July 1, 2024 • 45 mins
Summary
Robbie Lashua discusses the Stand to Reason (STR) Outposts initiative, its purpose, and the process of starting one at a local church. He shares his journey of getting involved with STR and his role as the outpost coordinator. The conversation also covers the flexibility of outposts, the target audience, and the use of STRU courses for small group discussions. Robbie is interviewed about STR's Outpost program, which equips local churches with apologetics resources. The program allows flexibility for churches to use other materials but requires adherence to STR's mission statement. Outposts are not meant to teach doctrinal distinctives, and the local church is responsible for indoctrinating its members. Outpost directors have access to resources and support from STR for managing difficult personalities and theological issues. The program has seen significant growth and is open to churches of all sizes.
https://www.str.org/outposts
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 The Purpose of STR Outposts
03:16 Starting an STR Outpost at Your Church
06:00 Flexibility and Target Audience of STR Outposts
22:33 Equipping Local Churches with Apologetics Resources
26:24 Navigating Doctrinal Distinctives and Flexibility in Apologetics
38:37 Support and Resources for Outpost Directors
42:26 Growth and Inclusivity of the Outpost Program
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
Robbie Lashua discusses the Stand to Reason (STR) Outposts initiative, its purpose, and the process of starting one at a local church. He shares his journey of getting involved with STR and his role as the outpost coordinator. The conversation also covers the flexibility of outposts, the target audience, and the use of STRU courses for small group discussions. Robbie is interviewed about STR's Outpost program, which equips local churches with apologetics resources. The program allows flexibility for churches to use other materials but requires adherence to STR's mission statement. Outposts are not meant to teach doctrinal distinctives, and the local church is responsible for indoctrinating its members. Outpost directors have access to resources and support from STR for managing difficult personalities and theological issues. The program has seen significant growth and is open to churches of all sizes.
https://www.str.org/outposts
Takeaways
- STR Outposts provide small group curriculum for training lay people in apologetics within local churches.
- The target audience for STR Outposts is lay people in the church who are not equipped to compete in the marketplace of ideas and culture.
- The use of STRU courses and small group discussions makes apologetics training more accessible and digestible for lay people in the church. STR's Outpost program equips local churches with apologetics resources and allows flexibility in using other materials.
- Outposts are not meant to teach doctrinal distinctives, and the responsibility for indoctrinating members lies with the local church.
- Outpost directors have access to resources and support from STR for managing difficult personalities and theological issues.
- The program has seen significant growth and is open to churches of all sizes.
Chapters
00:00 The Purpose of STR Outposts
03:16 Starting an STR Outpost at Your Church
06:00 Flexibility and Target Audience of STR Outposts
22:33 Equipping Local Churches with Apologetics Resources
26:24 Navigating Doctrinal Distinctives and Flexibility in Apologetics
38:37 Support and Resources for Outpost Directors
42:26 Growth and Inclusivity of the Outpost Program
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auden
and Chad Gross. Join us forconversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,
evangelism, and the Christian worldview.Once again, the eyes of the
nation have turned here to this tinyvillage in Western what's floying blah blah blah
(00:26):
blah blah. Hello and welcome tothe podcast. This is Brian Auten and
I'm Chad Gross. And joining ustoday is Robbie Lashua. He's here to
talk about an initiative called str Outposts. Now, normally we record these things
before the interview, but this onewe're recording after because hey, we got
caught up and we didn't have time. But I'm really glad that happened because
(00:48):
I'm really pumped about this interview.It was super enjoyable, but it made
me think, Wow, this issuch an amazing initiative. It makes me
want to start one my own church. But you know, if you think
about training yourself to address the issuesthat are happening in culture and being able
to equip Christians to defend the faithand give them tools and training they need
(01:10):
to share and defend their faith inthe culture, the standar reason outposts.
