Rethinking Apologetics for Students
I’ve often said that modern youth ministry puts the right emphasis in two places: evangelism and apologetics. While other areas and elements of youth ministry are debatable, there is hardly a youth group I know that doesn’t consistently emphasize these areas—and rightfully so.
In many ways, evangelism and apologetics represent the foundational dimension of a student’s faith. How a student is able to articulate and share their faith while also defending that faith is a helpful barometer to know how well the student has “owned” their faith and is maturing spiritually.
Yet I’ve been surprised as I continue to teach youth ministers. If one were to ask me before I began teaching about youth and family ministry what one question I would hear the most, I would have struggled. I may have speculated that students would inquire about curriculum (which they have), or about activities, or even about the magic equation of ordering the right amount of pizza (a professional secret). Still, the one question I hear from aspiring youth ministers more than any other, interestingly enough, is about apologetics.
Students consistently ask me if I know of any apologetic resources that focus more heavily on worldview issues or, what Forlines calls “the inescapable questions of life.” Most of these students have plenty of resources concerning archeology, history, science, and other topics to defend their faith. What they are seeking is an apologetical method that deals more centrally with the various presuppositions found in their world.
We can easily sit back and critique the current state of youth ministry. In my own writing, I have done this very thing, and there is certainly a place for that. However, I don’t want to reorient this entire area of youth ministry concerning apologetics, but instead make a slight course correction. In doing so, I hope to benefit youth ministers and youth alike.
The Right Direction
There is hardly a youth ministry I know who isn’t consistently concerned with defending the Christian faith. Often, one of the main aims to help teenagers own their faith is to help them articulate a proper defense of it. As the logic goes, the better a teenager can defend their faith, the more they have possession of it. Hardly anyone can disagree with this. Teaching apologetics is one of the best ways to instruct a student in articulating and acknowledging the truths of Christianity.
Nevertheless, in the midst of this healthy direction, youth ministers must understand the globalized, media-saturated culture in which we live. While turning on their television, looking at their cell phone, or glancing at their computer/tablet, youth are being inundated with a variety of messages. These messages are often more implicit than explicit and more formative than informative. What is more, some of these messages, unsurprisingly, conflict with Biblical Christianity.
For example, in an article for The Atlantic, Larry Taunton makes some striking claims about young atheists. Taunton and his team interviewed many young atheists to try and find some common denominators that led to their religious decision. While one would expect these students to cite at least one of the “new” atheists, Taunton and his team instead “heard vague references to videos they had watched on YouTube or website forums.”[1] While youth ministers are diligent to teach their students solid proofs for the legitimacy of Christianity, the world-at-large is drawing cultural maps for students to follow day-by-day. Even on social media, students are getting a more holistic answer to their inescapable questions. The media they interact with daily is shaping the way in which they view the world.
A Slight Correction
You might ask, then, what should we change in apologetics for youth ministry? If we’re appropriately helping students defend their faith, why should we try to fix the un-broken apologetic? This is where I would like to offer a slight course correction to student ministry apologetics. Walt Mueller writes,
Adolescence is a crossroads. It is a time marked by overwhelming change, numerous questions and a search for answers. Not sure which direction to take, the emerging generations are presented with confusing messages and options. Usually the signposts they choose to follow are the most attractive, loud and convincing in response to their unspoken teenage cry of “Show me the way.” The choice is made easier when they see their peers moving en masse in one direction. The automatic assumption is, “That must be the way.”[2]
The answer, to which Mueller alludes, is that youth are looking for more holistic answers to life’s questions. This is where we need to make an adjustment.
Broadly speaking, there are two main schools of apologetics: evidential and presuppositional.[3] The titles are telling. The former tends to focus primarily with historical/scientific proofs in order to substantiate a case for Christianity. The latter, however, deals primarily with people and their worldview presuppositions.
This is where we need recalibration. In my experience, the vast majority of apologetical resources and teaching for students have emphasized a more evidential approach. While we should not do away with these, I’m convinced that a millennial generation living in the throws of postmodernism desperately needs a more presuppositional approach to apologetics. For example, while dealing with the story of Noah, we may give our students more archeological proof for the Flood; but we should also encourage them towards dealing with God’s Divine judgement. The former deals with mainly evidences while the other may deal more heavily with the presuppositions of various worldviews. Or another example: while talking about the claims of Christ, we may give historical evidence concerning Jesus’ historicity; but we should also help students understand the exclusivity of Christ, and the presuppositions entailed therein.
The impetus for my concern here is that too much evidential apologetics with youth ministry may result in simple talking points in a discussion about their faith. Yet helping students understand both their own Biblical presuppositions and the presuppositions of other worldviews can help them have a more holistic understanding of the world around them, better orienting them to use evidences properly.[4] To put it another way, evidential apologetics may teach our students what to think, but a presuppositional approach will lead them in how to think. To echo Mueller, these students find themselves at crossroads trying to understand the world. As Francis Schaeffer argues, the real question in apologetics is whether the communication given by God completes and explains what we already know to be true.[5] Does God’s special revelation to us “fill in” our understanding of the world?
Conclusion
Remember, apologetics is not a field in of itself. As Cornelius Van Til has argued, it is the discipline that runs through the entirety of Christian thought.[6] Thus our aim in apologetics is to help believers worship God better. As Schaeffer states, “If this is not our own response first of all, and then the response of those whom we try to help, we have made a mistake somewhere.”[7] And this is our charge in ministry, to present believers mature in Christ (Col. 1:28). We help students formulate their worldview and defend it, and by doing so expand their potential for worship to God (Eph. 3:18).
Thus, my encouragement, I hope, is two-fold. First, I hope that youth ministers and ministries alike will continue to emphasize articulating and defending the Christian faith. May we never lose sight of the importance in helping youth verbalize their beliefs. Second, I hope I have offered here a slight appeal to expand one’s efforts. While advocating for a more holistic apologetic for students will require more time and energy, it will also be far more rewarding. It will demand that we respect the honest questions of teenagers about various issues, while helping them to understand what is behind many of their questions. Yet my prayer is that in moving in this direction we might see more and more students embrace a more robust understanding of their faith.
____________________
[1] Larry Alex Taunton, “Listening to Young Atheists: Lessons for a Stronger Christianity” The Atlantic, June 6, 2013, accessed September 14th, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/listening-to-young-atheists-lessons-for-a-stronger-christianity/276584/
[2] Walt Mueller, Engaging the Soul of Youth Culture: Bridging Teen Worldviews and Christian Truth (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006), 80-81.
[3] To some extent, this is an over-simplification. While opinions differ on how many “schools” of apologetics there are, I have found this article to be a helpful introduction on the topic and perspectives of apologetics: http://www.bethinking.org/apologetics/an-introduction-to-christian-apologetics. Also, see Five Views on Apologetics.
[4] Evidentialists rarely work exclusively in evidences. Likewise, presuppositionalists don’t discount the use of evidences. Nevertheless, these categories prove helpful when developing a framework for teaching and facilitating apologetics.
[5] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy, (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), 120.
[6] Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2003), 20-54. Van Til argues that apologetics, rather than functioning as its own discipline, should function across all theological disciplines.
[7] Schaeffer, Trilogy, 125.
Recent Comments