Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
With Mary Jo Sharp Again
78 Plays2 years ago
Today we welcome back a previous guest on the podcast to discuss Gen Z, deconstruction and the role of apologetics in the church today. Mary Jo Sharp also introduces Darkroom, a new, free resource for young people and youth leaders to address the issues Gen Z cares about in terms they understand. Clare Williams also joins the podcast as our guest co-host for this episode.
A former atheist who came to faith, Mary Jo Sharp has experienced two worlds of American culture: the post-Christian culture of the Pacific Northwest and the evangelical culture of the Bible Belt. She first encountered apologetics in her own spiritual search while seeking answers. Mary Jo is now an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and the founder and director of Confident Christianity Apologetics Ministry. She has been featured in Christianity Today’s cover story “The Unexpected Defenders” and is an international speaker on apologetics, focusing on love and logic to uncover truth.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to PepTalk and Guests
00:00:10
Speaker
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another edition of PepTalk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister from the Solar Center for Public Christianity. And I'm joined today, not by my usual partner in crime, Christy Mayer is off doing something Anglican somewhere, but I'm joined by the absolutely brilliant Claire Williams. If you follow our short answers videos and those things, you'll have seen Claire there. She's also done webinars for us. First time though on the podcast, Claire, welcome to PepTalk.
00:00:38
Speaker
Thank you, Andy. Thank you for letting a Pentecostal come to your podcast, not an Anglican. Oh, my words. Oh, my words. No jokes at all. But before we introduce our brilliant guest, Claire, for those who haven't caught up with you on some of the other stuff that you've done for us at Solas, which we hugely appreciate, in about 30 seconds, who is Claire Williams? Who are you? What do you do?
Claire Williams and Get Real Ministry
00:01:02
Speaker
Okay, so I won a ministry called Get Real, so you can find me on Instagram, GetReal321.
00:01:07
Speaker
And it's about looking at people's questions and objections to the Christian faith, but particularly around questions of race for the black British community. Can we engage with the questions that young people have, especially around race and racial justice?
00:01:23
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, we have an amazing guest with us, Devin. Claire, you and I are going to have a fantastic conversation. We'll have you as a proper guest, not just a co-presenter on pep talk sometime, but we are joined by actually an old friend of the podcast because I think you are the first person to be on the podcast a second time, Mary Jo Sharp.
Mary Jo Sharp's Journey to Christianity
00:01:44
Speaker
Mary Jo, welcome back to pep talk. Hey, it's so good to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:01:49
Speaker
Now, of course, the reason we got you back a second time is you committed all kinds of heresies the first time and there were complaints, so we figured lightning can't strike twice. Obviously, obviously. We're going to have to correct all of that. But for people who didn't catch you the first time, maybe the same question to you that I just put to Claire. In perhaps 30 seconds, who are you? What do you do? A bit of your story, because your story is quite interesting. Well, we covered that in some more detail on the previous podcast. But for people new to the Mary Jo experience, who are you?
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm a former atheist from the Pacific Northwest of the United States and I became a Christian in college. And after becoming a Christian and getting involved with ministry, I had some doubt about Christianity in general and my faith.
00:02:35
Speaker
Definitely. And so that led me into looking for answers to questions that I had, and it drew me into this field of apologetics, which now I'm a professor of apologetics, and I also have a ministry called Confident Christianity, in which I engage people in the hard questions of faith. I do a lot of training and dialogue there.
00:02:57
Speaker
Okay Mary Jo, thank you for that. It's really interesting to hear your backgrounds and I'm sure we'll maybe have a few more questions about this later. But you said that you're professor of apologetics and sometimes people don't think that there are credible reasons to be a Christian, but I've heard increasingly people saying that apologetics as a discipline is actually a harmful one.
Is Apologetics Harmful?
00:03:18
Speaker
What would you say to that?