What an excellent way to do that. So Ched tell us a little bit
about the interview. Yeah, soI have been kicking around the idea of
approaching my pastor about starting either areasonable faith chapter or an str Outpost or
something along those lines. And sowe reached out to Robbie and they graciously
(01:32):
accepted, and he came on andwe were able to talk about what exactly
an str outpost is, which genericallyis an apologetic small group. Also,
what are the requirements to start one, and the supports that str offers,
which are many, I might say, And finally, what to do if
perhaps your church is a bit reluctantor your pastor is a bit reluctant to
(01:53):
begin And yeah, I like you. Brian was very impressed of the user
friendly of the program. I thinkthe program is so needed and I totally
agree with Robby and one of thestatements he made, many of the statements
he made, but particularly one thatsticks out. He said that, you
know, churches that don't start toembrace apologetics and engage in apologetics are going
(02:14):
to begin to die because these arequestions that people are asking and we the
church need to have answers, andI think str Outposts is a great way
to provide those answers to lay people. And so, yeah, this is
an interview that I hope listeners willtake to heart. I hope that they'll
consider starting one in their own church. And yeah, super interview, really
enjoyable. Thank you Robbie for that. Let's go to the show notes for
(02:37):
the details and find out more atstr dot org. Let's go to the
interview. Let's get ready, switchme on. Well, Robbie Lashua,
thanks for joining us for the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Guys, this is great. Allright. Well, you're part of the
ministry of Stand to Reason. Canyou tell us a little bit about how
you got involved and what your roleis there. Yeah, so it's kind
(03:00):
of a crazy story. It goesback to COVID, right, because everything
starts with COVID. Now. Soduring that whole thing, I was doing
a lot of hikes. I livein Arizona and I like to hike a
lot, so you know, hecouldn't do anything else. So I was
outside a lot, praying a lot, thinking a lot, And in Arizona
there's not really a lot of apologeticsministries at all, and so I thought,
(03:21):
you know, maybe it's time forme just to start an apologetics ministry.
I'd been in church. I'd beena pastor for fifteen years, youth
pastor, then I was pastor ofapologetics at my church. But yeah,
I just felt like I want todo apologetics kind of full time and so
praying about it, talking with peopleabout my pastor, my wife, you
know. And so I started tocreate my own ministry. I was getting
my nonprofit status. One of myfriends, man, he gave me like
(03:46):
hit branding for my website. Hewas making me an app, he was
making me the website like all free. It was awesome. So We're going
full board into this thing. Andmy church gave me a year where I
could stay on staff and keep doingmy job, but I could have a
year to get everything before I launched. And so I'm in the middle of
that, and I was talking withAlan Schleman a lot, because we've been
friends for a while, and justasking him, you know, I know
(04:08):
how to do a church, butwhat is a parachurch organization, nonprofit business
model? And so he was talkingme through how str does things. And
a few months into this process.Alan calls me out of the blue and
says, hey, so I wastalking with Greg, and would you consider
having a conversation with us about maybecoming and just working at STR instead of
(04:30):
inventing your own thing, because you'rekind of like minded with us. We
already have the infrastructure and you couldjust come right on board and start doing
ministry unless you want to be anentrepreneur and create a thing, and I
don't want to do that like that. That was the worst part. I
just want to get to ministry rightright. So I talked with my wife,
talked to my pastor, prayed aboutit, thought about it, and
I was like, this is crazy. Never in my wildest dreams would I
(04:55):
think I'd work at STR. It'skind of still surreal to me after two
and a half years. Yeah,So Alan and Greg drove out to my
house in Phoenix and for a daythey pitched to me the future of STR
and why they want me to workthere, and so, yeah, we'd
prayed about it, and then Istarted working there in twenty twenty two.
So January first, twenty twenty twowas my first day with STR. So
(05:16):
that's kind of how it happened.And then what I do is, you
know, I'm I'm an apologist anda speaker, a content creator. So
I do stru courses, I speakaround the country, I write blogs,
you know all that stuff. Butone of the things that is unique to
my role is I am the outpostcoordinator. And so outposts are our version
(05:36):
of chapter groups in local churches acrossthe world, and it's really providing small,
grout curriculum for people to take theirchurch members through and disciple them in
good apologetics. And so we've beenrunning that for a year and a half
now and we have one hundred andtwenty outposts worldwide. We're in five different
(05:58):
countries, We're in thirty three state, so it's been going. It's been
going great, and a lot ofpeople are getting disciples in apologetics through these
outposts. So you said something,I'm going to go back a little bit
and this doesn't directly relate to whatwe're going to talk about today, which
is the str outpost for listeners whoare interested. You did you did I
catch you correctly that you said thatyou were a pastor of apologetics. Yeah,
(06:25):
yeah, that was my title atmy church. So I was you
pastor there for six years and oneof the things our church man, my
senior pastor. I still go tothe same church, even though I don't
work there anymore. I still gothere. I'm an elder there. I
love that church. And our seniorpastor's been there for twenty eight years and
he started this thing there called SMIStudent Missionary Internship, And it's basically that
(06:48):
every year with our high school group, we don't go to camps. We
go on a mission trip, butthey have to complete a long training period.
