You all may have seen the recent You Tube video with Dr. Oliphint posted here at Reformed Forum. If not, check it out and then come back and read this post. (By the way, only part 1 is posted here, but you can find parts 2 and 3 at You Tube).
What struck me about Dr. Oliphint’s presentation of Van Til’s apologetic method (properly called “Covenantal Apologetics” as opposed to “Presuppositionalism”), is that biblically faithful apologetics is not a matter of bait and switch. In other words, we don’t pretend that we can agree with the unbeliever on some neutral footing for the sake of winning him to Christ. So, we don’t pretend with the unbeliever that reason or evidence is our final authority in all things. We don’t do that because eventually we will have to come to the God of the Bible and the Bible of God. At which point the unbeliever will say “Hey, wait, you can’t go there, you promised to stay neutral!” You see, if we begin somewhere else other than the Bible and the Triune God and later seek to back track the reasonably intelligent unbeliever will rightly call “foul” and say that we are trying to switch up authorities on him. And he would be correct, we did try to pull the old bait and switch. As those committed to God’s word how can we be so dishonest with unbelievers and still seek to maintain a faithful witness to Christ? So, rather, we are to begin honestly with the unbeliever and seek to defend not generic theism, but the truth of the Christian Faith as such and as it is revealed in Scripture. The fact that the unbeliever doesn’t buy that does not change the fact that we called to honest and biblical apologetics!
Now, perhaps, you can see how this applies to ministry and the question of church growth. How will we grow the church? How will we carry out our ministry in the 21st century? Many believe that we have to meet the unbeliever on his own terms in order to reach him. We need to bait him with the kind of things unbelievers like, make our churches look cool and hip, and then once we get him in we can switch things up on him and give him the hard to swallow doctrine and beliefs. But don’t lead with that stuff – you’ll scare him away!
Again, this is the old bait and switch. In other words, that which we seek to keep people at our churches has to be the same thing with which we will seek to attract them there in the first place. And here we have in view, of course, the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of the self-disclosed triune God of Scripture. You can’t think you will attract people to the church through gimmicks and trinkets, and then think you will keep them with the offensive Gospel. Besides, when do you make the switch?
See, the bait and switch tactic leaves the pastor with a horrible choice to make. Either you keep the Gospel away from the people whom you attracted by other means, in which case your light remains under a basket. Or, you finally bite the bulletin and let the light of the Gospel shine brightly before them in which case – unless they are made to be born again – they will then be repelled. And more times than not, with the old bait and switch method, the pastor really never gets around to doing the meaty Gospel stuff because he is too busy trying to bait people with doctrine-lite sermons, stories, and gimmicks.
Van Til has a lesson here for us all. No bait and switch tactics! I know its scary coming right out and speaking your convictions before unbelievers. But if you don’t do that with the hopes of sometime later switching the conversation up on them, all you’ve done is delay the offense of the Gospel. But it is that very offensive Gospel which is not only the means by which some are driven away, but it is also the means by which God’s elect are graciously and wonderfully brought into the Kingdom. If you bait with something other than Gospel, you are giving up the very thing which God has promised to use to convert unbelievers. You’ve put away your best weapon for the battle.
And that goes for both apologetics and church growth.
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve. (Romans 16:17-18)