Two days apart in May, Christians had to digest two announcements pertaining to high-profile Christians. At first glance, these two announcements seem unrelated. But they are not, and the relationship between the two is critically important for pastors.
On May 19, Ravi Zacharias, influential Christian apologist and prolific author, passed away from a rare form of cancer. His death was felt widely across the evangelical landscape. We had lost a stalwart defender of the faith.
And the next day, May 20, Jon Steingard, front man for the popular Christian band Hawk Nelson, announced on Instagram that he no longer believed in God. We had gained an outspoken defector from the faith.
Like many postmodern Christians who have announced their defection in recent months, Steingard attributed his departure from belief to a “process.” A pastor’s kid, Steingard said his family was always focused on the church and grew up with a shared belief so “central to everything” that he simply “adopted” what they believed.
But then Steingard began to question why he believed it. His doubt took root when he questioned the Bible. He could not reconcile what he perceived as “contradictions” and imperfections in the Bible with what he had been taught. Soon his doubts pulled him away, and he now professes to be an “agnostic,” not sure if God exists, but hoping He does.
So, pastors, what does that have to do with you and me?
Steingard’s honesty is to be commended. But his defection and the postmodern climate that we live in should be a wake-up call to pastors. We can no longer count on the expertise of apologists like Ravi Zacharias to answer the hard questions of our people. It falls to us. Actually, it always did. That’s our calling.
Most American pastors have done a good job preaching and teaching what we believe. Mainly because that’s all we needed to do. For generations, Americans agreed on the basic tenets of a Christian faith, or, if they disagreed, the confrontation was over what we believed, not why we believed it.
But the stakes are different now. Church is different. If you have anyone in your church under forty years old, they are postmodernists, grappling less with what you preach and more with why you preach it. We can no longer assume that what we believe is accepted as is. Now we need to teach why we believe it, as if it has never been heard before.
Apologetics is the practice of answering the “why” questions, of defending the veracity and reasonableness of the biblical worldview. And the pastor is the primary apologist in the church.
I want to offer three main reasons that I think every pastor must embrace again the role of a Christian apologist in the postmodern world, and begin to proactively teach the “why” along with the “what,” before it is too late.
- Because our calling is to defend the Truth
Every time we open the Bible and teach from it, we are advocating the truth (2 Tim. 2:15). Absolute, definable, and unchanging Truth. This truth fuels Christian apologetics.
That means that pastors are the foremost defenders of the truth in their churches. But we are defending the truth in a postmodern culture, in which the most basic assumption is that there is no such thing as absolute truth. And if those opposing worldviews clash for us, imagine what it is like for our congregations.
Pastors practice apologetics each time we call people to respond to and believe the truth. In the postmodern world, we cannot slack off from this. We are defenders of absolute truth, God’s Word and the content of it, which all points to the Son of God, “the Way, the Truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
- Because our calling is to win the lost
Christian apologetics is the servant of evangelism, removing barriers to faith (Acts 17:22-23). In fact, Christian apologetics has no significant meaning or ministry apart from the church and the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).
Postmodernism must be answered, so it is inspiring to see the multiplication of academic degrees in apologetics, and the accessibility that pastors have to those degrees and other resources. But because of the rise of degrees in apologetics across the Christian academic landscape, Christians tend to view apologetics as a separate philosophical discipline.
As pastors, we have to retain the connection between apologetics and evangelism in the local church by teaching it in the church and applying it in the culture. Like Zacharias, most great apologists begin as evangelists, and they see apologetics as the servant of evangelism. Francis Schaeffer, whose ministry of apologetics in the late twentieth century laid the groundwork for many who followed, was often perceived as a philosopher and apologist. But when asked what he was, he answered wisely and biblically. He was an evangelist.
- Because our calling is to disciple the saved
Our job is to teach and equip disciples (Eph. 4:11-12). So we do a pretty good job of teaching church members how to do church. But we forget that we need to also teach them how to think biblically and prepare them to answer questions about their faith (1 Peter 3:15).
In this, I am not talking about simply teaching Christians how to answer Jehovah’s Witnesses, or how to defend the authenticity of the Genesis creation account. That’s important, but discipling Christians means cultivating a biblical worldview. That’s how we equip Christians to know the “why,” and to confidently believe the wonderful truths of a biblical faith.
And as we teach, we should expect doubters, even in the closest-knit parts of the body of Christ. We need to be careful not to push them away or leave them swinging in the wind. We should answer them, with patience and kindness, and tell them why we believe what we believe (1 Cor. 13:4).
We do a great disservice to our members if we give them the impression that apologetics is all about exposing the falsehoods of the Mormons at the door, but we leave them high and dry when they need to tell their teenager why they believe what they believe.
Remember how Jesus treated the world’s most famous doubter? A doubter, by the way, who had been exposed to Jesus’ teaching just like the other followers, but who still struggled with what God was doing? Yeah, Thomas. That guy.
Jesus came back, showed up, just for him. He said, here you go Thomas, proof that there is a compelling “Why” for the “What” you believe. And with that, Thomas not only embraced the truth of the gospel, he also learned something he had not known before. He learned that it mattered to Jesus that he believed. It mattered so much, in fact, that Jesus would take time out, come back, and respond to his doubt (John 20:24-29).
Do you suppose that singular moment made the difference between Thomas being a defector or becoming a defender? That’s apologetics. That’s what it looks like. Let’s get back to our calling, before it’s too late.