Most people who care about defending their faith already know some answers. The harder skill is catching the moment in a real conversation when you stop helping the other person and start performing for yourself, and then turning back without dropping the truth. That is what the next seven days practice. Dr. Joshua Chatraw, director for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement at Liberty University, calls the person formed this way an apologist of the cross. The exercises below try to make that phrase something you can do on an ordinary weekday.
You can work through the guide alone in about fifteen minutes a day. A small group can also use it by meeting at the start and the end of the week. Every written exercise is private unless you decide otherwise.
Before the week begins: an honest baseline
Think of one recent conversation where faith came up and it did not go the way you hoped. It might have been with a coworker, a cousin, a classmate or a stranger in a comment thread. On a sheet of paper, write three plain facts about it: what the other person actually asked or said, what you said back, and how the exchange ended. Do not grade yourself yet.
Then add one line underneath: What did I want out of that conversation? Wanting to be right is a real answer. So is wanting the other person to stop thinking Christians are foolish.
Lisa Fields, founder and president of Jude 3 Project, described a trap that people who read a lot about apologetics fall into: “you’re listening for a place to talk and not for it to actually listen and understand the person’s perspective.” Hold your baseline up to that sentence. Were you listening for an opening, or listening to understand? Keep the page for the last day.
Days 1 and 2: Read the instructions given to people under pressure
The best-known verse on defending the faith is 1 Peter 3:15: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” Before you apply it to anything, read it where it sits.
On Day 1, read 1 Peter 3:13-17 in one sitting, slowly, twice. Then do three things on paper.
- Underline every word that describes the manner of speaking. Circle every word that describes its content. Compare the two.
- Write one sentence describing the readers’ situation. Verse 14 speaks of believers who may suffer for doing what is right.
- Note what comes first in verse 15 and who the answer is given to.
A word on the older English. “Meekness and fear” is often rendered in other translations as gentleness and respect. Interpreters differ on whether “fear” points mainly to reverence toward God or respect toward the person asking, and the surrounding verses can support either. Both readings rule out contempt for the questioner.
On Day 2, read Colossians 4:5-6: “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Then read Matthew 5:43-48. Chatraw brings these passages together when he explains why manner matters. He says “we’re called to be a certain type of people that have gentleness and respect,” people “who are wise towards outsiders, who love even our enemies.”
For each passage, write two short lines: what it asks of your manner, and what it asks of your content. In Colossians, speech “seasoned with salt” is not bland, so grace does not mean saying nothing. And “every man” suggests the fitting answer depends on the person.
One caution belongs here. These are real commands, but their first readers were not arguing online. Carrying them into your group chat is application. That application is fair, but you should know you are making it.
Day 3: Notice your reply forming
Chatraw and his coauthor Mark Allen borrowed from Martin Luther’s contrast between a theologian of the cross and a theologian of glory. Of the apologist of the cross, Chatraw says: “it’s not about their own kind of personal needs to show off, but it’s about helping the other person. It’s about having a certain humility before God and before others.”
Today’s practice is observation, not self-judgment. In your conversations today, keep a quiet tally of how often your reply was ready before the other person finished. If faith comes up, pay particular attention there, and note whether the habit gets stronger or weaker when the subject matters most to you. Fluent talkers are often drawn to apologetics, and this habit tends to travel with them into every topic.
Then try a second exercise on paper. Chatraw names a kind of humility about knowledge, admitting that “there’s certain things as an apologist that we’re not quite sure about.” Make two short lists. The first holds things about your faith you are confident of and could explain. The second holds things you believe but are still working out. Could you say I’m not sure yet out loud about something on the second list? Overclaiming tends to make people distrust everything you say, including the parts you can actually defend.
Day 4: Ask before you answer
Chatraw’s counsel here is simple: “slow down a little bit and say, what is this person really asking?” He adds a reminder for anyone who has heard the same objection many times: “maybe you’ve heard it a hundred times, but it’s a different person asking that question.”
The practice for today is one rule. In at least one conversation, when someone raises a question or objection, ask one follow-up question before giving any answer. When you say that, what are you thinking of? Has something happened that makes this feel urgent? Where did you first run into that idea?
Afterward, write down whether the answer changed what you would have said. Sometimes the question about suffering turns out to be about one specific loss. The question about hypocrisy may be about one specific church.
