Third greatest need of the church

I've previously posted the first and second greatest needs of the church, and today I'm going to address what I believe to be the third. First, I want to make something clear. The reader should not necessarily think these are being ranked in order of importance. All three of these need to have high priority in the church. Prayer, a recommitment to the Scriptures as the Word of God, and today's topic, teaching people how to defend the faith are all critical needs of the church if we are to fulfill the Great Commission.

Faithful readers of this blog know the value I place in apologetics. Many Christians struggle to explain what they believe; even more struggle to explain why they believe what they claim to believe. As a result, many of us are afraid to attempt to share our faith with others. We fear someone will ask us a question about our faith that we cannot answer.

The inability to explain why we believe certain things about God also reflects on our lack of growth as believers. We came to Christ as little children and remained little children in our understanding. This also makes us more susceptible to our abandoning the faith. More than a few young people went to college and decided they could no longer believe in God when that belief was challenged and they were unable to meet that challenge.

If we are to grow disciples churches must do more than teach simple Bible facts. Yes, Jonah was swallowed by a large fish. Yes, David killed Goliath with a slingshot. But, at some point, we need to begin teaching people why the fine-tuning of the universe points to a Divine Creator, how evil and suffering are not proofs that a loving and powerful God could not exist, that we can trust the Scriptures as we have them today and a host of other evidences that explain why reasonable and intelligent people can believe in God.

We are constantly bombarded today with a steady diet of attacks against Christianity. The movies we watch, the music we listen to, the media all seem to challenge the Christian faith. Millions of books have been sold in recent years insisting that science has proven God does not exist. The fact that many leading scientists are strong Christians alone proves that statement is not true, but many do not know that. Unfortunately, many people believe that if an academic publishes something it must be true.

Churches need to provide deeper theological teaching to their members, and that teaching must include apologetics. In Sunday school classes, small groups, and from the pulpit people must be given the tools to defend their faith and to be able to discern truth from untruth. Instead of watering down our sermons, we need to go deeper. Let's teach not only what we believe but why we believe it. Our goal should be that every person sitting under the ministry of our church will "always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3: 15)."