Always Ready: Apologetics for Every Person

December 9, 2025

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Dr. Renton Rathbun

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 12/09/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

A good day to you and welcome to Stand In the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. Let me paint a picture for you. You are attending a company dinner or even just a neighborhood holiday gathering and the subjects of Israel and Charlie, Kirk or Christmas begin to surface among attenders and you’re overhearing this, and as the conversation grows, they begin to discuss spirituality, religion related issues, and then it happens. A well-intentioned coworker or next door neighbor says, Hey, we should ask, and they say your name because they’re religious, and all of a sudden you’re dropped into an evangelistic or better apologetic arena and you didn’t ask for it yet. In today’s environment, we should not be surprised. So what would you do? How would you respond? Where would you start and would you be ready?

I’m reminded of what the scriptures tell us. One Peter three 15, but in your heart, honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason of the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. I would like to tell you that that scenario is fantasy, but more and more Christians are finding themselves confronted with open doors and they don’t know what to do. Today’s stand in the gap, we want to help you get ready or at least start thinking about the importance of why in today’s culture you’ll be asked to give it an answer for your faith in Christ, and our guest is certainly qualified to help us. Dr. Mark Farnham is Professor of Apologetics at Lancaster Bible College and Graduate School, and he’s the founder and director of Apologetics for the Church. He’s authored a number of books, every Believer Confident, a Apologetics for Ordinary Christians talking about ethics, a conversation about moral dilemmas, and talking about world views, thinking about scripture. Philosophically, we wanted to have him on stand in a gap for a while and we’re glad we got it in before the end of this year. Mark, thank you for joining us today.

Mark Farnham:

Oh, it is my pleasure to be with you and to encourage Christians that they can engage unbelievers with the gospel.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen. Amen. Mark. Well, we just passed thanksgiving, we’re moving towards Christmas already around the Thanksgiving table. Mark, we’ve had some of these conversations starting, but let’s begin with the basics. What is apologetics and why is it that most believers feel they can’t defend their faith?

Mark Farnham:

The great question. I would answer that and say many Christians have been taught in evangelism how to talk about Jesus and the need to repent and believe, but they’ve not been equipped and even many pastors have not been equipped to know how to give an answer when someone challenges us with a question like, how can you trust the Bible or how can you think that there’s only one way or how can there be a good all loving God when there’s so much evil and suffering in the world? And apologetics is simply the ability to give an answer, to defend the truth of the Christian faith and to engage unbelievers in their worldviews, their beliefs, and to be able to dismantle them, move those objections out of the way by answering so we can then present the gospel and let the unbeliever see very clearly what we are saying when we say that Jesus is the answer that everyone’s looking for.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, one of the things, and we may talk about it sometime in this program, but one of the things that I’ve been thinking about over the years why either pastors don’t move in this realm of helping their people really defend their faith or even Christians opening the door to start learning about this, is I think there’s something inside of them that says, oh, I don’t want to ask too many questions, or I may find out that I’m wrong, and that’s a terrible way to start out looking at this issue of apologetics. We have the truth, we have the answers. With that in mind, mark, there’s growing in the ability to share and contend for the truth just doesn’t happen. What must Christians commit themselves if they want to be effective in engaging apologetically with lost people?

Mark Farnham:

Great question. I think it starts with what Peter begins with in one Peter three 15, set apart Christ as Lord in your heart. That is, it’s very difficult to confidently share your faith with someone if you’re not sure it’s true yourself. So the first step for a Christian is to dive into scripture, dive into sound doctrine, to learn these things because there are good answers for every legitimate objection raised against the Christian faith. And we live in a time where there’s so many resources, YouTube, videos, podcasts, books, websites, and I would just encourage Christians to find out, first of all, what are the questions the unbelievers in our life are asking? And then go search for them so that we ourselves can have confidence that what we believe is true. The second thing is to do what Peter talks about next, which is always being prepared to give an answer.

