You answered the question correctly. You quoted the right verse, you had the right facts about the resurrection lined up, and the conversation still went nowhere. That happens more than most Christians admit, and Rasool Berry says he knows why: you answered a question nobody in the room was actually asking. The fix is not a sharper answer. It is finding the real question first, then showing how Christ speaks to that one.
Why Do So Many Faith Conversations Go Nowhere?
Berry, a pastor, teacher and writer who has spent years in campus ministry and apologetics with a focus on reaching the next generation, opens with a line he credits to Tom Skinner, a former gang leader turned preacher. Skinner used to ask a simple, unsettling question before he ever preached a sermon.
“If Christ is the answer, what is the question? Before we reveal that Christ is the answer, we must know what the question is.”
— Rasool Berry, citing Tom Skinner
Most of us skip that step entirely. Someone says something dismissive about God, or asks why bad things happen, or wonders out loud whether the Bible can be trusted, and we reach straight for the prepared answer. The trouble is that the first question a person voices out loud is rarely the real one sitting underneath it. Answer the surface question, and you can be technically right and still miss the person completely. Berry’s whole approach starts by refusing that shortcut. Before you speak, you have to find out what is actually being asked.
What Is the Real Question Underneath the Question?
Berry leans on a framework he credits to scholars Carl and Karen Ellis to name what is usually hiding under the surface objection. He says relevance, whether the gospel actually connects to someone’s life, comes down to three questions almost everyone is asking in some form, whether or not they would phrase it this way.
“Relevance asks three questions: identity, who am I; significance, what’s my purpose; and dignity, what am I worth?”
— Rasool Berry
Think about what that means in practice. A young man who says he does not believe in God may actually be asking whether his life amounts to anything. A woman who says the church is full of hypocrites may actually be asking whether she is worth more than how she has been treated by people who claimed to follow Jesus. Identity, significance and dignity are the live wires. For people who carry the weight of history, stigma or rejection, those questions are not abstract theology. They are the actual ground they are standing on. A true answer that never touches identity, significance or dignity will feel beside the point, no matter how airtight the argument is.
The obvious objection to raise here: Doesn’t this risk turning the gospel into therapy, just telling people what they want to hear about themselves? Berry’s answer is that relevance is only half the case. The other half has to hold, or the whole thing collapses.
If the Gospel Feels Relevant, Does It Also Have to Be True?
Berry tells a story from childhood about a friend who kept a bowl of plastic fruit on the table. It looked perfect. Nobody touched it twice. Once you bite into fake fruit, you stop reaching for anything in that bowl, no matter how good it looks.
“Even a hungry man won’t eat food that looks fake. Our gospel has to be credible to be trusted.”
— Rasool Berry
Relevance gets someone to lean in. Credibility is what keeps them from walking away once they have looked closer. Berry argues the facts and history actually support the Christian faith, and he takes on one specific credibility challenge directly: the charge that Christianity is a tool of ethnic betrayal, a white man’s religion handed down by oppressors.
He points to two answers in the historical record. The Ethiopian official in Acts 8 encounters the gospel and is baptized centuries before European colonization touches the African continent. And Frederick Douglass, writing as a man who had been enslaved by people who called themselves Christian, drew a hard line between what he called “the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” and the slaveholding religion of his oppressors. Douglass did not abandon Christianity because of slaveholders who twisted it. He named the difference and kept the real thing. Berry’s point is not that the history is tidy. It is that the record does not actually support the claim that the faith itself is the betrayal.
Do You Have to Answer Every Objection?
Here is the part of Berry’s argument that surprises people who assume apologetics means having a comeback for everything. Berry points to Luke 20, where religious leaders try to trap Jesus with a question about his authority. Jesus does not walk into the trap. He answers with a question of his own about John’s baptism, and when they refuse to answer it, he declines to answer theirs:
“And Jesus said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.” (Luke 20:8)
The leaders in that passage are not actually curious. They are not asking in good faith, looking for truth. They are looking for a way to discredit him. Berry’s reading is that Jesus models discernment here, not evasion. Recognizing when a question is a trap rather than a genuine search is part of wisdom, not a failure of courage. You are not obligated to defend the faith to someone who has already decided the outcome and is just looking for ammunition.