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good one. Apologetics is like anything else. It is a tool that we use within Christianity. So it's like theology or philosophy. And the practice of apologetics is done by people. And so when you say apologetics is harmful, you have to go back to what's causing the harm. It is a personality that's utilizing apologetics in a way that's maybe weaponizing it rather than using it
00:03:48
Speaker
to communicate truth in love. So there's this admonition in 1 Peter 3.15 that says, yeah, that we indeed are to be ready to give an answer for the reason of our hope, but that we have to do it with gentleness and respect. And if you keep going in that passage, it's about not suffering on ourselves for the way that we're behaving, right? So I think that's important to remember. And then Paul's admonition
00:04:15
Speaker
in 1 Corinthians 13 that he says, if we have all knowledge in the faith that can move mountains, but we don't have love, he says, I am nothing. That's so important to remember. And I think that's what people are, they're noticing that sometimes people use apologetics in ways that can be weaponized, aggressive, instead of in love and for the sake of others. Thank you so much. That great Monday, Post-Pit 315.
00:04:43
Speaker
I think that's really helpful. One of the things I've been fascinated as well by Mary Jo is obviously your own story, and we talked more about this I think last time you were on the show that coming to faith from an atheistic background, which gives you perhaps an interesting perspective on
Cultural Questions and the Church's Role
00:04:59
Speaker
things. Now, and we'll talk about this bit more in a moment, you've been working more recently on resources for young people and apologetics.
00:05:08
Speaker
What are some of the questions that you see out there in culture right now? Are they the kind of same ones that people have always been asking about faith in terms of apologetics? We've always had to deal with Christians as Christians. Are the nature of the questions changing a bit in today's world? What are some of the things that you've seen from taking that long view that you've been in this ministry for a while now?
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, let me focus on like what they're asking today. So when we, I worked on a project called Darkroom and it's an apologetics video series. And so to begin that, we actually did somewhat of a casting call for Gen Z stories. And so we have students telling us exactly what they were struggling with. And some of the things that they communicated to us were that they're struggling with the issue of identity,
00:05:59
Speaker
They struggle a lot with how love is portrayed in Western culture and that it's really there's a line drawn very closely to sexuality with love instead of like the unconditional love of God. So they're struggling with what it means to love who they are.
00:06:15
Speaker
The one that's interesting to me is they're really struggling with the purpose of church, especially seeing people deconvert in the deconstruction movement. They're wondering, what is church for? Why should I be there? So that one is sort of not new because we have struggled with that, but it's newer for them is what is the purpose of this? What is, you know, like as a Christian, is this relevant to me? Do I need to be in church? Do I need to be a part of a community?
00:06:40
Speaker
And then the sort of throwback ones, they're still dealing with pain and suffering and the problem of evil. And they're still struggling with the intersection of science and faith. Do they go together or are they separate? Those are some of them. Yeah, do you think that with the whole deconstruction piece, is there a place like I often hear young people talking about deconstructing their faith and the role of doubt in that?
Doubt and Faith Maturity
00:07:05
Speaker
Where do you think doubt is?
00:07:07
Speaker
you know, a dirty word all Christians should avoid or is there a place for it in someone working out their faith? Yeah, I think there's definitely a place for doubt. I myself had to work through my own doubts and it led me to a stronger faith. It led me to better answers. That's not always where it goes. I don't want to make it sound that way, but I think it's part of the maturing process.
00:07:35
Speaker
becoming a Christian because especially if you're raised in the church when you're younger,
00:07:39
Speaker
You trust in the authorities in your life. You trust in your parents. You trust in what they're telling you in the church. But as you grow older, you need to become your own person, right? You need to think for yourself. And so doubt is part of saying, do I believe the things that I have been taught? And if so, why do I believe that? And then making those beliefs, those ideas your own. So I think doubt is actually more a part of the maturing in Christ process, growing up into your own faith.
00:08:06
Speaker
Of course, as you mentioned, there is a side where doubt can lead away from the faith. And so you want to make sure that you are engaging these doubts. Like you're questioning, why am I having doubts? Dallas Willard talked about that. You should be willing to believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts as well as doubt your beliefs and believe your doubts.
