Welcome to a very special five part series from Simple Faith Believers
and churchgoers have heard over and over again of the importance of
sharing and understanding your faith.
This is called apologetics, and for some of you, apologetics may be your thing.
It may be an area of interest and practice for you, but for the rest
of us, apologetics can feel off.
It can feel more like trying to argue someone to heaven
rather than lead them to Jesus.
In this series, we wanna look into the question, what if you're right?
What if apologetics, as we know it and have heard it before,
actually is doing it the hard way?
If that's true, is there a way that might make sharing your faith?
A little more simple.
Rusty George: conventional wisdom often dictates that there's some kind of an
engagement of intellect or presentation of carefully honed arguments, uh,
presenting some kind of irrefutable evidence in order to help change
somebody's viewpoint or worldview.
Well, these are some of the questions we're gonna ask over the next five
weeks, and that is, is that the only way.
Because many of us have wrestled with sharing our faith.
We've heard great commission being preached at us about how
you should have a burden for lost friends and lost loved ones.
Uh, you should be better at sharing your faith.
And as if it wasn't hard enough.
Now we have a culture that's deeply divided around politics and values, and
it feels as if there's only one thing people in our culture can agree on,
and that is that they don't agree and they don't necessarily enjoy church.
So how do we truly connect with those whose convictions stand
and start contrast to our own?
James Browning: Our investigation begins with a seemingly simple idea
that genuine human connection may be a crucial first step in navigating
the complex landscape of belief.
Rusty George: You know, there are many branches of apologetics that have
developed over the past 2000 years from classical to evidential to cultural.
And over the course of this podcast, I featured many experts in these
fields, including some of the leading experts on apologetics
like Sean McDowell and Lee Strobel.
These brilliant men and women have helped our generation build out a solid case for
Christianity and the solid foundation of reason and truth that our faith rests on.
But over the past several years, our culture has shifted pretty dramatically.
And if you're like me, you may have wondered what actually works now.
You may have found that an argument in a world of documentary people, uh, no
matter how solid or reasonable, it's just kinda like a drop in the ocean.
People spend all day arguing online, arguing about politics, arguing
about sports, arguing about anything.
So today I'd like to see if we can share our faith the simple
way through relational apologetics
James Browning: relational apologetics is the idea of building
trust and understanding with others before presenting arguments.
Instead of spending all my time trying to ask someone to make a
leap, I'm going to spend it building a bridge to get a clearer picture.
Let's look at the history of evangelism.
Much of our modern view of evangelism in general, and apologetics specifically
comes from the Roman way of evangelism.
Author George Hunter says that for the early church Romans evangelism
meant rationally proving the validity of Christianity's truth claims.
Hunter suggests that the Roman approach favored words, propositions,
concepts, and theological abstractions appealing more to the left brain as
Rome and the Roman way of thinking expanded throughout the Western world.
Christianity spread with it, but in the mid fifth century, the Roman
Empire began to fall, and again, along with it, Christianity began to
decline in much of the Western world.
However, there was one region largely untouched by Roman influence, where
Christianity began to spread and flourish.
That was thanks to the efforts of St.
Patrick.
While the Romans emphasized a need to fully accept the gospel and its teachings
in order to join the Christian community, the Celts took the opposite approach.
St.
Patrick and his later converts would create communities with the explicit
goal of inviting non-believers to join the community there, they
welcomed them and through song and story and metaphor, created an
environment where belief could happen.
The goal was to create the fertile soil where the seeds of the truth of the
gospel could flourish, and it worked.
That, and I've interviewed far more than a thousand first generation
converts out of secularity.
And so my own data led me to the conclusion that most people who become
Christians do not decide to believe.
They discover that they believe, and that faith is a gift.
In Ephesians two, eight and nine, uh, I think all of the exes tell us that,
that, uh, golden text affirms that both grace and faith are the gift of God.
And, uh, I felt like the ancient Celtic Christian movement, uh,
understood that and then as the culture moved incrementally from
modernity to post modernity, the Celtic uh, perspective, uh, seemed to
be more astonishingly relevant okay.
