Most churches can say what they would tell a skeptic about the resurrection. Fewer could name the question the skeptic three doors down is actually asking. The work here is finding that out. A congregation studies its own block, sorts what it hears into the three lanes Pastor Chris Brooks describes in Urban Apologetics, and then prepares for the belief systems actually present there. Brooks laid out those lanes in conversation with Lisa Fields, founder of Jude 3 Project.
A small group can work through this over four or five meetings, with real listening between them. One person can do it alone, more slowly. Each step builds on the one before, and the last step returns to the first.
Begin with what you think you already know
Take ten minutes. On a sheet of paper, list the five questions you believe people within a mile of your church most often raise about Christianity. Write each as a full question, such as Why should I trust a Bible that was used to justify slavery? Fold the paper, date it, and set it aside until the final meeting.
Every church carries a mental map of its neighborhood. That map came from somewhere: a book, a conference, a news story, or what the block looked like twenty years ago. This exercise puts your current map on paper so you can check it later.
Read how a city was read
Start with the verse most often used to defend apologetics. Peter tells scattered believers under pressure to “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” (1 Peter 3:15). Read it aloud twice. Then mark three things in the verse:
- Who starts the conversation? (The one who asks.)
- What is the defense about? (The hope that is in you.)
- What manner is required? (Meekness and fear: gentleness toward people, reverence toward God.)
Peter’s readiness is aimed at the person who actually asks. That makes listening part of obedience to the verse.
Now read Acts 17:16-34. Luke reports that Paul’s “spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17:16). Paul opens his speech with what he has seen: “I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you” (Acts 17:22-23). The KJV phrase “too superstitious” sounds like an insult to modern ears. Other translations render it as “very religious,” which fits a speech that begins by noticing what the city already worships.
Two cautions keep this reading honest. Acts is narrative. It describes what Paul did in one city and does not prescribe an outline for every sermon. Paul also kept his message whole. He moves from the unknown altar to the Creator, to judgment, and to the resurrection, and some hearers mock him for it (Acts 17:31-32). What carries over is the habit of looking closely before speaking.
For discussion: What did Paul have to do with his own eyes and feet before he could say “as I passed by”? What would the same kind of attention require of your church?
Brooks’s three lanes
Brooks defines apologetics as “answering the objections that culture has against the faith.” You cannot answer objections you have never heard. In his book, he says, he divides the challenges Christianity faces in inner cities into “the ethical challenges, the religious objections, and then the social justice questions.” Each lane needs its own preparation.
Ethical challenges are questions about how to live and what is right. Brooks names human sexuality as one of the most important. When you hear an ethical question, sort it by what the person is really asking. Some want to know what Christians believe about sex or marriage. Others want to know how the church has treated people like them. Preparing for the first means studying whole passages in context instead of trading single verses. Preparing for the second means being honest about where the church has failed people.
Religious objections come from rival belief systems. Brooks names movements mainstream apologetics rarely writes about: Black Hebrew Israelites, the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters. In his words, “these are religions that we see on a regular basis in our own backyard.”
Social justice questions ask whether the church has anything to say about public injustice. Brooks frames the challenge as showing solidarity with people suffering injustice “while still remaining distinctly and uniquely Christian.”
His reason for sorting this way is practical. Brooks warns, “we focus so much on perfecting our answers to the classical issues that we have maybe lost step with some of the contemporary questions.” He affirms that Mormon apologetics is needed elsewhere, but he says, “Mormonism is not a big issue in my neighborhood.” A strong case against Mormonism delivered in inner-city Detroit, he says, “may be the right presentation and have the right answers and the right information and the right research, but I have not answered the right question.” His summary sets the standard for this whole practice: “it’s not enough for the church to answer questions, rightly, we have to answer the right questions.”
He also gives a warning before any sorting begins: “We’re not a monolithic group.” The lanes organize what you hear, and only listening can fill them. Lisa Fields gave the counterexample. She described a friend who grew up in church and is becoming a skeptic. He asks about the Epic of Gilgamesh and cannot accept that his Buddhist and Muslim friends are going to hell. Young people in the Black church, she said, want to talk about evolution, creation and where the Bible came from. Those classical questions come from inside the community, and your listening has to leave room for them.
The listening season
This is the core practice. Give it at least three weeks.
- Draw your block. Agree on a real boundary: these streets, this school zone, the area within walking distance of the building. Name the places where people gather and talk, such as the barbershop, the bus stop, the corner store or the rec center.
- Start with conversations already happening. Each participant writes down questions about faith they have heard from coworkers, relatives, classmates or neighbors in the last year, as close to the person’s own wording as possible. Record no names.