What Does Listening First Actually Look Like?
Berry’s practical close lays out five moves, and none of them require a seminary degree:
- Be present. Actually listen.
- Walk in their shoes. Stay long enough to see what the other person is carrying.
- Find common ground. Look for it before you look for disagreement.
- Talk like a real person. Drop the churchy jargon that signals you are reciting a script.
- Offer a better story. Only then, give one that actually answers the question that was really being asked.
“Seek to understand before being understood. Then you’ll learn the real question people are asking, and you’ll be able to show how Christ is the answer.”
— Rasool Berry
Dr. Kimberly Credit makes a related point worth sitting with here. She notes that when most people picture someone defending the Christian faith, the image that comes to mind is a particular face and a particular voice, one that does not look or sound like the person standing in front of you.
“When I or a person think of Christian apologetics, what we see is the white male evangelical face.”
— Dr. Kimberly Credit
That mismatch is part of why answering the wrong question happens so often. If the only models you have absorbed for defending the faith came from a context that never had to ask Berry’s three questions of identity, significance and dignity in the way you have to ask them, you will reach for their script instead of actually listening to the person across from you. Rahil Patel, a former Hindu monk who now shares his faith across religious lines, makes nearly the same diagnosis from a different direction.
“Christians often ask Christian questions in the hope of finding Christian answers. Go into that world first. Then ask, where is the bridge?”
— Rahil Patel
Patel’s version of the fix matches Berry’s. Go into the other person’s world before you try to build a bridge out of it. You cannot find the real question from the outside.
What This Does Not Mean
This is not an argument for going soft on truth or never stating a clear claim about Jesus. Berry is not saying the answer does not matter. He is saying the order matters. Find the real question, confirm the gospel is credible and not just emotionally convenient, and then speak. It also does not mean every conversation has to end in a decision. Some conversations end with a question left open, a seed planted, a person who walks away having been actually heard for the first time in a long time. That is not a failure. Often it is the whole point.
It is also worth being honest about the obvious risk in this approach. If you spend all your energy listening for the real question and never actually say anything true about Jesus, you have not practiced apologetics. You have practiced therapy with a religious vocabulary. Berry’s framework only works if both halves stay intact. Relevance without credibility is flattery. Credibility without relevance is a lecture nobody asked for. The five practical steps he lays out exist precisely to hold both together: you listen long enough to find the real question, and you still bring an answer that is actually true, not just comfortable.
Why Context Changes the Way the Question Sounds
Credit’s point about the imagined face of apologetics matters here for a specific reason. Frameworks for defending the faith were not written in a vacuum. Many of the standard scripts for answering objections were built by people answering questions common in their own context, often questions about the existence of God or the reliability of ancient manuscripts. Those are real questions, and they deserve real answers. But Berry’s claim is that for a lot of people, especially people carrying generational weight around identity, significance and dignity, those are not actually the first questions on their mind. A borrowed script answers a question that was never being asked in that room.
This is why Berry insists listening has to come before borrowing anyone else’s answer, even a good one. The Ellis framework of identity, significance and dignity is not a replacement for solid apologetics. It is a diagnostic tool for figuring out which solid apologetic actually applies to the conversation you are actually in, instead of the one you rehearsed.
Quick Answers
Why do so many Christians stop sharing their faith? Berry says they get frustrated answering questions no one is really asking, then wrongly conclude that people just do not want to hear it.
What is the real question behind the question? Often it is identity, significance or dignity, the things a person actually carries, not the first objection they happen to voice.
What makes a gospel credible, not just relevant? Berry says it has to be real, not fake fruit, and that the facts, history and lived witness of faithful Christians support it.
Do you have to answer every objection? No. Berry points to Jesus declining to answer bad-faith questioners in Luke 20. Sometimes the wise answer is the one you do not give.
What are the five practical steps? Be present and listen, walk in their shoes, find common ground, talk like a real person, then offer a better story.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Hear the full message on the Jude 3 Project podcast, where Rasool Berry walks through the relevance and credibility framework and the five steps in more detail. Rasool Berry is a pastor, teacher and writer who has spent years in campus ministry and apologetics, with a focus on reaching the next generation.