It's from February first through June todo training. Every week. They
got a memorize scripture, they gotto read books. There's about fifteen different
things they have to pass with aeighty percent or better or they can't go
(07:09):
on the trip. And so whenI got there, this thing had been
going, you know for I don'tknow, nineteen years, eighteen years,
and so I came in and Isaid, well, kids need apologetics.
So I started doing apologetics trips.You know. We went to Berkeley with
Brett Kunkle and did an atheist trip. I took kids to Salt Lake City
to do Mormon apologetics. And sowe were doing this and what happened was
(07:31):
parents would come to me upset becausethey'd say, my kids inviting Mormon missionaries
over to our house all the time, and they're debating with them and talking
with them and showing them the truth, and the Morments have nothing to say.
And I don't know this stuff asthe parent, Like where's the training
for me? And so I startedteaching adult classes at church. Right,
I started doing kind of the bigapologetics issues, problem of evil, resurrection,
(07:57):
LGBTQ stuff. Hermeneutics kind of blossomedinto Okay, maybe you could do
this full time. So that's whatI started doing. I became an associate
right and I was over all adulteducation. I taught apologetics classes. I
preached second most out of anybody onstaff. And then I created a podcast.
I had a podcast for the churchcalled Christ Culture and Coffee, and
(08:20):
I think we almost we almost hadtwo hundred episodes. So it was weekly
podcast just on apologetics issues, likewhat you guys are doing, interviewing Gary
Habermass and Greg Cochol and you know, all all the top guys. And
yeah, it was really cool timefor me just to focus on apologetics and
how it could work with lay peoplein the church. And that's why I
think this outpost thing is so coolbecause I've done it, and I think
(08:43):
pretty successfully trained a lot of peoplein the church. We even started doing
adult mission trips with apologetics emphasis.And then now I'm just trying to replicate
that, you know, other placesthroughout posts. So it was definitely a
unique role, and I don't wantit to sound like all I did was
apologetics. You know what's like whenyou work at a church, you do
a bunch of different stuff, likeI was over the Mercy Care minustries and
(09:03):
you know, all those types ofthings. But yeah, I primarily got
to focus on training our people inapologetics. Yeah, and I'm gonna avoid
a soapbox here. I just wantedto ask you to explain that a bit,
just because I think that that justis a position that is becoming more
and more critical, especially in ourculture today. And so pastors, if
you're listening, that might be somethingyou want to pitch to your church to
(09:26):
maybe have some apologists on staff oran apologists on staff, because I think
you're gonna find much fruit from it. So let's dig into outposts. So
you talked a little bit about whatthey are, about what the purpose of
them is. Feel free to expoundon that more if you'd like. But
if let's imagine somebody wants to startone of these outposts, what kind of
(09:48):
steps should they take? Yeah,so we really want to be connected with
the local church. So that's importantto us. These aren't, you know,
silos of home groups that just doapologetics for what I call apologetics junkies,
right, And we all know thoseguys like I'm you know you guys
like I love apologetics, But thisisn't just about becoming smarter. For becoming
(10:09):
smarter sake, I feel like oneof the things that I really am afraid
of or I don't want to happenwithout posts is I don't want it to
be a place where people come andhear really cool info and then do nothing
with it. And that's one ofthe dangers of Sunday School or Christian apologetics
is it can just become a newform of Christian entertainment. And I don't
(10:31):
want that. I want people tohear this and propel them into life change
so that they're reaching their community andtraining up their kids well. And so
we want it to be we wantit to be connected with a local church,
and all that means is that thechurch provides a place for them to
meet. Now, if it's youknow, a home group through the church's
home groups, that's great. Ifit's a Sunday school, that's great.
