Apologetics Needs Relationship
I get a lot of great blog posts that come through my Google Reader friends shared feeds. This post from Reclaiming the Mind Ministries about Dan Kimball and the Emerging Church came through this morning. Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has a great interview with Dan Kimball about his new book They Like Jesus But Not The Church and the Emerging/Emergent Church in general.
Part of the interview was dedicated to talking about apologetics and I thought Kimball had some great things to say. He quotes 1 Peter 3:15:
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
He emphasizes the parts “who asks you” and “with gentleness and respect”:
People don’t just walk up to you on the street and say “what’s the reason for the hope you have?” They will ask you, not you present to them without them asking, when you are in the context of relationships, when they’re in the context of where they’re knowing you and they’ve trusted you enough to where they’re asking you. And so for me, my opinion is that we need aplogetics more than ever in the church today.
Kimball continues to explain that know why the scriptures are trustworthy is the most important apologetic, that of which all other apologetics are based. John Piper recently spoke about this at the 2008 Resurgence Conference. Check out the video of his talk titled Why I Trust the Scriptures or if you’re in the reading mood, his outline and notes from it.
Something to think about.
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Comments
I never understood the whole “conversion by argument” theory.
apologist: So you see from my well crafted argument you’re way of thinking is wrong, you’re an idiot, and I’m vastly superior to you in intelligence…
person: yeah…but I thought this whole Christian thing was suppose to be about Jesus?
apologist: .oh yeah…um…Jesus loves you?
We don’t want to elevate one method (”relational evangelism”) over another (”street witnessing”). Both have born fruit and both have biblical presidence.
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Dustin,
Shared items is one of my favorite features in Google Reader too…so I created a tool to help “Christian readers” share with each other:
http://christianreaders.info/grmashup-1
Let me know if you or any of your friends would like to contribute your shared items feeds to the tool.