That’s the word apologia, from which we get apologetics, give an answer or to give a defense for the reason, for the hope that’s in you. That is there are good reasons for why we believe the Bible’s reliable, why we believe Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God that he rose from the dead, that only Christians can answer the problem of evil and suffering. So those answers are out there, but it takes effort. It takes effort to say, I’m going to dedicate time to learn these things so that when an unbeliever asks me or we’re in a conversation, I can actually give them good answers. And as I said earlier, there are good answers for every objection raised against the Christian faith. We just have to go out there and learn them. And the truth is you don’t have to memorize hundreds of evidences. You can simply begin to understand the kind of questions people have and pursue answers to those few things. And you’ll be surprised how many unbelievers when you answer the few initial questions they have are now open to hearing about Christ and are willing to move to the next part of the conversation, which is here’s what you’re looking for and here’s how Christ can answer that need.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark I have said for a long time when trying to equip and encourage Christians to be ready, I’ve said to them that the apologetic muscle in our souls needs to be worked and we need to start at some point in engagement and talking and answering questions, giving a defense, we may not have all the answers at first, but the more we engage and the more we go back and forth answering questions to lost people and learning ourself how to give a defense the stronger and more effective we can be. Friends, I want you to stay with us today with the holidays coming and the number of spiritually oriented issues occurring in our culture today, the door is wide open for us to talk to people about the Lord, about faith, about the Bible. When we come back, I want Mark to share about the truly lost person today.

In many respects, an unsafe person is not like they used to be. We need to understand what’s happening in the lost world so we will be effective to be ready at all times. Well, welcome back to Stand of the Gap. Dr. Mark Farnham is my guest today, and we’re talking about equipping and igniting every believer to see how they can effectively defend the faith and engage with lost people. Mark, I’ve heard the phrase, this is not your grandpa’s world that we’re living in, and I would concur with that assessment with that in mind. The person who does not know Christ is very different today than most Christians. Remember a decade or two ago in the past there used to be a respect and appreciation among the lost for people of faith, but that’s not the case anymore. If we’re going to be able to reach the lost, I think we need to understand them. Can you paint a picture of who today’s lost person is and some of the variables that we may encounter?

Mark Farnham:

Sure. I remember when my mom became a believer in the 1970s. I grew up in Connecticut. Most of the people you would meet were Roman Catholic or liberal Protestant, so you just needed to show them in the Bible that salvation was by grace through faith, not by works. And many people came to Christ at that time, but we don’t live in a world like that anymore. There is a wide variety of beliefs. Think of the influx of major religions now, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, where many different world religions are present in our world, and you might meet people who are part of those religions. In addition to that, there are people involved in cults like Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons. So the scene is very different. Along with that, there’s a cultural difference. Aaron Ren in his book, the Negative World talks about that.

Up until about 1994, we lived in what’s called a positive world, where to be a Christian, it benefited you in society. You were considered to be someone of virtue and character and integrity, and it was a positive benefit to know that you were religious. And between 1994 and about 2014, he says, we entered a neutral world where your faith no longer really benefited you in society, but it wasn’t counted against you. But then he documents around 2014, 2015, beginning with the Obergefell versus Hodge decision that legalized gay marriage in 50 states. He says, now we live in a negative world where to be a Christian is a negative thing. People look at you negatively. They look at you judgmentally as irrational for believing in that. And as a result, then the tone directed toward Christians has certainly changed. And being aware of that is very beneficial to know that we’re not going to encounter a lot of positive response to being a Christian, and yet that should not silence us. That should not discourage us. It actually is a better situation because now our faith stands out more in contrast to the unbelief that that is all around us.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark talking about evangelism, I go back now 30 years. I remember when I was early in the ministry, I saw something that was called the angle scale of belief. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but angles I think taught out at Wheaton or somewhere in the Midwest and he looked at the levels of belief of unbelievers leading to conversion at the bottom was I have no idea if there’s a God, I don’t believe a God exists and all the way up. Is that even relevant today? Do the loss, do the unbelieving world have any ideas about God, the afterlife, the supernatural, any of that? Or are they just void of any ideas about who the Lord is?

Mark Farnham:

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think at one time that scale would’ve been beneficial, but today we have to take into consideration the wide variety of unbelief. Everything from outright atheists who say, I know God does not exist to agnostics who say, I don’t know if God exists, and I don’t think we can know all across the spectrum of major religions to what Tara Isabel Burton in her book, strange Rights and New Religions for a Godless world talks about spiritual but not religious. So people who do believe in spiritual reality, but they’re not part of a religion. He talks about or she talks about the faithful nuns, people who have no religious affiliation and are not really interested all the way up to what she calls religious hybrids. That is people that pick and choose their religions. And I see this all the time. There are people who claim to be Christian and yet they have crystals in their home and cleanse their home with sage and read a horoscope to people that wouldn’t call themselves Christians at all, but they practice and they may even call themselves atheists, but they practice new age and aspects of witchcraft and they believe in angels or demons or supernatural powers.