So if, if I can take from your book what it was saying is the Roman model
demanded, um, uh, an ascent to a certain body of knowledge and then you joined Yes.
Versus the Celtic model where you became part of a community.
Exactly.
The Roman model, uh, which has been widely assumed in Protestant Christianity,
is that you communicate the gospel and when people say they believe you,
then invite them into the fellowship.
But, uh, the Celtic model say no.
You look for people who are receptive and you, uh, there's some public
communication of the gospel, of course, and some people surface as interested.
You welcome them into the fellowship.
They belong before they believe.
And increasingly in post modernity, it seems like most people have to
experience it that way, or they might never experience it at all.
And the earlier way in some circles that this was framed is for most people, the
Christian faith is even more caught than taught, and they catch it from being in
small groups and other forms of Christian community, including worship, et cetera.
Uh, the evil one does not stack secular society on the side of many
people finding justifying grace.
Apart from the community of faith.
Rusty George: Emerging from this understanding is the concept of.
Of relational apologetics, a paradigm shift that prioritizes
connection before conviction.
This approach contrasts with the traditional Roman way of believe first,
then belong, where doctrinal agreement often proceeds community integration.
Instead, relational apologetics champions what has been termed
the Celtic Way belong to believe.
Imagine a community extending an unconditional welcome offering
support and genuine friendship, creating a context where questions
about belief can surface organically.
The focus here is on cultivating trust and understanding as
foundational elements proceeding the presentation of theological claims.
According to a study by Barna, 12% of believers claim they had
the gift of service, 10% claim.
They had the gift of encouragement, only 3% claim they had the gift
of hospitality, but just 1% claim they had the gift of evangelism.
Maybe traditional apologetics can feel like a challenge because
you've been trying to unlock a door with the wrong key.
This time, let's try the key that God made you to use.
James Browning: Hannah is a staff member at a church in Southern California.
She and her husband had recently moved there from across the country, and the
majority of the people that she were also on staff or attended the church.
At the beginning of the new year, her lead pastor started a one life
campaign encouraging everyone in the congregation to pray for and reach
out to one life with the gospel.
Hannah worked with preschoolers and does not identify as being gifted in vandalism.
Though she isn't shy about her faith, even still, she didn't know anyone well enough
yet to really start evangelizing them.
Hannah Browning: My husband and I were in a small group One week, the
leader of the group asked us to pray for a friend that was her one life.
This other woman was going through a rough divorce.
Her kids and our small group host kids were friends, and God had
placed her on our leader's heart.
So my husband and I decided that we were going to adopt her one life,
and so we started praying for her.
Soon.
Our leader invited her to our small group and we all became friends.
Just a few short weeks later, she asked Jesus into her heart.
James Browning: At first, Hannah said that it felt like cheating, like they
needed to find their own one life and that maybe they were stealing someone else's.
But the more they thought about it, and the more they discussed it with their
group, the more they realized that this was how all relationships work.
This is how their small group worked when they moved and joined the group.
We are constantly being invited into friend groups or families, or inviting
others into our groups and families.
Why are we trying to do it all apart from one of the key benefits of
Christianity, which is Godly community?
I.
Rusty George: The power of authentic Christian community
emerges as a significant, often unspoken form of apologetic.
For individuals who have never encountered tangible expressions of Christian Love and
care, the lived reality of a supportive and inclusive community can serve as
a far more compelling introduction to faith than any philosophical treaties.
Thinkers like Ooz Guinness underscore the reality that belief is frequently shaped
and sustained within social frameworks.
Personal experience often echoes this truth.
The positive influence of a friend who holds a particular belief can be a
powerful catalyst for further inquiry.
James Browning: Yet a critical question arises.
Does this emphasis on connection risk diluting the core tenets of faith?
Is being nice, a substitute for the clear communication of the truth.
This concern is acknowledged directly within the framework
of relational apologetics.