(10:52):
If it's a once a month eventat the church. We've created this to
be flexible because we want to beall around the country all you know,
all around the world, and everyplace has different cultures and contexts and how
churches run ministries. So we madeit to be really flexible in that way.
And so if somebody wants to startone, what they have to do
is go to our website str dotorg. Under the training tab, there's
(11:15):
a little thing you can click foroutposts, and then there's a start and
outpost and there's other info on there. They could look up where they're all
at, they could look up whatit's about. There's a video intro thing.
But then they just fill out aform. It probably takes four or
five minutes to start an outpost andthey apply and then what that'll do is
it'll kick them in automated email withall the requirements that they have to fulfill
(11:37):
to start one. And it's notit's not hard, but there are It
might take a little time. Sowhat we require is that people read Greg
Kochel's book, The Story of Reality, and then there's a questionnaire that comes
with that. There's one question perchapter that I have them answer and send
me their answers. They have tosend me their testimony of faith. They
(12:00):
have to send me two references.I can check with them on one of
them being a pastor at the church, and then they have to agree with
the standards and statement of faith.And so that's the application process. Once
people send me all their documents,then I meet with them on Zoom.
We talk through what it looks liketo open an outpost. I give them
the keys to the kingdom and thecurriculum, and then they're ready to go.
(12:20):
In addition to running their outpost,we also have Zoom meetings occasionally with
different regions just to talk about howthings are going, what's working well,
what's not. And then we havean annual in person conference that's completely exclusive
actually to outpost directors. And soonce a year we invite them all to
come to Southern California and all ofthe guys at str we put on a
(12:43):
conference with insider information for them becausethey're teaching our stuff. Right, Like,
we're not going to have Cocal dotactics to these people who are teaching
tactics to everyone at the church,right, So we do new stuff we
haven't done before, insider information becausewe want to keep them up to date
what's coming and how they can effectivelydisciple their people. And so, yeah,
someone wants to start it, yougo to the website, you apply.
(13:05):
You have to talk with your churchand make sure they're cool with doing
this, and we really want toincorporate it into what the church already does.
Like I said, if Sunday schoolis a big thing, hey,
you can run this as a Sundayschool. If small groups are a thing
and this would fit in with that, you can run as a small group.
I even though some churches who takelike five or six of the big
apologetics topics and they just put themon a rotation because they want everyone in
(13:28):
the church to go through those fiveor six topics. It's good idea.
So it's pretty easy to start.We didn't want to make it too hard,
but I did have to have somekind of vetting process for people,
just to make sure if our name'son it, that things are going well
and that people are qualified to leadthem. Robbie, you mentioned they're you
know, making it sort of likea form of a Sunday school or things
like that. Tell us a littlebit about some of the opp posts that
(13:50):
are out there, because you know, we've talked to different ministries that have
sort of chapters and things like that, and we find those to be very
useful options that people might explore ifthey're looking to get apologetics in their church
or their communities and things like that. And so it could be in a
church, but it can also bein different settings. So give us some
rundown of sort of like what varietyyou might find these groups at. Yeah,
(14:13):
I mean most of them are runout of churches as a small group
or a class. You know.Some of them run as like an eight
week class in the fall, eightweek class in the spring. It just
depends on every region because church attendantsand church classes are different depending on the
culture that you're in, you know, around the country and around the world,
and so there's so many different wayspeople run them. You know,
(14:33):
some people do a once a monthApologetics night and that's where they do outposts.
So it really depends on the scheduleof the director and we emphasize fit
it in with what the church isalready doing. We don't want to make
this a burden on the church.We want it to be a benefit.
And if we can fit into whatthey already do and their flow of ministry
and their seasons and their schedules,then that's a huge win for us.