Day 5: Affirm, challenge, find the tension
Chatraw’s approach starts from the fact that “we’re never engaging a blank slate.” Every person already has a way of seeing things. His method is to step inside that view and ask, “what can I affirm and what can I challenge about this framework?” Then he looks for places where the view strains against itself. If someone cares deeply about justice, he would ask, “does your worldview really have the goods to deliver on that?”
Choose one view you disagree with. It should belong to an actual person you know or a writer you have actually read. Write three short paragraphs in this order, without skipping ahead.
- Restate the view so fairly that its holder would sign it.
- Name what you can honestly affirm in it. This has to be real agreement, not a setup.
- Name the tension: a place where the view reaches for something it may not be able to ground, and where the gospel might make better sense of the person’s own concern.
Chatraw wants to restore “this kind of hermeneutic of love,” and the first two paragraphs are where that love gets practiced or skipped. If your restatement would make its holder wince, rewrite it before moving on.
Day 6: Test gentleness against courage
Chatraw notes that many skeptics today object less to Christian ideas than to Christian behavior. They point to harm done in Jesus’ name. One response, he argues, has to come from character itself: “We can’t be the caricature that they’re trying to make us out to be.” Write down the objection to Christianity you hear most often. If the complaint is that Christians grab power and coerce people, a coercive defense confirms the charge while claiming to answer it.
Now test the other side. Chatraw does not trade truth for niceness. “It needs to be true and it is true,” he says, and he insists “there is persuasion that needs to happen.” His posture is “standing for truth with courage. But that doesn’t mean with a fist in the air.” Gentleness can quietly turn into avoidance: changing the subject, agreeing with something you think is false, or never saying what you actually believe about Jesus.
On paper, recall a moment when you stayed quiet or softened your view. Ask three questions about it. Was I protecting the other person, or protecting myself? Was there something true I needed to say and did not? What would saying it plainly and kindly have sounded like, in one sentence? Write that sentence. It is your picture of courage for this week.
Finally, consider what counts as success. Chatraw grants that this approach usually persuades better, but he ranks that second: “I would actually put a theological basis on it.” He says the apologist’s role includes learning “to live under the cross, which means to suffer,” and when he speaks of opening a person’s heart, he adds, “of course the Lord does that.” Describe a conversation in which you said the true thing clearly and the other person still disagreed. Was it a failure?
Day 7: Take it to people who can see you
Chatraw is blunt that this kind of character cannot be downloaded: “you can’t just watch a YouTube video or podcast and get that.” Instead, “what you need is actually what God’s given us, which is the local church. You need mentors.” He even turns the critique back on apologists. When pastors and academics dismiss the field, he says, “before we blame both of those groups, maybe we should look at ourself.”
Get out your baseline page. Reread it, then rewrite your side of that conversation using what the week trained: the follow-up question, the fair restatement, the honest I’m not sure, the affirmation before the challenge, and the one true sentence you might have left unsaid. Compare the two versions. Note what changed in your aim, not only in your words.
Then, if you are willing, ask one mature believer in your church whom you trust to tell you one thing they have noticed about how you talk with people who disagree. Choose someone safe and kind, and share only what you want to.
Using this with a group
Meet twice. At the first meeting, read 1 Peter 3:13-17 aloud and do the Day 1 observation together. Let people disagree about what “fear” means in verse 15. That small disagreement is good practice for the week.
At the second meeting, invite volunteers to read their Day 5 restatements without the challenge paragraph, and let the group judge whether each is fair. Then work in pairs. One person voices a real objection they have heard, in that person’s actual tone. The other asks a follow-up before answering, then gives an honest answer that does not dodge. The first person says whether they felt heard and whether they got a real answer. Both verdicts count.
Questions to talk through
- In 1 Peter 3:15, the answer is given to someone who asks. How should that shape the times you speak up when no one has asked?
- Where would you draw the line between speech “seasoned with salt” and speech that is simply harsh?
- When has your gentleness become a way of avoiding something true? How could you tell the difference in the moment?
- Which was harder this week: asking a follow-up question before answering, or saying you were not sure?
- In your Day 5 exercise, did writing the honest affirmation change the challenge you wrote afterward?
- Which reasons for gentleness do you actually act on, and how would you tell?
- Who in your church has watched you disagree with someone? If no one has, what keeps that from happening?
Under the line you wrote on the first day about what you wanted from that conversation, write the line you want to be true of your next one.