“Why should I trust a man who lived 2,000 years ago, hung out with social outcasts, and got himself killed?”
“Even if there is a God, I’d be only 40 percent sure he’d communicate with us.”
“Isn’t the resurrection of Jesus just an inspiring concept?”
“What do Christians have against the LGBT+ community?”
As a pastor in one of America’s most educated and least religious states, I often hear these questions. In many cases, the inquirer is a sincere agnostic who wants to know whether the Christian faith is intellectually plausible, ethically just, and morally compassionate. But in many other cases, the questions come from church members.
These people are committed to following Jesus, but they feel the pressure of navigating their faith in an increasingly post-Christian culture. They regularly ask me about issues such as the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between Christianity and science.
As a pastor, I want answers too. When I was a young graduate student, my doubts about Christianity prompted me to investigate the rational basis for my faith and eventually to discover it was deeper, richer, and more beautiful than I could’ve imagined. So, like all Christians, I long to commend Christ in all his fullness and splendor to everyone I can.
This is why I find Dayton Hartman and Michael McEwen’s book, The Pastor as Apologist: Restoring Apologetics to the Local Church, so relevant. Their central aim is “to recover an ecclesial approach [to] apologetics where apologetic engagement and Christian philosophy is intertwined with the ministry of the local church and not completely detached from it” (26). This book equips pastors to weave apologetics into their preaching and even into the administration of church programs.
Reclaim Apologetics for the Church
The local church is seldom considered the center of apologetic work. For most, the word “apologist” conjures up a picture of a high-profile Christian intellectual with several academic degrees, a broad reach, and a packed speaking schedule. That’s an image far different from a local pastor in his weekly work of shepherding the flock.
The bulk of the work of commending the Christian faith is not done by high-profile speakers, but by little-known pastors.
Hartman and McEwen, both pastors, want to shift apologetics back to the local church, and that’s a good thing. After all, the bulk of the work of commending the faith is not done by high-profile speakers but by little-known pastors. The authors write, “There is no spiritual gifting defined as ‘Christian Thinker.’ On the contrary, you see that God’s plan for the advancement of the gospel is the local church, and pastors, we believe, are called to help serve the local church in apologetic roles” (2).
Pastors must answer the anguished “Why?” written on the faces of the young couple who just had a stillborn baby. They must preach sermons intelligible to both believers and skeptics. And they must present the hope of the resurrection in funeral after funeral.
Yes, the pastor is an apologist. He might as well know how to be a good one.
The authors make their case for an ecclesial and pastoral approach to apologetics by showing that rational defenses of the faith have come from the local church since the New Testament times. Based on that argument, they offer basic terms and example arguments geared toward pastors to help them embed apologetics in their preaching and throughout church ministries.
Basics of Pastoral Apologetics
The book’s weight rests on the rational and liturgical moves a pastor should make in commending the Christian faith: for example, sound arguments for the existence of God, solid historical evidence for the resurrection, apologetic training, and a winsome Easter service. These are nonnegotiables, of course. But in my experience, unbelievers are more often won over by a Christian’s good character than by her good arguments.
The Pastor as Apologist doesn’t claim to be a comprehensive treatment, but it did leave me wishing for a more fleshed-out vision for the task. Specifically, I wanted to know how the rubber hits the road regarding the claim that “apologetics isn’t just a defense with our words, but also a defense with our whole selves” (7). I longed for more specific examples of how a pastor can shape an apologetic community that bears witness to Christ in both word and deed.
The basic tasks of pastoring—faithfully expositing the Word, cultivating love and fellowship among the members, organizing worship gatherings—wield immense apologetic power. Peter Adam, for example, insists that “when the preacher uses biblical theology, the congregation learns more about the coherence of the Bible. . . . In an age in which knowledge is more and more fragmented, they learn the metanarrative that explains human existence and purpose in the context of God’s saving will and the coming of Christ.” Part of the apologetic task is showing how a Biblical worldview is more realistic, credible, and coherent than any other, which a pastor can do simply by faithfully preaching the Bible.
Pastors should be aware that their strongest apologetic work over the long haul is likely their habits of faithful service.
Helping pastors learn how to weave traditional apologetic arguments into their preaching is important. But pastors should be aware that their strongest apologetic work over the long haul is likely their habits of faithful service. So perhaps the best way a pastor can improve as an apologist is to improve as a pastor.
Display the Glories of Christ
The vision presented in The Pastor as Apologist is one which pastors, seminarians, and laypeople alike should hunger for: “to restore apologetics to the local church,” which begins by “restoring our understanding of Christ as King” (116). After all, it’s through the church that “the manifold wisdom of God” is displayed to “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10).
The Pastor as Apologist speaks to an ever-relevant need for pastors and churches in the 21st century: to make churches centers of apologetic engagement and to equip pastors in the basics of apologetic skills. Engaging, accessible, and succinct, it can serve as a primer for pastors needing a first-level orientation to apologetics and even as a refresher for pastors already trained in it.