…youth leaders are increasingly aware that neither relational evangelism nor apologetics alone are effective vehicles for truth. “Kids need relationships and they need clear gospel presentations—it’s not either/or.”

Relational evangelism may have the key to successful youth ministries in the 1990s, but today apologetics is gaining new traction.

Kids struggle to explain their beliefs today more than they did two decades ago, said Christian Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Youth and Religion at the University of Notre Dame.

One of the center’s 2005 reports indicates that 12 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds say they are “unsure” of their religious beliefs, and 41 percent of Protestant teens agree that morals are relative.

“[Their] faith is more about meeting emotional needs than an ideology,” said Smith. This is the product of “an overwhelmingly relativistic and privatized cultural climate,” he said, as well as “youth leaders who have not challenged that climate.”

Challenging the cultural climate is a major component of the new apologetics, said Sean McDowell, head of Worldview Ministries. “The apologetics resurgence has been sparked ultimately by teens who are asking more questions about why people believe the things they do,” he said. “Those who thought that kids in a postmodern world don’t want an ideology were wrong.”

Greg Stier, founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries, agrees. “[Teens] are aware of the latent apologetic conversations in culture—Harry Potter, for example—and want to react,” he said.

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