worldview/Apologetics Blog For Real People

On January 1, Lord willing, I’ll be introducing a whole new approach to blogging on this site. I’ve made graphical changes before, but this is different. I don’t know of anyone else who is doing this. In some ways it will be experimental. The plan is still evolving in the preparatory stage, and will probably continue to be that way for a few months while I discover the best way to go about it.

Here’s what’s new. Every worldview/apologetics blog I know of, including mine, has been about what interests the writer. For the most part they’re written for an audience of people who are interested in the same things.

But I have been haunted lately by the vision of a family around the dinner table (even that’s an ideal thought, but let’s pass that by), where the middle- or high-school child says, “Dad, Mom, why do we believe … when my friends or my teacher say … instead?” I could fill in the blanks there with a hundred topics, most of which most Christian dads and moms are unequipped to answer.

I’m haunted by the mental picture of pastors and ministry leaders explaining what Christians ought to believe without dealing realistically with the challenges their members face in accepting or explaining those beliefs.

I’m haunted by the thought of men and women in the marketplace who don’t know how to express or explain what they believe.

So I’m going to add a completely new set of features here, where parents, ministry leaders, and everyday Christians can find something that feels like home and help, even if they’re not part of the usual audience of apologetics/worldview writings.

It’s been a busy Christmas season, and we got delayed in our travel by snow, so I’m not totally sure I can roll this out by the target date of January 1, but it should happen soon thereafter if not right then.

Please pray. And if this sounds like something you’d like to help make happen, you could do two things:

  1. Leave a comment with thoughts about topics I could focus on, and even ideas about how best
  2. Make a contribution to help fund Thinking Christian and the new user-centered direction I’m taking with it.

Thank you!

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2 Responses

  1. Elliott says:

    Hi Tom
    I’m on a winter vacation with my wife and daughter Gwendolyn (18 months). One of my goals this vacation was to start researching the christian blogosphere, and find a handful I’d like to start reading. I came across your blog in my search. I like your idea of having a user-driven apologetics blog. My recommendation would be to add some sort of living/growing topics tab (or search bar for your site) in one of the margins, so new users could quickly find content on specific topics you have already written about. For instance over the next year you may end up writing about justification, soteriology, eschatology, etc… If someone comes looking for specific answers to one of those categories it would be most convenient to have ready access to those articles within one or two clicks of the mouse.

    I’ve also found it to be the case that apologetics tends to help answer one question by raising 10 more. I think this is due mostly to the fact that apologetic argumentation uses deductive reasoning grounded on vast theological theories that most church laypeople (such as myself) do not understand comprehensively. In no way is that a stab at apologetics, in fact I think that attribute makes it quite a valuable pursuit. All this is to say, I’d recommend including with your articles (whenever possible) links to other sites, sermons, podcasts, etc… that delve into the specific topic you’re addressing in a more lengthy detailed manner than is appropriate for a daily blog. This would provide an opportunity for your readers to get those 10 questions answered that are spurred from reading one of your articles (and, then of course, give them 100 more questions to answer, and so on).

    Blessings to you in your efforts. Hopefully I will be one of the people to follow along for the ride.

  2. Marie Hughes says:

    I appreciate your article. This is my inspiration, apologetic is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of information. Early Christian writers, who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists.