Apologetics Illustrated During Church Services

Church services provide some good opportunities for pastors, Sunday school teachers, parents, and others involved to teach and reinforce apologetic concepts. Since services often involve various types of repetition (e.g., regularly celebrating communion), there's more opportunity for reinforcement accordingly. For example:

- In the process of turning to a passage in the Bible, we distinguish one book from another. We distinguish among the gospels by the names of their authors. That's relevant to the popular modern claim that the gospels initially circulated anonymously. We have a lot of evidence that the gospels were distinguished from each other by means of authorship attributions from the second century onward. And continuity is more likely than discontinuity. It makes more sense that the gospels were distinguished by means of author names in the first century than that they weren't. That scenario better explains the widespread acceptance of the practice later and the absence of any comparable or better alternative. The need we have today to distinguish among the gospels in order to turn to a passage in one of them existed in the first century as well, and that provides evidence against the claim that the gospels circulated anonymously at the time.

- Baptism offers evidence for early interest in Jesus' burial and the empty tomb. We see that in Romans 6:4, for example. That's relevant to claims about the alleged lack of interest in and lack of references to the empty tomb among the earliest Christians. For further discussion, see here.

- Some portion of 1 Corinthians 11 will often be read or referred to during the celebration of communion. Verses 23-26 are valuable in some apologetic contexts. They illustrate Paul's knowledge of various details in Jesus' life, in agreement with the gospels. And these verses provide an example of Paul distinguishing between his own words and those of Jesus (verse 26 and beyond) rather than putting whatever he wanted to convey into Jesus' mouth.

These are just a few examples. Others could be added. I'd recommend mentioning concepts like these more than once. But even mentioning them only once could be enough to create an association in somebody's mind between an apologetic concept and a particular aspect of a church service. The association can then be reinforced many times over the years as that aspect of the church's services is repeated.

Ideas For Christmas Sermons

I recently referred to the problem of Protestants being shallow and overly repetitive in their sermons, including Christmas sermons. I discussed a related problem a couple of years ago. There was a news story about how pastors neglect apologetic issues during the Christmas season, even when those issues are prominent in the society around them. In light of these problems, I want to post some ideas for potential Christmas sermons, in addition to the idea I suggested in the first post linked above. This list isn't meant to be exhaustive. These are just several among many more that could be added. The links below, including links on scripture passages, will take you to relevant posts in the Triablogue archives. These are just ideas in seed form, which would need to be developed to produce sermons, Sunday school classes, blog posts, or whatever. The posts I link provide further thoughts about how to develop these themes:

The Anti-Catholic Mary Of Christmas

It's become popular in many Protestant circles to say that we need to find a balance between Protestant and Roman Catholic views of Mary. Supposedly, Protestants, especially Evangelicals, are overly negative about her. In an attempt to resolve that alleged problem, we're often encouraged to give a lot of positive attention to Mary during the Christmas season. She's often featured in Protestant sermons, for example, as a model believer. Sometimes we're even told that Protestants have a problem with being "afraid of" Mary, being "suspicious of" her, etc.

Playing hooky

This is a sequel to a post I did several years ago:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-tebow-sabbath-breaker.html

As the Superbowl approaches, some pastors are decrying Christians who skip church to watch the Superbowl. A few quick observations:

i) i agree that many Americans have skewed priorities when it comes to sports. (And not just Americans. The same holds true for Europe, the UK, and Latin America.)

That said, unless you think professional sports is sinful, a prudent pastor should pick his battles. No point attacking something that's popular unless it's sinful. That's a lost cause. 

In cases like that, it's best to take advantage of the situation.

ii) At the risk of stepping on some toes, most church services are eminently forgettable. How many church services in your experience ever made an indelible impression? If you attended one less church service per year, what difference would that make? Would you remember the service if you hadn't played hooky that Sunday? 

iii) Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting that watching football is more important than attending church. Mind you, that depends on the kind of church you attend. There are situations where you'd get more from reading a good Bible commentary. 

iv) Someone might object that this isn't a fair way to assess church attendance. The value of church attendance is cumulative and fairly subliminal. A form of spiritual maintenance. A regiment or discipline which helps to keep you from drifting. 

If that's the argument, I agree. But by the same token, skipping one service has negligible effect. 

v) A better question is what we do in our spare time generally. It's not enough just to complain about how many churchgoers fritter away their leisure time on trivia. They need advice on how to make better use of their free time. 

John Bugay to speak on Roman Catholicism

Here's a little bit of shameless self-promotion. My church has asked me to speak to its Apologetics Group, the Agora Forum, on the topic of Roman Catholicism, and "how Roman Catholicism is different from Protestant Christianity". This coming Friday night, November 21, on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Email me, johnbugay [at] gmail [dot] com for questions or directions.

American Pastors Silent On Controversial Issues

See Jim West's post here on a recent Barna study. Contrary to what's often suggested, pastors typically avoid controversial issues like abortion and same-sex marriage rather than saying a lot about those subjects. As I've said before, the claim that churches focus too much on such issues, are overly political, etc. seems to often be a dishonest excuse used by people who rarely or never attend church. They're trying to come up with a justification for something like not attending church or rejecting Christianity, so they cite the common claim that churches are too focused on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. In reality, churches are addressing those issues far too little.

I suspect that a large percentage of pastors are highly ignorant of the issues, and that's part of the reason why they don't say much about them. Other factors are that they're overly concerned about not losing their tax-exempt status, not dividing the church, not losing financial support, not being accused of being too political, etc.

How Parents And Churches Produce Apostates

Wintery Knight recently put up two threads I recommend reading, here and here. He addresses some recent cases of the apostasy of professing Christians who had been raised in Christian homes. Read the comments after the initial posts as well. A lot of good points are made about parenting, apologetics, apostasy, what it's like for students to attend universities in today's world, the role of the local church, and other, related topics.

For those of you who don't want to have much involvement in apologetics, but instead want to just pray, study the Bible, entrust your children to God, etc., I would ask whether you take the same approach toward other areas of life. Just as you don't teach your children about matters like apologetics and church history, don't teach them ethical standards or things like how to tie their shoes or brush their teeth either. Don't work a job. Don't pay your bills. Don't shovel the snow off your driveway or cut your grass. Don't go to a doctor, watch your diet, or exercise. Don't do any research about finances or saving for retirement, for example. Instead, just trust God, pray, read your Bible, and so on. Don't make the most of the resources God has given you, such as the mind he's given you and the opportunities he's given you to do research and reason with people. Instead, just pray, read the Bible, etc. (the same approach you take toward apologetic matters) and wait for God to pay your bills, cut your grass, and set aside money for your retirement. See what happens.

Making People See Their Need For Apologetics

Here's a podcast J. Warner Wallace did last year about neglect of apologetics in the church. He plays a recording of a meeting he had with a church youth group, in which Wallace's son posed as an atheist and interacted with the teenagers who were there. As bad as they were at responding to Wallace's son, I suspect that most church youth groups would do even worse.

I think Wallace makes some good points during the program. I suspect there's a lot of value in approaching youth ministry the way he suggests.