So the truth is what we might encounter among the lost is so widely different from what we would have half a century ago, that we need to be aware and prepared for the fact that if I start a spiritual conversation with someone, it could result in just about any kind of religious system and belief system out there. And therefore I cannot prepare for just one kind of unbeliever.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark my eyes were open when I read the book by Peter CRE on ecumenical jihad and this whole idea of syncretism, of the mixing together of religions and creating a kind of new religion. And that’s one of the problems. You talk to unbelievers, they may have a little bit of understanding of Christianity, but they’ve lost the message completely. Mark, with that in mind, I have found that most unbelievers have built up a shield about them, a kind of a Christian warning detective system to their soul. Immediately when they hear that we’re Christians, they put up roadblocks. How can we overcome and connect with unbelievers who are skeptical of Christians and Christianity?

Mark Farnham:

It’s a great question. And just describing the variety of belief out there could discourage a Christian to say, oh man, how could I ever be ready for that? And the truth is, our approach is what should encourage us. When I meet an unbeliever, I don’t start by talking about Christ or the gospel. I start with where they are. I ask questions, tell me about your religious background. Do you believe in any kind of deity? So the truth is I don’t have to know anything about a particular unbeliever’s belief system because I’m going to ask him or her about it. And as a result, then that takes all the pressure off me because I am asking questions. I’m showing an interest in what they believe where they are spiritually. And as a result, then there’s no burden on me to know this stuff already. A good example is a number of years ago, one of my many doctors was a Chinese lady, and I began asking her in one of my appointments, I said, I know most people from China are either Buddhist or atheist, which are you?

And she said, oh, I’m a Buddhist. And I said, oh, I don’t know much about Buddhism. Tell me about that. What are the main beliefs? How did that affect your life? And she sheepishly said, well, to be honest with you, I tell people I’m Buddhist, but I don’t know much about it myself. And so I could have gotten all worked up thinking, I’ve got to go home now and study Buddhism so that I can have this conversation. But you don’t need to do that. You just need to ask them what they believe. And because of the new world we’re in, many times, even people who adhere to a particular religion or belief system, they’ve developed their beliefs in a hybrid way. They pick and choose what they find helpful. So don’t feel like I have to know a lot about any particular belief system. Ask those questions, let that person tell you what they believe and then go from there.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, you’re exactly right because there is something endearing and it warms up a relationship when you have an interest. I’ve had that happen to me numerous of times with people like from the Orthodox faith or the Catholic faith and saying, listen, I’m not a Catholic. Could you help me understand some of that? And Mark, I’ll tell you, you can make tremendous inroads, but even better, you’ll find out that you may even know more about their faith than they know about. Isn’t that a common reality when we’re talking to people about religion?

Mark Farnham:

Yes, especially when I meet atheists. Nine times out of 10, atheists know far less about atheism than I do, so I will actually often help them strengthen their argument before then I dismantle it. So I read the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who was the most overt, consistent atheist out there, but almost no atheist I meet has read him. And so oftentimes they’ll have a very weak version of atheism and I’ll say, oh, no, it’s much stronger. Let me help you with that. And then I will show them where it fails, and that leaves them very open to talking. And so asking people questions, we love to talk about ourselves, and that will often open the door. So sometimes in a conversation with a stranger, I’ll spend the first 15 to 20 minutes just asking questions, and that gets them interested in the conversation.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, exactly. Friends are talking about how to reach the lost, and one of the things I can tell you is you will open more doors being curious about their spiritual background or their religion or the church they attend or the faith that they have had maybe since a child, but they really haven’t developed it. It’s a different day that we live in and we need to be intentional and strategic and curious and wise in how we engage the loss. Next up, I want Mark to talk about common objectives and how to overcome them. Today we’re focusing on apologetics for everyone how to be ready in a day that’s filled with spiritual questions. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us here and stand in the gap today. Our topic today has been always ready, apologetics for every believer. Mark Farnam has been our guest. Mark, one of the things I’ve noticed about Jesus that he asked a lot of questions, and we know that Socrates loved answering questions with the questions. They call that Socratic discussion method. We want to look at how we can respond and answer people today, and you do that in your training. Talk a little bit, mark about the nature of your training, your ministry to churches and how people can have you at their church.

