Written by James N. Anderson |
Monday, December 5, 2022
The Bible not only assures us that God will provide sufficient answers to the most pressing objections to the Christian faith but also explains why we do not have an answer to every question we might want answered, at least while we “see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12).

After exhorting his readers to “in your hearts honor Christ as Lord as holy,” the Apostle Peter instructed them to always be prepared to “make a defense” to everyone who asks the reason for the hope within them (1 Peter 3:15). The Greek word translated “defense” is apologia, from which we get our English word apologetics, meaning the reasoned defense of the faith. Apologetics is one of the tasks of the church, and whenever God directs His people to a task, He supplies whatever is needed to fulfill that task. Thus, when Scripture directs us to give answers to those who raise critical questions about the Christian faith, we may reasonably assume that answers will be available to give.
When I first delved into Christian apologetics, it was primarily (I’m ashamed to confess) for the purpose of self-defense. I wanted respectable answers to the hard questions tossed at me like grenades by the very smart unbelievers with whom I worked, so that I wouldn’t look foolish in their eyes. But in those early years, it felt like a roller-coaster ride. Whenever I encountered a new objection to which I had no ready response, I would experience a sense of panic, as though the entire Christian faith were hanging in the balance. Every single time I did the research, however, I discovered that there were solid answers to the objection, and it wasn’t nearly the devastating blow that I had feared it to be. It took many years for me to learn the lesson: newly encountered objections should be seen not as threats to faith but as opportunities for growth, and it’s safe to assume that answers will be available if we’re willing to do the work of finding them.
I learned a second important lesson through those experiences and the studying I was prompted to do. Apologetics is not a recent innovation in the history of the church. Christians in the early centuries were confronted by a battery of objections to their claims about God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Yet the Lord has never left His people without answers. In every generation, God has equipped His church with gifted thinkers who have been equal to the task of defending the Christian faith against the prominent critics of the day. The objections have varied over the centuries, and the answers have sometimes changed too—mostly through critical refinement and improvement. The one constant has been the faithful provision of the Lord Jesus, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).
Thanks to this long history of intellectual engagement, we have more resources today for defending the faith than ever before. We should be greatly encouraged that Christian apologetics is flourishing in our time. There has been a remarkable renaissance of Christian philosophy in the last sixty years, and some of the most respected and productive scholars in the field are also professing believers. Conservative biblical scholarship is very much alive and thriving. Historical research into the ancient world is increasingly confirming that the four Gospels contain exactly what they claim: firsthand eyewitness testimony of the ministry of Jesus. Meanwhile, in the natural sciences, the more we uncover about the structure of the universe and the history of life on our planet, the more we find confirmation of the biblical doctrines of divine creation and providence. To echo Francis Schaeffer: all truth is indeed God’s truth.
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According to WORLD, this year’s conference encouraged attendees to leave churches that do not affirm their orientation/gender identity and to form LGBTQ “affinity” groups in their local setting. Revoice doesn’t aim merely at being a conference. Its organizers aim at being a movement that spreads in churches throughout the country. And if your church doesn’t agree with Revoice teachings about affirming LGBTQ+ identities, then people should leave your church and find one that does.

