The book’s weight rests on the rational and liturgical moves a pastor should make in commending the Christian faith: for example, sound arguments for the existence of God, solid historical evidence for the resurrection, apologetic training, and a winsome Easter service. These are nonnegotiables, of course. But in my experience, unbelievers are more often won over by a Christian’s good character than by her good arguments.

“Why should I trust a man who lived 2,000 years ago, hung out with social outcasts, and got himself killed?”

“Even if there is a God, I’d be only 40 percent sure he’d communicate with us.”

“Isn’t the resurrection of Jesus just an inspiring concept?”

“What do Christians have against the LGBT+ community?”

As a pastor in one of America’s most educated and least religious states, I often hear these questions. In many cases, the inquirer is a sincere agnostic who wants to know whether the Christian faith is intellectually plausible, ethically just, and morally compassionate. But in many other cases, the questions come from church members.

These people are committed to following Jesus, but they feel the pressure of navigating their faith in an increasingly post-Christian culture. They regularly ask me about issues such as the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the relationship between Christianity and science.

As a pastor, I want answers too. When I was a young graduate student, my doubts about Christianity prompted me to investigate the rational basis for my faith and eventually to discover it was deeper, richer, and more beautiful than I could’ve imagined. So, like all Christians, I long to commend Christ in all his fullness and splendor to everyone I can.

This is why I find Dayton Hartman and Michael McEwen’s book, The Pastor as Apologist: Restoring Apologetics to the Local Church, so relevant. Their central aim is “to recover an ecclesial approach [to] apologetics where apologetic engagement and Christian philosophy is intertwined with the ministry of the local church and not completely detached from it” (26). This book equips pastors to weave apologetics into their preaching and even into the administration of church programs.

Reclaim Apologetics for the Church

The local church is seldom considered the center of apologetic work. For most, the word “apologist” conjures up a picture of a high-profile Christian intellectual with several academic degrees, a broad reach, and a packed speaking schedule. That’s an image far different from a local pastor in his weekly work of shepherding the flock.

Hartman and McEwen, both pastors, want to shift apologetics back to the local church, and that’s a good thing. After all, the bulk of the work of commending the faith is not done by high-profile speakers but by little-known pastors. The authors write, “There is no spiritual gifting defined as ‘Christian Thinker.’

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