It is crucial to understand that this approach is not a
watered down version of belief.
But rather the essential groundwork for the effective communication of truth,
it is learning someone's language in order to tell them the good news.
Greg Cocal astutely points out kindness alone is insufficient.
It must be coupled with an appropriate communication of the truth.
Greg Koukl: This is one reason why I think it, it's almost dangerous for people to.
Lean too heavily on that read, which is gonna break on 'em because, oh, you
can't reason somebody into the, well, there's a lot of people that need that
kind of thing to remove the obstacles
keep in mind too, any of your friends that are listening to the show that
have skeptical or non-Christian friends that have pushed back
against Christianity, I guarantee you everyone is pushed back for a reason.
They will say, well, this bothers me, this and whatever it happens to be, hypocrites
in the church, or, uh, problem of evil, or Jesus being the only way or can't
trust the Bible right down the line.
But these are all reasons that they, that, that they are not willing to
take the Christian message seriously.
Now I think we understand that there's.
Another reason that goes deeper than that, that has to do with rebellion and
sin, but at least this, these are the first things we encounter, and unless
we remove, it's not always the case.
But often, unless we remove those barriers, we can't get to the real issue,
which is their rebellion against God.
Yeah.
One qualifier here though, we, we lower the bar for our
engagements with other people.
Let's just be friendly, let's be warm with them.
Let's build relationship.
And, uh, it doesn't mean though that we substitute being warm and friendly for a
substantive communication of the gospel.
Right.
Uh, and what I say to folk is, if you think that being nice.
People is, is going to be the way that you're gonna win them to Christ.
And, and you kind of stop there.
Just keep in mind you'll never be able to, to out nice a Mormon, so
this is why we want to make sure that our, our, our gracious.
Character and demeanor and involvement with them is coupled with an appropriate,
um, communication of the truth.
James Browning: The strategic imperative lies in the order,
establishing a foundation of connection.
Creates an environment where truth is able to be received and
understood with greater openness.
Rusty George: Thus the act of sharing one's faith can be reframed.
Not as a forceful imposition of doctrine, but more of an invitation.
An invitation to engage in meaningful dialogue and then become
part of a supportive community.
This subtle but significant shift in perspective can alleviate the
pressure for those sharing their beliefs and reduce the sense of
threat for those exploring new ideas.
In Luke 15, one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible, we
read the parables of Lost Things.
We've got the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, the Prodigal Son.
In each of these three parables, the emphasis is not on finding the lost thing.
The emphasis is no command for you to find the lost thing.
The parables are all about the party.
When the lost thing is found, they're in response to Jesus, welcoming
and eating with the sinners.
The Pharisees were questioning Jesus' efforts to build a relationship with
people who didn't live like him.
And in each one of the stories, by word count, Jesus spends the most time
talking about the party and the final parable, the story of the prodigal son.
Not only was everyone in the community invited to the party, but the lost
son was too, and so was the other son.
The other son was chastised for not participating in community despite being
right, despite having the truth and having had the truth the whole time.
He still missed the relationship.
James Browning: The emphasis shifts from delivering pronouncements to
walking alongside individuals, actively listening to their narratives and
providing a shared meal or space for exploring life's profound questions.
In short, the reason Apologetics has felt off.
The reason it has been so hard and so complicated is maybe because you've
been trying to do it by yourself.
Rusty George: As we wrap up this first episode, we're
left with some key questions.
Have personal experiences shown that openness to new ideas is often
linked to the person presenting them.
How does the feeling of being truly heard impact one's willingness
to consider new perspectives?
And does the concept of belonging before believing resonate with observations
in various aspects of life, both within and beyond religious context,
yet a significant challenge remains.
If relational apologetics hinges on building authentic connections,
how do we navigate the deeply entrenched mistrust that can arise
from negative experience with religious individuals or institutions?
How do we bridge the relational barriers created by church hurt?
James Browning: This critical question will guide our
exploration in the next chapter.
See you next time.