Online Apol starts TONIGHT!! Remember, all classes are recorded! Ethan Tong will coach this semester class/club. Sign up HERE – https://lastingimpact.info/product/club22508/ Or read on for his valuable insight…
I never used a box in Apologetics. Early on, I had a box in which I stored blank cards, but eventually, I stopped using a box at all. At first, I told people that I wasn’t using a box because “you don’t have a box with you in real life when someone asks you a hard question.” But… that was an excuse. I was a little too lazy to figure out how to print stuff onto index cards, and I was definitely too lazy to HANDWRITE all the cards.
But my senior year, I won the Region 4 Championship (which used to be all of Texas and Oklahoma!) in Apologetics. Without a box! How? Let me give you some of my secrets…
(1) Pay Attention to Your School!
Weird tip, I know. But most of my best rounds were when I drew in something I had been reading in my school that month. Almost all of us have some Christian readings as part of our assigned readings––Screwtape Letters, Knowing God, Mere Christianity, Practice of the Presence of God, or whatever! Use the things you learn in these books for your speeches. For example, if you get a topic on prayer, draw in what you read about prayer from one of your books! For me, I remember Screwtape Letters mentioning something about how Christians sometimes turn prayer into “motivational resolution” instead of it being actual petitions that GOD would help them. That’s something I would incorporate into my speeches!
If you skim your readings, you won’t have anything to add to an Apol speech. But the best Apol speeches have the best sources. And you have personal experience with some of the best sources out there!! Use what you’re learning in your books––you’ll see it pay off.
(2) Read your Bibles!
Another weird tip! (But if they were expected tips, that’d be a lame article). Why does this matter? Because when you can tell a judge something you’ve been personally reckoning with in your daily devotions, it shows them that you aren’t just a robot reading your card you basically copied from GotQuestions.org. It shows them that you are invested in your own faith! And your insights will be much better. For example, I’m reading from Jeremiah right now about how God is allowing the nation of Israel to be enslaved to Babylon. That would be helpful in explaining cards on why bad things happen to good people (it’s part of God’s larger plan), on how God is sovereign (even in the bad, God is ordaining it), etc.
If you are skimming your Bible reading, just doing it to check it off in the morning, you’ll miss out on applications you can use for Apologetics (and a rich personal walk with God!). I encourage you to read your Bibles carefully, seeing what you can glean from it. That’ll enrich your speeches so much––I can’t emphasize enough how nice it is to hear what a competitor has been reading in their personal studies!
(3) Play Devil’s Advocate
Most of you know what Devil’s Advocate is––it’s not literally advocating for the devil, it’s just playing the other side. The best apologetics is where the competitor is doing a good job representing the other side the best they can. Too often, I see competitors taking the lazy route––sticking up a straw man and knocking it down. Take, for instance, the prompt “Does the Bible degrade women?” That’s a good prompt! Something we actually have to wrestle with. It is NOT a good idea to say, as I heard one competitor say, “Of course the Bible doesn’t degrade women. How can the Bible hate women when there are women all over its text??” Friends, that is NOT a good response to this question. Why? Because it doesn’t do a good job showing the other side.
You need to make the horse thirsty if you want it to drink. In the same way, if you want the judge to really want to listen to your speech, you have to prop up a REALLY good argument from the other side before you knock it down. What if instead of the previous argument, I posed to you this intro:
Christianity tells us that men and women are equal. But is that really what Scripture says? Doesn’t Scripture say that “woman is the glory of man?” That “women are to be silent, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church?” That “women should ask their husbands at home?” These passages are difficult for us to understand. They seem, at first glance, to be examples of Christianity putting down women. How do we respond?
Isn’t that so much more of a compelling intro? When you put up a better argument on behalf of the skeptic, your speeches will be so much better.
If you want more of these types of tips––and want to get in depth into some difficult theological topics––sign up for our Apologetics club, which meets Thursday from 8-9pm. I’ll be leading the group through multiple topics each week, and there will be some opportunity to practice as well. I promise it’ll be worth your while––I can’t think of anything more important than doing Apologetics! You can register here. Don’t wait––class starts in about two weeks.
Ethan Tong (‘19 Alumnus) is a second-year seminary student at Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, TX. He competed for four years in NCFCA, amassing 15 top-3 finishes in speech and debate categories. He served with InterVarsity at Hillsdale College, where he was a Philosophy and Religion major, graduating with one of the top 10 highest GPAs in his class.
You must be logged in to post a comment.