Preaching that only says just believe tends to fail the next generation for a specific reason. It hands people a conclusion without the steps that lead to it. When a hard question arrives, they have nothing to retrace. The remedy is not to believe less. It is to teach the reasons in a sensible order, so that each new question lands on ground that has already been laid.
This guide is a teaching sequence for that work. It draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Dr. Howard-John Wesley, a senior pastor in Alexandria, Virginia. You can work through it alone over a few evenings, or with a group across four or five meetings, one step per meeting. Each step depends on the one before it, so resist the urge to skip ahead to the most interesting question.
First, a distinction the whole guide depends on
Three things often get treated as one: trusting God, holding a belief, and knowing why the belief is reasonable. A person can have deep trust and sincere belief and still lack the third. That is not a defect in their faith. It is a gap in their teaching.
Wesley is careful here. He does not say the Black church failed at defending the faith. He says it defended it differently, by preparing people to live it out under oppression. His concern is that young believers now meet atheism, agnosticism and other religions far more often, and need to understand what they believe “and are prepared to give an answer for it.” He is also clear about the spirit of that answer. The goal is not to make people hostile to other faiths: “not to say that they’re anti-Muslim or anti Jew or anti Bahai, but let’s make certain we are pro Christian.”
Hold onto that distinction. Every step below adds reasons without discarding trust.
Observe the text
Read 1 Peter 3:15 slowly: “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.” In the KJV, “meekness and fear” means gentleness and reverence. Before discussing the verse, notice three things in it. What is the reader asked to explain? Who starts the conversation? What manner is required? The verse assumes the believer already has hope. What it asks for is the reason behind that hope, offered gently. That is exactly the gap this guide is trying to close.
Step one: collect the questions people already have
A good teacher starts by finding out what the learner actually lacks. Wesley did this literally. He asked the young adults in his congregation to send him the questions they were wrestling with, and when the emails came in, he found that most of them were apologetic in nature. His diagnosis is simple: “people always have these questions, but never have an opportunity to ask them.”
That sentence explains why just believe fails. A sermon is a one-way format. The questions do not go away because there is no place to raise them. They wait, and they are often asked first by someone who wants the person to leave the faith.
Practice for this step. Give everyone in the group a few index cards. Each person writes, without a name, one question about the faith they could not answer right now, or one they have heard from a friend, coworker or relative. Collect the cards and read them aloud without comment. Then sort them together into piles. You will probably find that many cards fall into a small number of piles: where the Bible came from and why it has authority, whether Jesus is the only way to God, why God allows suffering, and whether church is necessary at all. Wesley names these same recurring questions, and he does not think they are new: “I don’t think that they’re new. I think that they kind of recycle.”
That is good news for a teacher. Questions that recycle can be taught before they arrive.
For whoever leads: keep the cards. You will return to them in the final meeting. Do not answer any of them yet. The point of this first meeting is to show the group that their questions are welcome. Wesley ties that welcome to credibility: “I think only when you embrace the questions, do you gain respect from those who ask them.”
Step two: teach the arithmetic before the calculus
Now look at your piles and ask which question the others depend on. Wesley’s answer is the Bible itself. Many arguments about Jesus, morality or salvation end the moment one person says they do not accept Scripture as authoritative. He frames it this way: “If you and I can’t agree that one plus one is two, then we can never have discussion about calculus.”
The image helps because it shows order. You cannot reason from a text with someone until you have given reasons for taking the text seriously. That is why Wesley wants ordinary church members to understand how the canon came together, including why texts such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas were left out. Without that, he warns, “you’re gonna be blindsided by someone who has researched that.”
The analogy also has a limit, and it is worth naming so the group does not misuse it. Faith is not a proof that collapses if one step is unclear. Many believers trust Christ long before they can explain the canon, and that trust is not invalid. The point of the image is teaching order, not a claim that every belief hangs on a single argument.
Practice for this step. Assign one or two people to read a reliable introduction to how the Bible came together before the next meeting. Wesley recommends a book by Barton called How the Bible Came to Be for this purpose. Ask them to come back with three things in plain words: roughly when the four Gospels were recognized, what questions early Christians asked when deciding which writings belonged, and one thing they learned that surprised them. Then let the group try to answer, out loud, the card that asks why certain gospels are not in the Bible. Notice how much easier it is now.
Observe the text
Read Acts 17:11: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” The Bereans were not doubting for its own sake. They received the message eagerly and also checked it. Ask the group: what did they check, and what did they check it against? This is the posture of step two: eager reception and careful examination at the same time.