00:08:30
Speaker
Nice, thank you. And I think what's interesting in that, but this goes for you folks too, but I was struck by how often when I talk to some people who've gone through, you know, the deconversion process where they talk about having left their faith, how often Mary Jo, there'll be, you know, you'll press into that and it'll be, they had a question, they had an issue and there wasn't space in the church to ask. I've lost track of how often that's been
00:08:56
Speaker
that's been the case and somehow I think we've got to try and do a slightly better job haven't we in the in the church of why you say not not just put energy behind every doubt and gosh you've got a tiny little doubt it's all over but how do you create a space where you can say it's okay it's okay to ask questions it's okay to to have a doubt it's okay to not understand stuff these are that's part of discipleship it's part of growing up it's part of becoming a more well-rounded christian but I think churches can sometimes be afraid of
00:09:25
Speaker
the person who puts their hand up at the back and asks the annoying question. That would be me. That's me. And I was a pastor's wife, so they're like, no, don't ask that. That's so important. I have a background in education in the public schools in the United States, and so I have an undergrad degree in education. And one of the things that we stress so often is creating a safe place for students to encounter ideas.
00:09:55
Speaker
And that is so important for a student to grow in knowledge.
Transparency and Safe Spaces in Church
00:10:00
Speaker
And that's something that the church needs to adopt as well, is that we are a safe place for students to encounter these ideas and not make the ideas big, bad, and scary, but just saying, hey, we need to encounter these with you. And we ourselves are on this journey of learning alongside you. And I think
00:10:19
Speaker
You know, that's really important is that students see in leaders that they are lifelong learners, that they are saying like, this is what I believe. I'm open to correction. I'm open to being wrong because, you know, I'm just a human too. So, and I'm learning along with you as the students. So those are like important parts of what we can do at our church. Be a learner ourselves as leaders and then create that environment where it's safe to learn, where it's exciting to learn.
00:10:48
Speaker
I think the whole transparency piece is really big at the moment. I think as I'm looking on social media and seeing people do videos and responses about the church and how we need to kind of get rid of it because of scandals and the fourth and great, all the things that happen, transparency is a real way forward. So Mary Jo, I had a look at some of the episodes of The Dark Room and I was like, this is amazing, it's so good.
00:11:13
Speaker
I just wanted to ask you about, there's an episode, I think it's called my deconversion, where a young person is talking about seeing clips online about other people talking about their deconversion. What would you say, you know, the average Christian youth leader, church worker, parent needs to know about how
00:11:35
Speaker
kind of I guess theology is being discussed on social media. And I see lots of TikTok videos and people clapping back on the TikTok videos and remixing and just this kind of ongoing quest for knowledge. And well, the Bible really says this, those kind of videos that go around, what can we do? How can we be aware of it? How can we engage young people where they are? Because that's where they're going to for answers. They're not coming, unless we make the space, that's where they're going to for answers.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, so many things that we can do. We need to help students navigate what they're seeing online. And you know, you brought up the episode that we did on doubt, which is my deconversion where it directly addresses that they're seeing these kinds of things.
00:12:19
Speaker
A couple of things we need to help them understand is that there's a lot of pseudo-intellectualism online. These are not experts in the field. These are people who are speaking out of their own experience, which is fine. But at the same time, who is that person that is telling you about theology? Is it Thomas Aquinas who gave his whole life to studying theology? Or is it somebody who had a poor experience in the church
00:12:48
Speaker
and is now looking for the answers to why are people so aggressive or belligerent in the church. Their motive is to absolutely deconstruct things instead of to say, hey, I wonder if this is true or why it's true.
Challenges of Pseudo-Intellectualism Online
00:13:06
Speaker
I think that's hard for students to encounter because we don't teach them about
00:13:09
Speaker
Like sort of the intersection of truth and motive, like how we are knowledge and motive, I guess would be a better way to say that. How, why is a person looking at things this way? And, you know, you got to remember that there are people who have been hurt in the church who are actively seeking to
00:13:27
Speaker
to combat that hurt and to deal with that. Now, I don't want to make it sound like everybody who's questioning the Bible is hurting from the church because that wouldn't be true. But at the same time, there's that pseudo-intellectualism going on. We should be going to experts and commentators and things like that. So as a church, we can help our students by saying, what are you seeing online? Bring it to us. We'd like to engage it with you. We'd like to see what people are saying. So when you hear something,
00:13:52
Speaker
please bring it on in, and then not getting defensive when they bring it in, right? Not being defensive when we hear something, because your kids are going to bring stuff in that you've never studied. I get asked questions all the time in front of audiences where I don't know, because I haven't encountered that minute piece of scripture from the Old Testament in a long time, you know, like some people throw stuff at me. Just tell people, yeah, I've not studied that. I don't know. Let's find out together.