Mark Farnham:

Sure. So my website in my ministry is called Apologetics for the Church. So you can go to apologetics for the church.org, and we have a number of resources there. Free online resources, guides for gospel conversations, infographics. We have a YouTube channel, a podcast study guide that goes with my book, every Believer Confident. So the goal of our ministry is to provide resources for ordinary Christians. That is people who are not pastors, not professors, but just ordinary Christians who want to be effective in gospel engagement. So you can go to our website there. I also go to churches and hold regional conferences where in the space of a Saturday or a Friday night and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday, I can give ordinary Christians the training and the confidence that they can turn right around that week and with their coworkers, their friends, their neighbors, their acquaintances, they can begin gospel conversations and see them be effective.

I regularly hear from people the week after I’ve been at a church or a regional conference and they say, I’m so excited I’ve had a burden to talk to the unbelievers in my life. And this week I had a conversation that went an hour and a half long, and that’s never happened before. And that is really the reason I do all of this because in my own life, for most of my Christian life, from the time I became a believer at nine and began witnessing it at 12 years old to my friends until through the years I was a pastor in New London, Connecticut, frustration in this area. But once I learned apologetics, I now regularly have long conversations with unbelievers about the gospel, both strangers and recurring conversations, and I walk away in courage knowing I’ve planted seeds of the gospel.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen. Well, you check out Mark’s ministry, apologetics for the church and encourage your pastor to look into it. Mark, as I have interacted with lost people over the years, I’ve heard some of the same objectives of why they don’t want to believe or even consider or dialogue and consider Christ. Can you take some time in this segment and maybe outline a few of these very common objectives and how a believer should respond? I know we just have few minutes for these, but I think it would be good to get our people thinking about the objectives and then how to respond.

Mark Farnham:

Yes. The one common objection is the question or the challenge prove God exists and that seems impossible. How do you prove that an invisible eternal God exists? And again, by thinking of asking questions instead of giving answers initially, you can debunk or defang their objection. If someone says, prove God exists, I’m going to ask the question, what would it take to prove God exists? And you’ll be shocked at how many people say, that’s a good question. I’ve never thought about it. Ultimately, for many people, they would say, I would want God to do something and to appear in such a way that I couldn’t deny it. I say, okay, so if you have a vision, would that be enough? Usually, no. If you saw a bright light, would that be enough? No. They say, I want to see God in some tangible way and for him to do something that I could not explain away.

And I say, I’m so glad that you said that. Let’s go to the gospels and see where God became a man. He was visible, as John says in one John, we touched him, we heard him, we saw him, and let’s see what the Bible says about Jesus because he is the ultimate proof of God, and he performed miracles that even his enemies did not deny. So have you ever read the gospels and now we’re right into a conversation about Jesus? Another objection is how can we believe in an all loving, all powerful God when there’s so much evil in the world? So rather than present a long, convoluted philosophical arguments, I’m going to ask them, okay, if there is no God, how does that affect your view of evil and suffering? Number one, we would have to conclude that evil and suffering is just the way the world works.

The world is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. This is the way natural selection works. So why are you bothered by that? And the truth is people are bothered by that because they have an inherent belief that the world is not the way it’s supposed to be, that there should be meaning in suffering. And I say, ah, exactly, those intuitions, those feelings only make sense if the Christian God exists. So let’s take a look at how can there be so much evil and suffering in the world when there is a good and all powerful God? And I can show them that if there is no God, all this is meaningless and life is pointless. But if there is a God, he may have a perfectly good reason for allowing what He does. He did not create the world this way, but sin brought this curse upon the world, but God promises that he does nothing without a reason, and someday he’ll make everything right.

So why wouldn’t you want to, in the face of evil and suffering, have this answer? It may not answer every question you have, but this provides the satisfaction that those who do evil will be judged, that God can forgive those who’ve done wrong, which is all of us, and God will someday help us to understand why he did these things. So that is the kind of answer to this objection, which causes people to think about what are the implications if there is no God, and I don’t want that kind of world. I want suffering to have a purpose, and I want to know that someday will be made right? And if there is no God, it won’t be made right.

Jamie Mitchell:

That was the question I was going to ask you because I’m seeing that more and more and more people look at the heartache and the suffering and the difficulty in the world, and they think to themselves, well, if you’re selling that there’s a God who’s in control. Why is all this happening? Mark, here’s another big question. Take a second and respond to this. We’ve got an answer with the Bible, but what if the lost person you’re talking to says that’s just a collection of stories that has no authority, that has no weight in this conversation? What if they discount the Bible as being true and valid and the veracity of it in our discussion? How do we come back after that?

