7 tips to do Everyday Apologetics the right way

There was once a woman who approached Dr Timothy Paul Jones after he taught a session on human sexuality and God’s design. She told him that she believed the resurrection of Jesus really did happen. But she was not ready to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

“Because Christianity won’t affirm what I want to think about myself,” she told Dr Jones.

The woman was no stranger to Christianity, the church or Dr Jones. Up until COVID swept across the globe, her family had worshipped at the church in which Dr Jones was a Pastor.

“She followed a very predictable pattern. She would come to our church for a few weeks to youth group, spend a few weeks and then she’d get upset because we wouldn’t affirm certain things.

“Then she’d leave and say, ‘I’m never going to come back to church again.’

“And she would be gone for maybe two or three weeks, and guess what? She’d be back again for several weeks and then she would get upset and leave.”

So what made her return again and again? Love.

“Even though the youth leaders didn’t affirm what she wanted affirmed, they continually just loved her with open arms. They were loving but not compromising on the truth either. And this young woman found that attractive.”

Dr Jones recounted this story at a session of D6 Singapore Family Conference 2025 (July 25-26) which was attended by over 400 people from more than 50 churches. This year’s theme was “As We Go”.

Dr Timothy Paul Jones sharing biblical insights and practical tips on the attitude to adopt while defending our faith. Photo courtesy of D6 Singapore Family Conference.

A Professor of Christian Family Ministry at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where he is also Vice President, Dr Jones is, in addition, a Pastor at Sojourn Church Midtown, and an author and a cohost of The Apologetics Podcast.

In Part 1, Salt&Light covered tips he shared on how to do Everyday Apologetics.

In this next part, we look at what attitude and posture we should adopt when defending our faith in our daily lives.

1. Show love to the person

Loving and accepting is not the same as agreeing. As we defend the goodness of God’s truth that may go against the culture of our times, we “do not have to speak with hatefulness and spite and disgust toward people we disagree with,” said Dr Jones.

“We can speak with gentleness and love and kindness. We can say, ‘We love you and we care for you but we do not affirm what you’re doing.’

“Until we actually love people, we cannot engage them.” 

2. Defend with meekness and fear

In 1 Peter 3:15-17, Peter talks about how we should be ready to make a defence of our faith with “meekness and fear”.

Meekness, also translated as “gentleness”, comes from the Greek work prautés, said Dr Jones. The root word of prautés is praus which is “sometimes used for the bit that’s put in a horse’s mouth to guide it”.

“In other words, it’s not being powerless. Meekness is not weakness. Meekness means you have power and you use it in a way that is kind and gentle.

“If you defend the Bible in a way that’s cruel and mean, then you may be undercutting the Bible by the way you defend it.”  

As for the fear Peter talks about, it is the fear of God. It is recognising that we have a responsibility to be faithful to His truth which cannot be compromised.

3. Don’t be preachy

Work apologetics into the everyday.

“Your children are not going to listen to a lecture. Your children are going to listen to the little drips you give along the way,” said Dr Jones.

This may mean watching a movie or a TV show and then chatting about how God or sin is depicted.

“If it is necessary to talk to your kids in an extended way, they get the first 23% of it, and then they forget the rest. So put the important stuff up front because they tune out at a certain point.”

4. Be age-appropriate

There are three seasons in parenting. Understanding them will also help us understand how to manage the questions and doubts of our youths.

When they are young, children require authority. As they move into their teens, they need an interpreter to help them navigate their emotions and life changes in the light of God’s Word. As young adults, they need a guide to point them in the right direction.

“When young adults turn off from us, it is often because we aren’t giving them the space to feel like they can make the decision.

“We want them to feel they have the freedom, and we are going to love them even if we feel like they made the wrong decision. There’s unconditional love in that.”

5. Challenge those who assume they know

When asked how we should manage those who grew up in the faith and who now assume they know everything in the Bible, Dr Jones said: “Can we just recognise part of that as being a kid?

“It’s part of their development that they think they know more than they really know.”

The approach then is never to tear them down, but to set up something for them that is challenging to them.

“Help them to recognise it’s not about knowledge, it’s not just about what you know in your head. But it’s about how you get it deeply in your heart, and to establish relationships with them.”

When he was a youth minister in church, he had a group of youths who were “getting out of hand and not listening” because they thought everything was far below their understanding.

Dr Jones started a group called Beyond for those who wanted to “go beyond the norm”. Twelve people signed up for the first round.

“During the 13 weeks you were in Beyond, you had to commit to only listening to Christian music and going through two weeks of a total media fast.

“The reason for that was to help them to see there’s a challenge, to help them meditate on the information they already know.”

Every week they would gather at Dr Jones’ house and spend time digging deeper spiritually. Sometimes, they would “dig deep into a song and how [the truths] apply to our lives”.

While not advocating that everyone starts a class like this, Dr Jones maintained that giving the youths who think they know it all something to jump into that is “higher than normal” would help them grow deeper in their faith and in their love for Jesus.

6. Engage with those happy to live in sin

For those “living outside God’s design who seem genuinely happy”, Dr Jones said: “You and I know that they cannot be happy for the long term in the life they’re living.

“But here’s the other truth – they don’t know that. So we need to meet them where they are, not where we know they will be.”

To do that, we need to find out what they are passionate about and start a long-term conversation with them about it.

“Somewhere in that passion, there is something that is beautiful and good and is borrowed from God’s good design.

“They may be misguided in so many areas, but there’s something beautiful and good in that. Let’s start a conversation there and show them that what makes the most sense in a Christian worldview.”

Whether it is championing equal rights, caring for the starving or fighting for justice for all, we can point out that both the passion, as well as the understanding of what is right and just “make the most sense in God’s design”.

7. Undergird it all with the Gospel

Apologetics or the defence of the faith must go hand in hand with an understanding of the Gospel. So while our children can learn more about their faith as they are trained to defend it, we must “work the Gospel foundation in”.

“Make sure when you’re teaching apologetics you don’t assume they already know the Gospel. You have got to articulate the Gospel as part of that training.”

For details on next year’s conference, do head over to biblesociety.sg/registration, which is now taking early bird registrations.  

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