00:14:23
Speaker
We've talked a bit about this great resource that you've been working on, Darkroom. One of the things I like about that, I believe you said it's free, which is a word I always like. As someone who's a minister, the word free is always attractive.
00:14:40
Speaker
But tell us, so how could people get hold of that marriage here? But more particularly, we'll obviously put a link in the show notes too. How do people use that? Because there's so many resources out there. Sometimes I think as, you know, as church leaders, youth leaders, we could be overwhelmed by an embarrassment of riches actually, I don't know where to start. So we'll put a link in the show notes to Darkroom. But then what could people do with it? How do they get the most use out of it with their young people?
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so it is free. So all you have to do is go to the website and enter in your email and you get access to a full set of curriculum that goes with these 14 videos that we've made. And these videos, thank you, Claire, for mentioning them. They're excellent. We paid attention to the aesthetic quality because we know that in order to grab students' attention,
00:15:30
Speaker
you need to be excellent in the medium that you're using. So we've got a group called Ox Creates, and they did an amazing world-class production on our videos. So you use the videos with the group, and then there's a study guide for the students for them to fill out and to engage, and then there's leader guides for you to lead. And it goes through each session. It'll give you just kind of, I call it plug and play on some of the subjects, like on the subject of suffering,
00:16:00
Speaker
I would probably study a little bit and study the resources because we give so many resources in there as well. You can go as deep as you want and we introduce you to a lot of different thinkers so you can have that background to be able to use the leader guide and then to help guide your students through their study guide. Plus, there's a bunch of social media stuff on there so you can just grab social media and throw it on your Instagram like, this is what we're doing next week at church group.
00:16:28
Speaker
So that's how to use it. And yeah, we're just really excited that we were able to make it available for free. That is such a blessing. I recently hung up my hat of youth work, to be honest. I still do, obviously speaking engagements around it, but actually within my church, I've just said this is enough now. But yes, I salute all the youth leaders, and I think the resource looks really, really good. What has been the response from young people or from youth workers? What have some of the feedback been?
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah. So the idea of grabbing their attention has been one of the feedback statements that we've been given is just like, wow, this is really holding their attention. Another thing is like, this is framed in the way that the students would say things. So in the videos, there's a narrative that was based on a real Gen Z narrative somewhere in the world.
00:17:21
Speaker
And then there's the expert commentary. But as far as the Gen Z narrative goes, it's actually their words. So we were trying to present it in the way that they would present it, which actually is kind of hard for me because sometimes I was like, no, that's not how I would say it, but I'm not Gen Z. So obviously, yeah, I mean, the culture changes and the words that they use to explain things change.
00:17:46
Speaker
So that I think just and having just sort of answers that are invitational to students where they don't feel like the church is sort of shoving this down their throat, but actually bringing them into the conversation and giving them sort of a hot second to think about the subject before you engage in the conversation with the students. I think that was one of the things that youth ministers really appreciated as well as the students is they let them think about it
00:18:14
Speaker
Before we go into having this long conversation or this discussion about, well, what are some of the answers to that? That's pretty helpful.
00:18:27
Speaker
The other side of this as well, I've been thinking about as well, of course, there's a whole question of how we help students deal with the doubts and the questions they
Engaging Students in Faith Conversations
00:18:35
Speaker
have. But there's also the question of how we help them deal with the doubts and questions that their friends raise. It's one thing to raise this question in the context of church, nothing to be at school, university, whatever, and there are your friends out there who are raising these kind of issues. And I know for some young people, actually not just young people, many Christians that can shut them down from talking more about their faith because they're afraid of what's going to get flung at them.
