Pastors should develop an apologetic culture in their churches as the need for Christians to defend their faith has increased significantly, Canadian author and apologist Stephen J. Bedard said.
In an interview featured on the Apologetics 315 website Monday, the author of Unmasking a Pagan Christ: An Evangelical Response to the Cosmic Christ Idea, talked about issues ranging from the need for articulation of the Gospel to the Jehovah’s Witness booklet and the evidence of Jesus’ existence.
Asked what his advice to pastors was, Bedard said they should make their congregations aware that there are answers available; “it’s not a blind faith.” “We don’t have to prove that Christianity is absolutely true, but we have to demonstrate that it is something rational,” said Bedard, pastor of Woodford Baptist Church and First Baptist Church in Meaford in Ontario.
Bedard, who got interested in apologetics after reading Christian authors and thinkers C.S. Lewis and Norman L. Geisler, said churches also needed to articulate what the Gospel is. Only when they know what the real thing is will they be able to respond to the counterfeit, he said.
Talking about Hope’s Reason: A Journal of Apologetics he edits, Bedard said the need for apologetics had “increased significantly.” People today are exposed to all kinds of doctrines, from Gnostic gospels to theories like “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” thanks to the media, he explained.
Gnostic gospels are based on texts that are not part of the standard biblical canon. “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” is a documentary made by a Canadian filmmaker on the Talpiot Tomb near the Old City in East Jerusalem and it seeks to misinterpret the events regarding Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, Christians believe.
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