(14:56):
And that's why we made them soflexible, so that people can fit them
in to what their church is alreadydoing. When I was working at a
church, you know, there's somany parachurch organizations that want to be in
your church. You get mailers allthe time and calls and drop ins,
and it gets quite annoying after awhile. But the worst was when people
would act like, if you're notdoing our program, you're not doing church
(15:18):
right, and that's just completely nottrue. The church is really important,
very important. It's it's God's vehicleto reach the world and to change culture
and to equip the saints, andso if we can come alongside and help,
that awesome. But you know what, there's some churches that already do
really well at apologetics, and tostart an outposts might just be more of
(15:39):
the same thing. So it's definitelynot something that every church has to have,
but as you know, the deficiencyof good apologetics training is so prevalent
in the American church that we reallywant to impact people with it and and
our target audience for these because becausethere's a difference, Like I've met with
Tyson James, you know, fromReasonable Faith. He's in charge of their
(16:00):
chapter groups. I love what they'redoing. That is so awesome. Outposts
are different than that because Reasonable Faithis like kind of high level apologetics philosophy.
What Outposts are targeted at is traininglay people in the church. That's
really our goal is, like peoplewho've never heard of apologetics. This is
for you. How do you talkabout homosexual aiding in the Bible with your
(16:21):
kids? How do you talk abouttransgenderism? How do you know that Jesus
rose from the dead. We're reallytargeting lay people in the church who love
Jesus and read their Bibles and cometo church, but they're not equipped to
compete in the marketplace of ideas andculture. So that's that's who we're targeting.
That that's kind of what we're goingafter. You know, that's that's
really great that you mentioned that,because you know, we have talked to
(16:44):
different folks on the podcast. Wetalked to Tyson James, and we're all
for all of those things, butwe want to we want to present people
what are all the different options forme. And so clearly there's some people
who are going to really latch ontothat Oh yeah, reasonable faith chapter that
that's totally my thing. I lovethe work of William and Craig or something
like that, but it's not.It is clearly not accessible to everyone.
(17:07):
Some people are just gonna be like, that's the last thing for me because
that's over my head or something.But I like what you're saying there because
basically saying, hey, the entireculture is dealing with these issues, and
this is for everybody in your churchto bring it down to everyone's level and
make it accessible. So I thinkthat that's super I'm really glad you mentioned
(17:27):
that, because the last thing wedon't want people to think is that,
oh, well, this is here'ssomething that people can't imagine themselves being able
to reach for or you know,facilitate or something like that. They're not
this is no, this is goingto be over people's heads. No,
exactly the opposite, you know,yeah, exactly the opposite. Well to
be honest with you. So,like I've interviewed all of our one hundred
(17:48):
and twenty Outpost directors and so wehave some of them who who have PhDs
in philosophy and apologetics, right,So that's that's one side of the spectrum.
And then we have people who heardabout apologetics two weeks to go at
a conference and they're like, mychurch needs this. And the beauty of
Outposts is it's so turn key.People on all spectrums can take it and
(18:10):
start implementing it at their church rightaway, which is really that's what I
wanted. I didn't want it tobe hard for people to use. So
what I hear you saying is isif there's somebody listening right now and they're
thinking, Wow, this is great, I think my church needs something like
this. But I'm not an apologeticsexpert. I don't know a whole lot
(18:30):
of apologetics. If I understand youcorrectly, you're saying that should not hold
them back. No, it shouldn'thold them back because here's how the curriculum
works. What we use for thecurriculum is our stru courses. So we
have twenty four of these courses now, and we create one to two new
courses every quarter, so we areoutpacing how fast we go, how fast
(18:52):
people can go through them. Butthe course is kind of a misnomer.
It's not like a college course rightwhere there's seventeen hours of lecture. It's
nothing like that each course. Mostof them are kind of formalized at five
videos that are between eight to fifteenminutes long each and so not tons and
tons of content. The one complaintI got from a lot of people I
(19:17):
interviewed about apologetics in their church,first of all, if they had it
right, so it was it's toughfinding people who have apologetics in the church,
which is but a lot. Butyeah, it's not. Yeah,
they would all say, first ofall, I don't know where this has
been all my life. I loveit. Why haven't we known more about
this? So first of all positiveexperience. But the one negative I kept
hearing is but there was just somuch information. I wish I could remember
(19:40):
it. I wish I could rememberit. And every apologetics conference I go
to, people say, I know, what's like drinking out of a fire
hydrant. Right, It's so muchinformation coming at you. And that's the
danger of apologetics, is it isinformation heavy because that's what it is.