- Notice what is present. Pay attention to which belief systems are visible nearby: literature on the corner, groups teaching in public, conversations at work, the shows and podcasts younger relatives quote. Lisa Fields pointed to a popular radio program aimed at younger listeners that featured a Pan-Africanist guest. Find out what your neighbors are listening to.
- Ask, then stop talking. If a natural moment comes, ask an open question: What do you think most people around here get wrong about church? or Is there something about Christianity you have never heard a good answer to? If you feel the urge to correct, write the question down and save the answer for later.
Treat every neighbor as a person, never a research subject. Never record a conversation without clear consent, and be honest about why you are asking. Sometimes listening brings out real pain, such as grief, a crisis or harm someone is living through. That moment calls for care, and for connecting the person with the church’s leaders or qualified professionals.
Facilitator guidance: At the next meeting, put three large sheets on the wall labeled with Brooks’s lanes, and add a fourth labeled “Doesn’t fit.” Have people write each question on its own card and place it. Expect arguments about placement. A question about whether God cares about police violence might belong to justice. It might also be a religious objection, if the person asking has concluded that Christianity is a white man’s religion. Talk it through before you move the card.
For discussion: Which card was hardest to place in one lane? What does that difficulty show about how the lanes overlap in real life?
Test your sorting
Once the cards are up, check them four ways.
Sample. A few weeks of informal conversations cannot map a whole neighborhood. Your group knows certain kinds of people, works certain jobs and keeps certain hours. Retirees, teenagers, recent immigrants or night-shift workers may be missing from your cards entirely. Ask whose voices are absent, and treat the wall as a first draft that the church keeps revising. The wall is also no reason to drop classical apologetics. Questions about God’s existence or the resurrection will still come, sometimes from your own members.
Stereotypes. Did any card come from what someone assumed rather than what someone heard? Take those down. If the religious-objections sheet holds only the movements Brooks named, ask whether you found them or brought them with you. Brooks’s lanes were built to widen the church’s attention.
Silence. Brooks warns that “whenever the church doesn’t give an answer to an issue, people assume it’s because we don’t have an answer.” Look at your fullest sheet and ask which of its questions your church has never addressed from the pulpit or in a class. Lisa Fields observed that groups like the Five Percenters and Hebrew Israelites are “actually winning over the African American community because they tackle those issues.” Her concern was that those groups show up to the questions.
Ideology. The justice sheet carries the most risk of drifting into party politics. Brooks grounds the justice lane in God’s character: “the throne of God is established on righteousness and justice. Righteousness and justice kiss one another.” Compare his wording with Psalm 89:14, “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face,” and Psalm 85:10, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” What does Brooks keep from these verses, and what does he combine? The psalms describe the character of God’s own rule. For each justice card, ask first what Scripture says about the wrong behind it, both individual sin and sin built into systems.
For discussion: Where has your church been silent, and what might that silence have told the people who asked? How would you explain to a skeptical member why justice questions belong in apologetics, without turning the explanation into a political argument?
Build readiness for what you found
Now plan, starting from the cards.
- Choose two or three questions that appeared most often or were asked with the most weight.
- Study the actual belief systems present. Learn what a movement teaches from its own claims before you rehearse a rebuttal. Practice in pairs: one person explains the movement’s view until the other agrees it was represented accurately, then swap.
- Hold the center steady. Brooks names the tenets that do not move: an almighty Creator who alone determines right and wrong, Scriptures that are God-breathed and true, Jesus Christ as Lord, and one way of salvation revealed in Scripture concerning Christ. The questions and illustrations change from block to block. The gospel stays the same.
- Find the people already answering. Brooks holds that “every church needs an apologist,” and he urges anyone with this passion to go to their pastor and ask, “How can I use this passion to better serve the mission of our church, of reaching our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ?” The best-prepared person for your block may be the one the block already trusts.
Brooks also gives a realistic limit: “none of us can reach everyone, but every one of us can reach someone.” A church does not need answers for every card by next month. It needs to start preparing for the conversations its block is actually having.
For discussion: Choose one belief system present on your block. Can you state its central claim in a way a follower would accept as fair? Who in your congregation already answers these questions informally, and how could the church support that person?
Open the envelope
At the final meeting, hand back the folded sheets from the first session. Read your five predicted questions next to the cards on the wall. Which card, if any, differed from your prediction, and how?
Brooks insists the problem is never a shortage in the gospel: “the gospel answers the longings of the hearts of men. The challenge is, are we giving that answer?” Pick one card that nobody predicted. Decide together who will study it, who will pray over it, and when the church will speak to it in public. Then put that date on the calendar.