Thanks to Andrew for responding in Scot McKnight’s post on emerging evangelism. Andrew posted a link for an article by Tim Keller that has definitely enlivened by morning coffee at The Grind. Keller’s article “Ministry in the New Global Culture of Major City-Centers (Part III) has some gems in it for anyone wrestling with how to equip your congregation for life in the city. An excerpt below and the link to the full article.

In general the church’s communication and preaching must continually chip away at the main “defeaters,” the main, widely held objections to Christianity that form an “implausibility structure” keeping most people from solid faith thought because “all the smart people I know don’t believe Christianity.” Here are the main ones in U.S. cities today:

The other religions. “No one should insist their view of God is better than all the rest. All religions are equally valid.”

Evil and suffering. “A good, all-powerful God wouldn’t allow this evil and suffering. Therefore, this God doesn’t exist or can’t be trusted.”

The ethical straitjacket. “We must be free to choose for ourselves how to live—no one can impose this on us. This is the only truly authentic life.”

The record of Christians. “If Christianity is the true religion, why would so much oppression happen in history with the support of the church?”

The angry God. “Christianity is built around a condemning, judgmental deity who demands blood sacrifice even to forgive.”

The unreliable Bible. “The Bible can’t be trusted historically or scientifically and much of its teaching is socially regressive.”
Summary: A city-center church today must use presuppositional reasoning more than the old evidential approach. It has to show that all doubts and objections to Christianity are themselves alternate beliefs and faith-acts. (If you say, “I just can’t believe that there is only one true religion”—that is a faith-act. You can’t prove that.) And when you see your doubts are really beliefs, and when you require the same amount of evidence for them that you are asking of Christian beliefs, then it becomes evident many of them are very weak and largely adopted because of cultural pressure. The city-center church redundantly weaves responses to these defeaters into every area so that people “in process” will have these major barriers to faith removed.

Please read the whole article here.