It's content, it's information, it'sarguments, and so I was thinking,
how can we not scare away laypeople with this ministry, right because we
(20:04):
want them having a steady diet ofthis. And so how it works is
with our scru courses. Again,each videos, you know, eight to
I think the shortest video we haveis two minutes. The longest one we
have nineteen minutes. So a groupcomes together, they watch one video from
the course, not the whole course, just one video, you know.
They take ten minutes they watch it, and then we've created small group curriculum
(20:26):
to go with that, discussion guides, where there's questions, where there's exercises,
where there's homework. And that's reallythe bread and butter of it because
if people can watch a little andtalk a lot, they'll be able to
retain the information. So that's kindof our methodology. It's more of a
marathon type ministry than a sprint ministry. That's why I don't have any certificate
(20:47):
of achievement. I'm not trying toget people to blitz through this. That
is not the goal. The goalis to have this at the church as
a place where people can come asktheir questions, get their doubts answered,
or be directed to somebody or someorganization who can help them with their questions.
I like that too, because unfortunatelywe're we don't read as much as
(21:08):
we used to write just as aculture as a whole, and so I
think that makes it more digestible too. But I love that aspect as well.
Is it making it easier to ifyou dive in, If you do
a little bit and you do adeep dive, you're going to be more
apt to remember it. So Ilike that. Now, as far as
resources go, let's say someone startsan str outpost. Are they committed to
(21:33):
using exclusively str resources? Are theyallowed to supplement with other materials? How
does that work? Yeah, that'sa great question. I don't know how
it works. So that's that's oneof the things I know. Well,
if you don't know, no,I'm just kidding. We're figuring. We're
figuring this out as it goes,you know. And so like, Okay,
we love what William lan Craig does, right, We love what Turk
(21:56):
does a cross examined. We loveyou know, there's all these organis reasons
to believe all of them it's great, we study that stuff, we use
their resources, and so I've kindof just not really said what people are
supposed to do with that. AndI know outpost directors who will supplement and
they'll show a Bobby Conway video toopen the thing great, Like I don't.
I don't. I don't have anyproblem with that. But as str
(22:19):
I'm trying to think through what arethe guardrails I should put up so things
don't go off the rails. Butthe other side of it, guys,
is this isn't standard reasons ministry.This is God's ministry. This is God's
church. These are God's people,and I don't want to be cavalier or
reckless with that. But the truthof it is we're providing a tool for
(22:42):
people to use in the local church. And there's other tools out there that
are good. So I don't wantto be territorial or say only use our
stuff, because there's a lot ofother good stuff. But I'm also trying
to formulize if our name's on it, how do we you know, not
go off the rail. So,Chad, that's a great question. I
wish I had an answer no.No, they might have the answer No.
(23:07):
I understand that, and I appreciatethe transparency and just being real.
I mean, it is kind ofa new ministry. And if there's not
a hard fast answer, that's okay. And I hear you saying that there
is some freedom. I'm just assumingthat you know, the materials that are
used, if they're brought in fromanother ministry, should at least be consistent
with Yeah. For example, themission statement of str in the church.
(23:32):
Yeah, and that's where the peoplepeople have to sign our mission statement.
And it's a mere Christianity. Wedon't get into doctrinal distinctives, right,
We're just very basic. This isthis is classical Christianity, and so people
have to people have to agree tothat. And I've had I've interviewed people
who don't agree with our doctrinal statementand sometimes as they don't understand something or
(23:52):
a little nuance. But one timea guy, I had a guy reach
out to me and he said,I'm a Unitarian Universalist, I don't believe
in the TREN. Is that goingto be a problem. And I said,
yeah, that's going to be ahuge problem. Like you can't be
an outpust director and you really shouldreconsider your position like, and I did
an stru course on the Trinity,right, so I sent him the link.
(24:14):
I'm like, you probably should watchthis, man, because it's pretty
important and it's scriptural. So wedo deny people if they don't agree.
But well, that's kind of athat's I mean, that's not like the
Age of the Earth. I mean, that's that's a pretty big deal.
That's pretty it is. Well,and the other thing too, is And
this, because I think this isimportant, is we're not going to create
(24:34):
stru courses about doctrinal distinctives. We'renever going to have one called modes of
Baptism or are the signs gifts fortoday? Because that's not our thing.
We're dealing with apologetics. And andwe have already an outpost. You know,
we have Calvaries, we have Methodists, we have Presbyterian, we have
Lutheran, we have Assemblies of God. I've got some hyper charismatic churches out
(24:56):
in the South. We have Baptists, Southern Baptist, you know, Conservative
a Baptists, all these different denominationswithin Protestantism, Anglican. And I think
I could be wrong about this.I don't know what you guys think,
but I think that the local churchis supposed to indoctrinate their people. I
think that's the goal. Like thisis where we land on end times stuff,
(25:18):
this is where we land on sciencegifts. They should be transparent and
indoctrinate their people with their doctrinal distinctives, with their denominational distinctives. I think
that's great, and so as standardreason to come in and say, hey,
you know, some of us don'tlike this open handed issue within Christianity.
You know, that's not our rolewith apologetics, and so we do
(25:41):
leave flex for them to teach theirdoctrinal distinctives within their outposts according to what
their church is, because I thinkwe are subservient to the church. But
at the same time, I dorequire three things of every outpost meeting.
They have to watch one of ourvideos, they have to go through the
discussion guide, and they have totake time time to pray together. So
(26:02):
if they show a Bobby Conway videoor a Red Pen Logic video, you
know, or Frank Turk or whatever, that's fine, but those are three
things have to be happening on aconsistent basis. You mentioned the different curriculum
and stuff. So let's say Isign up I'm like, yeah, I'll
be a director and starting next week, what did the materials look like?
Is it like, oh, here'syou know, an outlaw, here's teaching
(26:22):
outlines or what does that look likeexactly? Yeah. So I have an
outpost director's handbook that i'd send you. I talk with you through all of
the ins and outs of it.But there's not a schedule of events because
each church and the people of eachchurch are probably at a different place as
to what they need to study,especially on regions of the country, I
(26:45):
mean all that regions of the world, right, And so I leave it
up to the outpost directors to pickwhich courses they want to do, as
long as there's a discussion guide togo with it, because I have to
create the discussion guides because stru existedprior to outposts, and so I'm playing
catch up on some of these courses. But as long as there's a discussion
guide, they can pick whichever coursethey want to start with. They have
(27:07):
the progative to pick when they redoa course. You know, because these
minishes are cyclical, you're gonna havepeople coming in and out, and so
you might get to a place andsay, man, we need to go
through the resurrection again, because thesepeople weren't here for that, and so
I leave that up to each individualoutpost director when they should do that.
But there is no set schedule ofthe curriculum and the order you need to
(27:29):
go through it in Okay, Sofor instance, I have in the past
run a reasonable Faith chapter and sonow I was one of the very first
ones, and so maybe they've gota lot of more resources and helps now,
But the way I would run thingswould be like, well, I
think i'll teach you this, andhere I'm going to come up with all
the I'm going to have to makethe PowerPoint. I'm gonna have to select
(27:52):
videos. It was autonomous at thetime. Now as I say, there's
more materials now for something like that, But it sounds am I getting it
right? When I say, oh, if it's an str outpost, it's
kind of like, oh, here'sthe topic. Resources are provided, and
we're going to go through this material, this this set material, and we're
going to talk about a video andwe're going to talk about and we have
(28:15):
a discussion guy to go through it. So it's it's basically plug and play.
Is that is that right? Plugand play and we made it simple
like that. So again, sopeople who are well versed in apologetics,
like like if you if you guysstarted one, so you two guys who
know this stuff, you wouldn't evenhave to look at it before you used
it, Like I mean, youmight want to, but you wouldn't have
(28:37):
to video and with the questions.It's it's pretty user friendly. That's great
because that's you know, for me, that's that's a barrier to entry,
you know, because am I quoteunquote qualified to do that? Yeah,
but here's the barrier to entry forme starting some group or something in my
church. Do I have the timeto put together power points? I have
(29:00):
the ability. I don't have thetime of the bandwidth. But if we're
going to be at church anyway,no problem talking about this, no problem
facilitating this. Oh SDR has plugand play resources, snap that up,
because we could get this started tomorrow. You know that. That's wonderful.
