Back when I was growing up in the eighties, “evangelism” consisted of accosting people in the street with a tract and a bracing question: “Do you know where you’d go if you died tonight?” (For an example of the kinds of tracts I might have used, see my article “Evangelistic tracts so bad that they’re […]
evangelism
How to become a Christian when you’re not sure you believe
This is a follow-up to my article “Start with Christianity. Because it works.” Some of the readers responded to that article with a degree of incredulity, believing that while I might have provided a basis to begin an investigation of Christianity, I did not provide a basis to become a Christian. For example, Luke Breuer wrote: […]
Could it ever be right to deny Christ?
“Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. 33 But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32) In his influential book Situation Ethics, Christian ethicist Joseph Fletcher argued the unthinkable: under certain conditions it could be ethically right to deny Christ publicly. […]
“Faith is Like Skydiving”: A review
Rick Mattson, Faith is Like Skydiving and Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics. InterVarsity, 2014. In his new book Faith is Like Skydiving, Rick Mattson invokes more than thirty years of experience as a staff worker for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to provide an engaging and accessible introduction to apologetics. There are many books on the […]
Atheists aren’t looking for converts … said The Atheist Missionary
If I were still awarding the Face-in-Palme D’Or Award,™ today The Atheist Missionary would have been a shoe-in. You see, in the blog today he made the following comment: “(despite my sarcastic online handle) atheists aren’t looking for converts.” I replied with my trademark witticism: “Oh yeah. That’s why Boghossian wrote ‘A Manual for Creating Atheists’”. Heh […]
Peter Boghossian’s Manual for Wasting Paper (Part 9): Don’t be a jerk
I began my review of Boghossian’s book by pointing out the spurious definitions he provides for terms like “faith” and “atheism”. John Loftus immediately sprung to Boghossian’s defense (not surprising given that he had gushed about the book like a prepubescent superfan at a Justin Bieber concert). However, instead of attempting to critique my analysis […]
John Loftus defends Boghossian’s “rhetoric” because the man has found “the truth”
Imagine that a Christian — let’s call him “Pastor Bob Gossian” — were to write an evangelistic manual on how to convert atheists to “the Truth” titled A Manual for Creating Christians. And then imagine that an atheist were to write a review in which he critiqued the definitions Bob Gossian offers for terms like […]
More evangelistic tracts so bad that they’re good
There is no shortage of wonderfully bad evangelistic tracts out there, and each deserves to be celebrated for its own unique badness. For the first installment of this celebratory series click here. This time we have a wonderful tract which I received several years ago and have kept in my desk ever since. It is […]
19. Mark Buchanan on becoming an Acts church
This time on The Tentative Apologist Podcast we sit down with pastor, author, public speaker and professor Mark Buchanan. After pastoring for 17 years at New Life Community Baptist Church in Duncan, BC, Buchanan moved to Calgary, Alberta in September 2013 to become Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Ambrose Seminary. Buchanan is perhaps best known […]
16. Gordon T. Smith on Christian conversion
In this episode of The Tentative Apologist Podcast we get to sit down with one of the foremost theologians in Canada, Gordon T. Smith. Dr. Smith is President of Ambrose University College and Seminary in Calgary where he also teaches as Professor of Systematic and Spiritual Theology. Over the years Dr. Smith has worn many […]
Evangelistic tracts so bad that they’re good
I grew up in a fundamentalist-evangelical Christian subculture that understood evangelism to consist of small pieces of folded paper that you handed out to unsuspecting passerby or planted strategically in public washrooms. I speak, of course, of the hallowed tract, a short, pithy statement of Christian conviction. The truth is, however, that people are bombarded with literally […]
If inclusivism is true does believing in Jesus still matter?
My defense of inclusivism prompted Jason Thibodeau to comment: “If believing in Jesus is not necessary for salvation, then Christians should focus on the stuff that is necessary. Call that ‘having the appropriate relationship with Jesus Christ’ if you wish, but clearly this can be accomplish [sic] without believing in Christ.” Is Jason correct here? If […]
Are the missionaries bringing bad news? A misbegotten objection to inclusivism
In my article “Why inclusivism makes sense” I explained why, er, inclusivism makes sense. I defined “inclusivism” as the view that “cognitive awareness of Christ is not necessary for salvation by Christ.” Walter replied: “If the unreached are automatically saved, then missionaries are doing people no favors by statistically increasing their chance of experiencing an […]
On methods of evangelism
Like many Christians of my generation, I grew up equating the Great Commission with accosting strangers passing in the street, initiating an awkward banter, and thrusting a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws into their unsuspecting palms as soon as possible. As I look back I can see the blushing inadequacy with this affrontive method of […]