When organizers announced the program for the first Revoice conference in 2018, the controversy surrounding the meeting was sharp and protracted. It was a conference appealing to so-called Side-B “gay Christians,” and it was founded in part as a repudiation of the Nashville Statement. Indeed, founder Nate Collins told Religion News Service in 2018 that he viewed the Nashville Statement as “pastorally insensitive” and as a form of “spiritual abuse.”
If the organizers of Revoice were trying to repudiate the Nashville Statement, they did a good job of it from the very beginning. The part of the Nashville Statement that seemed to offend so many of them was Article 7, which says, “WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Article 7 was trying to communicate that followers of Christ must not construct an identity for themselves that contradicts God’s design in creation. And yet, forging and expressing LGBTQ+ identities seems to be a central focus of Revoice.
A lot has changed in America and even among evangelicals since that first Revoice conference. Since 2018, Bible-believing Christians have been put on notice about the dangers of Critical Theory and its offshoots in queer theory and third wave feminism. In 2020, Carl Trueman published a watershed book explaining how people in the West have come to think of maleness and femaleness as social constructs—malleable concepts that individuals can shape and adjust by an act of the will. We have all been witnessing radical gender theory trickle down from the ivory tower to main street as countless public schools and HR departments are force-feeding this ideology to their charges. There has been as much as a 4,000% increase in adolescent girls identifying as transgender—many of them still minor children and undergoing destructive “medical” interventions, including double mastectomies and puberty suppression.
In this context, one would think that Revoice might retreat from radical gender ideology and its denial of the male-female binary. And yet, WORLD magazine reports that the most recent Revoice conference—held a couple weeks ago in Plano, TX—has launched headlong into this error. The report says that Revoice has changed, but not for the better:
Revoice has changed, too. Speakers have always emphasized homosexuality as an identity, not just a behavior. But this year, such assertions from the dais seemed more insistent, with speakers assiduously using civil-rights language to present radical change as settled truth. That identity rhetoric extended to transgender ideology. Speakers frequently referred to “sexual and gender minorities” and used preferred pronouns, along with terms such as women “assigned female at birth.” The group’s reach and influence are growing, but leaders now emphasize parachurch activities. Speakers frequently referenced ongoing rejection within the church and encouraged attendees to form their own spiritual communities in local Revoice chapters.
This doesn’t sound like a retreat from radical gender theory, but a doubling-down on it. The report goes on:
On the conference’s first night, attendees formed lines at registration tables.
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Researchers found that the changing religious landscape in America, sped up by the pandemic and enforced lockdowns, has led to the challenging times that pastors now face, causing more of them to think of changing churches or leaving the profession altogether.

As American pastors have grown increasingly discontent with their profession, more than half have seriously considered leaving pastoral ministry since 2020 for various reasons, a new study from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research suggests.
In “I’m Exhausted All the Time—Exploring the Factors Contributing to Growing Clergy Discontentment,” released as part of the Institute’s larger project “Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations,” researchers surveyed a nationally representative group of 1,700 religious leaders in the fall of 2023 then compared the findings to responses provided by clergy and their congregations in earlier EPIC surveys.
“The further we are from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the more we observe larger percentages of clergy pondering alternatives to their present congregation, vocation, or both,” the research team led by Scott Thumma, professor of Sociology of Religion at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace and director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, stated in the report.
The data suggests that as of fall 2023, 53% of religious leaders have seriously considered leaving pastoral ministry at least once since 2020. This share is significantly higher than the 37% of pastors who reported in 2021 that they had similar thoughts since 2020.
About 44% of pastors also said they seriously considered leaving their congregations at least once since 2020. This is more than double the 21% of pastors who reported this sentiment in 2021.
“While there is some overlap in these two thoughts, it is not entirely the same group of leaders considering leaving both their current congregation and the ministry profession altogether. About a third of leaders report having both thoughts, a third have considered one or the other (11% consider only leaving their congregation and 20% consider only leaving the profession) and the final third have never considered leaving either,” researchers explained.
The growing discontent among pastors was described in the report as a “disconcerting” reality that implies “clergy are in the midst of a challenging time.”
The average clergyperson was described as a 59-year-old leader who had served in their position for a median of seven years and was 80% more likely to be white and male. Some 75% were employed full time, and 60% of them served solo rather than as part of a team of leaders.
While most pastors reported taking a day off during the week, only a few have taken a sabbatical in the last decade. About a third held paid employment beyond their ministry work, and this was found to be more common among pastors who served part time. Nevertheless, more than a quarter of full-time pastors reported additional employment.
In their efforts to explain the rising discontent among clergy, researchers examined questions of overall health and wellness among the leaders. They found that it did not appear that “a large percentage of clergy have suddenly become unwell or are suffering a dramatic emotional or spiritual disease and then thinking about leaving.”
Researchers found that the changing religious landscape in America, sped up by the pandemic and enforced lockdowns, has led to the challenging times that pastors now face, causing more of them to think of changing churches or leaving the profession altogether.
“The post-pandemic turnover has left our lay leadership depleted; people’s sense of connection and commitment is less than before; it’s hard to get people to do DIY church in the way that we did before; people seem to be more demanding of services. Plus — people’s doubt is at an all-time high. I’m spiritually exhausted from talking people back into faith — am I even doing them a favor?” one pastor in the study said.
Researchers pointed to the decades-long decline in in-person attendance and church membership numbers.
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