Five Minute Ministry

Jeff Durbin of Apologia Radio does a great job of working with Mormon elders on the street.  You'll notice that he's memorized a number of references.  That may be a bit challenging for most people to accomplish but I'd like you to pay more attention to his attitude than his arguments.  Even if you don't have all the references memorized you can still have his patience and compassion when you interact with Mormon elders.

I’m so glad you’re here to get prepared to answer challenging questions that skeptics often ask. The skills you will be sharpening will be in the role as an apologist and in practicing apologetics. This doesn’t mean making an apology for your faith but to make a defense of the faith, like a defense lawyer may do in court. If you’ve ever studied apologetics before then you will be familiar with the apologetics creed, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”  1 Peter 3:15,16 NIV The challenging questions we’ll discuss in this class usually come from atheists but I’ve also heard many from those professing to be Christians as well. It does matter where they are coming from because the atheist will have a completely different worldview th...

Greg Koukl offers this excellent question on this subject: "In order to have right standing with God, to be saved, do I have to be a member of your organization." They believe that to be true but it is awkward for them to say so. If they do admit that is what they believe then follow up with "Would you please show me in your Bible where it says that anyone needs to be a member of any organization to be saved, much less the Watchtower Society that has only be around for less than 150 years?" This is the Missouri "Show Me!" question in action.

About eight years ago I was at an apologetics conference in St. Louis and a former Jehovah's Witness, Charles Smith, relayed a very interesting story. He said he was asking another man, who had been a JW for forty years, what was the first thing that made him start to doubt the Watchtower Society. The man told him, "Thirty-three years ago a good Christian woman asked me a question I couldn't answer. She asked, 'Why do you think it was so important to Jesus that you are born again?' I didn't have a good answer to that question and it bothered me." This story has always made me think that if this man had been asked more questions like that, ones he couldn't answer, then it probably wouldn't have taken so long for him to leave the Watchtower. With this in mind, I've been thinking of those kind of questions that the average Christian, the ones who don't want, and aren't prepared for a long debate, could ask the Jehovah's Witness or...