November Digital Smorgasbord

This week, I've got a selection of articles I've come across I think you'll find useful.

✧ Add Cultural Apologetics to Your Evangelism Tool Kit
There are several ways people think about apologetics. Then there are different ways people approach the task of apologetics. This article is about the latter. Trevin Wax says we need to begin the task further upstream than we used to.

With the fading of a Christian framework in society, these cultural touchpoints (God’s existence, the unseen realm, the definition of sin, our understanding of salvation) can no longer be assumed. An evangelist’s work becomes more complex. We often have to start further back—whether we’re talking about God’s existence, or distinguishing between cultural conceptions of sin and what the Bible says about human depravity, or making a case for the goodness and beauty of the church.

If traditional apologetics is about making arguments to defend Christian truth, cultural apologetics is about making arguments that showcase Christianity’s beauty and goodness, using cultural touchpoints as an opportunity for gospel witness. It’s a precursor to evangelism. It sets the stage so the gospel’s beauty can be accentuated.

In what follows, I offer two reasons (and one caveat) why cultural apologetics should no longer be a neglected tool but a necessary way of engaging people in a secularizing world.

✧ God Calls Me to Give. But to Everyone?
As we approach the season of giving, this offers a way to sort through all the folks who ask for our help.

One obvious guiding priority is to give financially where there is the most need. To this, we all agree. But our world is increasingly interconnected. I can simply click a button to give financially to help people almost anywhere. If the only guiding principle is the need, I would get stuck in the paralysis of indecision.

But Scripture takes me beyond simply looking at the greatest needs to also seeing that God has given me greater responsibilities to help certain people. I propose looking at financial giving through a concept I call “circles of priority.”

✧ The ‘2 Roads’ Approach to Evangelism
Many souls have followed the Romans Road to Christ, but Joe Carter says it can fail to connect with people today. He suggests a correction, based on a work by Trevin Wax.

We trust that God’s Word has the power to save (James 1:21) and that someone’s response to the gospel is based on the Holy Spirit’s work (1 John 2:20–27). Yet while we know that only the Spirit changes hearts, we can seek to make our gospel presentation one that engages the hearer’s comprehension and understanding as far as it depends on us. Our approach to sharing the good news of Jesus can thus significantly influence how it’s received, especially in today’s post-Christian cultural landscape.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that will always work, I want to recommend a framework that presents two powerful evangelistic pathways—the Romans Road and the Ephesians Road—and demonstrates how this combination can work together to create a more complete and compelling gospel presentation.

✧ (Almost) every apocryphal gospel explained in 10 minutes (video)
If you've ever wondered about the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Judas, and all the rest, this is a quick overview from an orthodox perspective.


Image via Pixabay