For the apologist, clear communication and winsome interaction are key.

Rather than seeing outsiders as enemies, which often creates an “us versus them” mentality, we need to reach out with a posture of humility, generosity, and openness.

The only question is where to start. That’s a tough question, because we could explore any number of possible outlets for reaching people. If we started listing the possibilities, we might quickly get overwhelmed: websites, blogs, audio, video, podcasts, social media, Twitter… the list goes on. Here we’ll take a different approach by first looking

Proverbs 18:13 (NASB) states that “He who gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame to him.” In almost every personal interaction mentioned in Proverbs, the first step is listening.

It’s important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the medium you are using. As mentioned before, Twitter is not the most effective tool for debating others. The strength of Twitter might be more suited to propagating links to resources. The comments section on YouTube also isn’t the best place for trying to carry on a deep discussion.

To listen to a person will require that we temporarily set aside our objections to what a person is saying and allow him or her to speak openly without fear of being challenged.

In his book How We Believe, atheist psychologist Michael Shermer discusses a study that surveyed “skeptics” for why they do or do not believe in God. Issues related to scientific evidence for God and design in nature ranked as the number one reason why skeptics doubt God, and also why some believe.

The Barna Research Group found that twentysomethings who stay in church were twice as likely to have a close personal friendship with an adult inside the church. Those who had an adult mentor at church, aside from the pastor, were almost three times as likely to stay as those who did not.4

Question 3: Where do we agree?