00:18:57
Speaker
What kind of experience, what kind of thinking have you, have you, have you done marriage over how you then almost in a sense, not just help the young people dealing with answer their own questions, but then be ready to engage with the questions of others with with confidence, with confident Christianity, which is a great title. We love that title.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think that's what my last pep talk with you guys was about was how we have conversational sort of evangelism. And yeah, for young people, the series really stresses and I stress that you should really love the person first and where they're at in life and just truly try to understand where they're coming from and their point of view and then find points of commonality with them.
00:19:38
Speaker
I think a lot of times we would portray evangelism as an us versus them. Like, hey, we're saved. They're not. But the thing is we're all God's creation. So there's commonality that we have with others. In fact, most people are trying to look for the good in life. They're trying to live a good life. And so there's a point right there where we both have commonality and we're searching for the same kinds of things.
00:20:01
Speaker
What I encourage students to do is to ask a lot of questions about what, you know, what do you mean by that when somebody says something and how do you know that or where are you getting that from? And, you know, now why do you believe that? So I want them to ask more questions rather than feel the pressure of having to have all the answers. Because I think when you jump in too soon, you don't really help somebody because you don't really know them yet. You don't know what they're struggling with. You don't know who they are.
00:20:30
Speaker
You're just giving like a set, you know, pat answers. And that goes back to what Claire asked me at the beginning about apologetics sometimes being viewed aggressively or harmful. And that can be that situation where you're just trying to jump in and tell the person what they believe. And then here's the answer to that. Instead of really trying to care for them and minister them and find out what they believe so you can aptly and effectively converse with them and minister to them.
00:20:56
Speaker
Thank you, that's really helpful. I think it's really important to just, yeah, dignify people's questions and not, you know, like you mentioned something about us versus them. I think that's really, really important. So I guess my final question to then Mary Jo would be,
00:21:11
Speaker
I mean, I guess you created Darkroom because there has been a noticeable decline of young people from the church. I guess post-pandemic, we're still, people have kind of left the faith because of suffering, like you said, is a big question. What can churches do? I mean, your resource is there, but what can churches do differently to kind of stem that exodus, I guess, from the church of young people?
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's such a great question.
Why Youth Leave the Church
00:21:39
Speaker
We need to understand what it is that is drawing them away from the church or what their aversion is. And one of them is they're disillusioned with the purpose of the church. So especially with all the scandals and the high profile people leaving the church, they need to, they don't know like what community church communities for. So part of our role as leaders in the church would be to teach them the purpose of church and then
00:22:02
Speaker
to be actively living that out in our individual lives as church members. So students, Gen Z in particular, are looking for mentors in the church and people who are actually living out or trying to live out. They don't want you to be perfect. They just want to see a person who is actively trying to become Christ-like. And they want people in their lives who care personally for them and who have that attention to the active transformation of their own lives.
00:22:30
Speaker
So those are the kinds of things that can really help Gen Z see that authenticity that we talk about and see the value in being in church community is being around people who are actively conforming their lives to Christ. So I think those are the things that I would say that can really help draw youth back to church data. It's not about more activities or more show, it's about
00:22:54
Speaker
What they need to see are real Christians devoted to Christ in their own personal lives. That's an absolutely brilliant place to draw the conversation to a close, actually, Barry G. I think, in a sense, just thank you for reminding us what that is, what it's all about in so many levels. So thank you for all that you've shared. It's been really fascinating, again,
00:23:18
Speaker
having you on pep talk again encourage listeners to check out the link to dark crew we'll put a link in the show notes you can click through and explore this amazing resource that marriage has been involved with and also a big thank you to Claire for hopping into the hot seat and and firing questions that i guess it'd be great to have
00:23:36
Speaker
you with us, Claire. And we've got a couple more episodes of Claire as well. So if you enjoyed today, do tune in again. We'll be back in two weeks time with another guest and another episode of pep talk. So meanwhile, thanks for listening and have a great couple of weeks. Bye for now.