Step three: take the recurring questions one at a time
With some footing on Scripture, the group can take up the other piles. Wesley’s own Bible studies were built for this. He did not want them to move only verse by verse: “Let’s deal with the real issues that people are facing in the world.” He wanted people prepared for questions that come up at work and with family.
Take the question Wesley puts first: “how do we say that there’s only salvation in the name of Jesus” when a person knows devout, morally serious neighbors of other faiths. Jude 3 Project affirms what Jesus said of himself, that he is the way, the truth and the life, and holds that conviction as an invitation, never a weapon. Teaching this well means reading what Jesus actually claimed, not only repeating the conclusion. It also means taking seriously the real neighbor behind the question.
Wesley adds a caution that many teachers skip. He wants people to know the “great diversity of doctrine and thought and division that makes us who we are as Christians.” Learners who are taught that every Christian agrees on everything will feel betrayed the first time they discover otherwise. A good sequence tells them early which beliefs are shared by faithful Christians everywhere and which ones faithful Christians have long debated.
Step four: lay the foundation for suffering before the crisis
Save this step for last because it rests on the others, and because it is the heaviest. Wesley calls evil and suffering “the make or break issue.” He also observes that people often carry a belief about God formed very early, and “when these tragedies come, they’re ill prepared.”
His approach is to build the foundation ahead of time. He teaches people to think through how God’s providence relates to human choice, putting the question this way: “How much of your life is providentially planned? And how much is a direct result of choice?” From there he connects those questions to God’s knowledge and power. Faithful Christians answer the providence and free will question differently, and a group should hear more than one answer. The goal is not one system. It is to keep people from meeting a funeral with only a slogan. Wesley says he cannot tell a family whose child died of cancer that it was simply the Lord’s will.
Lisa Fields adds the necessary guardrail. She describes the problem of evil as one of her major challenges in seminary, and notes that a philosophical answer “might make sense in your head” while the person in front of you is grieving. What she valued in Wesley’s teaching was “just kind of marrying the two so you’re not disconnected” from people who are suffering. Teach the ideas, but never let the ideas replace sitting with someone in pain.
For whoever leads: someone in the room may be carrying a fresh loss. Make every question in this step optional. If a person’s grief or distress is heavier than a discussion can hold, help them find a pastor or a qualified counselor, and stay with them as a friend.
Observe the text
Read Job 1:6-12. Notice the accusation: Satan suggests Job serves God only because he has been blessed. Wesley reads the scene as a wager that some people can go through suffering without an answer and still hold onto their faith. That is his interpretation of the passage. Ask the group what the opening chapter tells the reader that Job himself never learns. How might knowing the reasons for faith help someone endure even when they do not know the reasons for their suffering?
A misconception to clear up
Some people hear all this and conclude that emotional worship is the enemy. Wesley does not say that. He warns against “the dumbing down of the gospel,” meaning sermons built mainly to produce a shout. But in his closing words he calls the good feeling of worship and praise “really critical components of discipleship.” His complaint is with the shout as the goal, not with the shout itself.
A second misconception is that raising hard questions plants doubt. Step one usually answers this on its own. The cards show the questions were already there. Wesley describes the setting he hopes for as a place “where we can deal with the reality of Bible and deep theological and philosophical issues and it edify our mind, but not break our faith.” He keeps his posture simple: “my job is not to make you think what I think.” The teacher’s task is to make sure people are thinking.
Questions for discussion
- Before this study, which of the three (trust, belief, knowing the reasons) did you think was weakest in your own faith? Has your answer changed?
- Look at the pile of cards your group sorted. Which question depends on another being answered first, and why?
- Wesley says the Bible’s authority is where the biggest battles come. Do you agree, or does another question in your pile sit underneath that one?
- Where in your church or household is there a regular time for someone to say they do not understand? If there is none, what would it take to create one?
- Restate in your own words one Christian answer to the providence and free will question, then restate a different one fairly. What does each explain well, and what does each struggle to explain?
- Lisa Fields warns that a sound argument can still feel distant to someone who is grieving. How would you tell the difference between a moment for an explanation and a moment for presence?
Close by returning to the cards
In your final meeting, read the original cards again. For each one, ask a single question: could someone in this room now give a gentle, honest answer, or at least say where to look? Set aside the cards you still cannot answer. Those become the plan for your next study. A group that ends with a list of unanswered questions and a way to pursue them has learned the main lesson of this guide: the reasons can be taught, and they can be taught before anyone needs them in a hurry.