Homiletical Apologetics and the Local Church: Equipping believers through holistic apologetic preaching

This thesis researches the question, ‘To what extent does apologetic preaching equip evangelical believers to defend and share their Christian faith today?’. It argues that a holistic approach to apologetics and a textual approach to apologetic preaching are helpful to evangelical believers to understand their Christian faith deeply, and to defend and share it in a relevant and contemporary manner. The three main motivations that led to this project were 1) a lack of apologetics in preaching during Sunday worship services, 2) a dearth of academic literature on apologetic preaching (and none from a British perspective), and 3) to develop professionally both ministerially and academically in this subject area. The research was conducted at Apologia Baptist Church (anonymised), a small evangelical Baptist church in the UK. Ten participants were chosen through purposive and maximum variation sampling. Norton’s pedagogical action research methodology was employed for the research, and it included two sermon series: Topical Apologetic Preaching (TAP) and Holistic Apologetic Preaching (HAP). Kemmis and McTaggart’s Spiral was used for individual sermon reflections. Originally, ten topical sermons were planned for the TAP series. However, critical reflection and reflexivity as part of my action research methodology resulted in major issues being identified. The two major issues (dominance of the intellectual nature of apologetics and the weaknesses of the topical approach to apologetic preaching) halted the TAP series after six sermons. My response to these TAP inadequacies was to develop three original ideas. First, I made a case for a holistic understanding of Christian apologetics. I argued for the inclusion of spiritual gifts alongside intellectual apologetics (moral arguments, proofs, contradictions), and I encouraged the use of action-oriented forms of apologetics (fighting injustice, solidarity, compassion). Secondly, I made a case for the HAP model with a textual approach. HAP sermons encourage believers to defend and share their Christian faith intellectually and spiritually, embracing imagination and creativity through action-oriented apologetics. Thirdly, I developed a HAP homiletical framework that enables preachers to develop holistic apologetic sermons. Six textual sermons on the Book of James were subsequently developed using the HAP homiletical framework. I employed a SWOB (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and barriers) analysis to the results of my thematic analysis. Participants reported that holistic apologetics provided opportunities to defend and share their faith in imaginative and holistic ways, and that textual apologetic sermons helped them understand their faith more deeply. The HAP Homiletical Framework was useful in generating holistic and relevant apologetic sermons. Finally, the micro, meso and macro changes for further development are presented in this thesis.

Citation

Abel Boanerges, S. (2022). Homiletical apologetics and the local church: Equipping believers through holistic apologetic preaching [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Chester.

Publisher

University of Chester

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10034/627869

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en