Mark Farnham:

Yeah, some approaches to apologetics say, you should not use the Bible because the unbeliever doesn’t accept it. And I completely disagree. We are told that the scriptures are the sword of the spirit. So why would I put aside my greatest weapon to answer unbelief? So I think we ought to use scripture. So if someone says, I don’t believe the Bible, I’m going to ask him, why not? What do you know about the Bible? Have you ever read the Bible? Do you even know what it is? It’s not one book. It’s a collection of 66 books written over 1500 years by 40 different authors. So I will point to some external points of evidence. The fact that it is written in such a way, it is unlike any other book in the world, and yet it has a unified message. And along with that comes the point of fulfilled prophecy.

How do we explain that Daniel, hundreds of years before these kingdoms arise, can foresee these things? How do we explain that a thousand years before Christ, the depiction of crucifixion is given in Psalm 22, long before crucifixion even began. So I point to the miraculous nature of scripture, how it came together, but then I also want to know why don’t you believe in the Bible? And it could be the fact that they’ve never read it. It could be the fact that they’ve seen social media reels and videos that discount or debunk the Bible. And many times those are 30 to 92nd little clips of things about the Bible taken completely out of context. So I want to find out what their objection to the Bible is, but ultimately then I can say to them, listen, I’m going to use the Bible as my source for my arguments.

You use whatever you want to use science, philosophy, reason, feeling, and let’s compare the answers to the various important questions of life based on our authority. And I have full confidence as a Christian that using the scripture, I can show the inadequacy of their authority and show that the Bible us far better answers to the most important questions in life. Questions like, why are we here? Where did we come from? What is our purpose in life? What’s wrong with the world? What would make it better? This is something truthfully, as a Christian, you’ll only gain real confidence in the sufficiency of scripture as you have these conversations. So often tell Christians, you’re going to feel unprepared when you start having these conversations, but the only way to feel prepared is to have more and more conversations that will direct you to more study and over time and experience very much like learning how to swing a baseball bat. Over time, you’ll gain the confidence that I know how to do this.

Jamie Mitchell:

Amen. And when you don’t have an answer, I found the best responses to be honest. I say to ’em, Hey, that’s a great question. I don’t have the answer off the top of my head. I’ll find out what the answer is and I’ll get back with you. And the beauty of that, you get a second opportunity to talk to that lost person. The fact is, given time and the word of God, we can have confidence that God has an answer when we finish up why questions are more effective than answers. Don’t go anywhere as we finish up today’s program, always ready apologetics for every believer. Ladies and gentlemen, as we kind of get to the end of 2025 and kind of move our way through December, I just want to mention something to you in the coming weeks. We’re going to be doing some special Christmas programming throughout those last two weeks of the year.

There’ll be some of the best of Stand in the Gap, but we have a special Christmas program, a two-parter. We’re going to be starting it next week using some of our personalities, some of our past guests this year. And so we want you to keep a heads up for that. I think it’s going to be a great blessing, but we got to finish up today. And Mark Farnham from Lancaster Bible College has been our guest. He’s also director of Apologetics for the church. Mark I mentioned in the last segment about Socrates. He’d loved to answer questions with a question. As we’ve been talking today about how to do apologetics, we’ve kind of been talking about this whole idea of answering our unsafe friends, our lost loved ones, people that we encounter answering their questions with a question. What kind of questions would be best for believers to start to engage? I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about it, but as we start to prepare believers in engaging, what kind of questions could we break the ice? How do we enter in and even move a lost person towards a spiritual conversation?

Mark Farnham:

A great question itself. Probably one of the best questions I ask right off the bat when I meet someone is, do you have a religious background? Or what is your religious background? Just to find out where they are spiritually or one of the worldview questions is a great way to start a conversation. Why do you think we’re here? What is our purpose in life? Do we have a purpose? What do you think is wrong with the world? I ask that one a lot because everyone feels like the world is not as it should be, but you want to know why do you think that? What do you think is wrong with the world and what do you think it would make it better? And then as they answer in order to invite people further into the conversation, because that’s what questions do, some regular questions like, why do you believe that?

Or what do you base that on? How do you know that? And you give me the example of that. These kind of questions are just really the hallmark of a good conversationalist who shows more and more interest in the other person. And when we show interest in others, it disarms them, encourages them to enter the conversation, and it also takes the burden off of us. Too many times Christians want to a monologue, they want to tell the whole story of the gospel right off the bat, and they know nothing about the person they’re talking to. And I’ve done this as well. And then the person says something like, oh, I’m Jewish. And every verse I’ve used is from the New Testament. Well, if I had taken the time to find out where they are spiritually, what their religious background is, I could have used Old Testament verses to speak of Christ.

So ask questions. Why do you believe that? What do you base that on and genuinely listen? And then what you’ll find is as people answer, they will say things that will give you thoughts about more questions to ask. Again, where do you get that from? Have you actually seen that or experienced that? And then what will happen is then you can begin to say things like, oh, as a Christian, I agree, but here’s why I believe that every person is valuable and should be treated with dignity or I disagree. And here’s the reason why. So you can find by asking good questions that most people are actually interested in having conversations.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, I’ll give you my two favorite ones. First is that I will ask a person, let’s say somebody’s cutting my hair or I’m engaging with somebody and I have some small talk, and I’ll say to them, Hey, I’m interested in this. If you had a crisis in your life, who would you go to talk to? And would you ever go and talk to somebody like a priest or a rabbi or a pastor or a spiritual counselor? Would you ever go to a person like that for an answer? If they say yes, then I follow up. If I say no, the natural question then is, well, why not? Why don’t you think that that might be a good person to answer? And the second question I use all the time is this is if I find out that they believe that there is a God. My follow-up question is, so you believe that there is a God, can I ask you a question? Do you think that he or you could know him personally? Do you think that you could actually know personally who God is? And boy, that has opened doors for me in many, many venues. Mark, I have a question where the American pastor’s network, what could a pastor do to do a better job at preparing his flock to be more apologetic, mindful,

Mark Farnham:

That’s good. In fact, if you go to our website, apologetics for the church.org, we have a free downloadable PDF, how to build an evangelistic and apologetic culture in your church. Because when I was a pastor, I didn’t know apologetics, and I always struggled with this. I knew I was supposed to lead my congregation and outreach and I just didn’t know how to do it well. So we have a document there that helps you think through what are ways, number one, we can equip the people, and that’s where my ministry apologetics for the church, where my book, every Believer Confident comes in. But also, how do we create an atmosphere where we’re encouraging this? Because what you honor is what you get and what you encourage is what you cultivate. I talk in there about giving people who’ve had effective gospel conversations, a chance to give a testimony in church and tell people, here’s what I did and here’s how I did it. To have special training, to have times of maybe even free resource giveaways. I know a lot of pastors now that once or twice a year that order books for everybody in the church and say, I want to equip you in this area. And to do that at least once a year with something apologetic. And there are literally hundreds of great books on apologetics out there that will give people the confidence they’re looking for.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark. So many churches today, when they do baptisms, they don’t allow or they don’t make a way for the person getting baptized to actually tell their complete story of conversion. And I have found that when people hear the process by which people come to faith in Christ, it triggers in their mind, oh, that is what moved that person to come to faith. And it’s almost like a back door to doing apologetic training. Last question, mark, we’ve just got a few minutes left. What’s one encouragement you can offer fellow Christ followers today as they are faced with apologetic opportunities, but they feel inadequate for the task? How would you encourage ’em this Christmas holiday when they’re going to have so many opportunities?

Mark Farnham:

Sure. I would say the most important thing is to remember how scripture describes salvation. God is doing a great work of salvation in this world, and he does not need us. This is one of the wonderful things that takes all the pressure off you. God does not need me, but he invites me to participate in the salvation of those in my circles, my friends, my neighbors, my family members, my coworkers, my classmates, my acquaintances. God invites me to participate in their salvation for my joy. So that takes all the pressure off me. It doesn’t all depend on me. So if I mess up that this person is going to be lost forever because of me, but rather to remember God is doing this great work, it’s the Holy Spirit that takes my testimony, my words, no matter how feeble they are, and he works that into their hearts to bring them to repentance and to faith in Christ. So if I want to have joy, then I need to participate with what God’s doing in the world.

Jamie Mitchell:

Mark, we got to have you back. What a joy it’s been to have you. Please, friend, reach out to Mark’s ministry, get his books, but most importantly, get in the game. Start engaging with lost people. Share the hope that’s in you. I know it’s scary, but that’s why we need God to instill courage in our hearts and when he does that, live and lead with courage. Have a great rest of your day. We’ll see you back here in 23 hours. God bless.