I am so thrilled to hear thatbecause I knew about the SDR outposts and
(29:21):
I just was like, oh,it must be another sort of chapter thing,
you know, my ignorance and Ilooked into it. That's why you're
here. But that's really encouraging.That's I mean, that is that's super
So I'm yeah, I'm on boardwith pretty one other thing too that I'll
mention that we're going to be startingin the next month is so so.
One of the things when I waspastor of Apologetics and youth pastor I noticed
(29:42):
is that people will train harder ifthey know a test is coming. Right.
When I told kids we're going toBerkeley to talk with atheist professors,
they studied really hard. Yeah,and the same with parents. Right.
So, so what we're doing withoutposts is this the second we're calling outpost
engagements, and it's just another toolfor people to use to train their people.
(30:06):
And what it is is there's there'skind of three tiers to it.
So the first tier is what we'recalling, you know, outreach engagement.
And we've partnered with Racio Christie.You guys are familiar with Racio Christie,
right, They're a big university apologeticsorganization. Well, they're in one hundred
and ninety campuses around the country,and so I was talking with Eric Scott
(30:27):
and what we've done is we've partneredwith them to where all of their directors
that are on the college campus,know about outposts and know that our outpost
directors may be contacting them to taketheir outpost people out on the campus to
evangelize, to table with them,to you know, to get in conversations
(30:48):
with non believers, because I thinkif you train them, hey, here's
these three courses to go through onatheism, on you know this, and
that. Now, take your peopleto the local college and let them use
their tactics, let them practice,and then come back in debrief. So
we've partnered with Rational Christie to makethat work. We've also partnered with an
organization called Justice for All, whichis a pro life organization that goes out
(31:11):
on college campuses. So you couldtake your people through making an abortion unthinkable,
and then you could go practice atthe college right with Justice for All.
Now, I also know a lotof people get freaked out about that
and never want to do it becauseit's scary. So the next tier of
outpost engagement is what I'm calling invitationalengagement. And a lot of people,
(31:32):
you guys probably know this, buta lot of people I talk to you
don't, I tell them. Doyou know you can order a Mormon or
a Jehovah's witness online like a pizzalike. You can just go here's the
website. He go say I wanta home visit, and they'll text you
and say, let's set up ahome visit. Yeah. So we've got
a lot of courses on you know, the Trinity. We've got some tim
did on Jesus identity that directly attackJehovah's witness theology. And then I'm making
(31:57):
a new course on witnessing the Mormons, and so people could go through that
and then say, hey, thehomework this week is to go order a
Mormon and have an hour long conversationwith them at your house. And here's
the guidelines. You don't drink coffee, you get donuts or cookies to give
to them, you're nice in yourkind, you ask a lot of questions.
Here's the witnessing techniques that we wentthrough, so they can go do
(32:19):
it. And then as a groupwe debrief, and I think that's really
important. We talk about what workedwell, what did you fumble on,
what arguments did you hear that youweren't prepared for, what would you do
different next time? And so thisoutpost engagement thing I'm pretty excited about because
it's giving people the opportunity to useall the stuff they've been learning, and
it's kind of pushing them out thedoor to go and to use it.
(32:42):
So that sounds outstanding. I lovethat, yeah, Robbie. One of
the things I've been pretty blessed overthe years with meeting pastors who are open
to apologetics in their church. ButI know that not everybody has had that
experience. So I'm wondering, howwould you, God, somebody, or
what advice would you give to someonewho are attending a church and perhaps their
(33:07):
pastor or their church are reluctant toallow them to start something like an outpost,
or seem disinterested in apologetics or don'tsee how vital it is. How
would you, I guess, suggestthey deal with that. Well, I've
had that happen a lot, becauseone of the things I want people to
(33:27):
do is talk with their pastors aboutthis, you know, before they go
through everything and then get excited andthen get rejected. I'd rather they got
rejected up front. And so I'vegotten multiple emails from people saying, my
pastor's not on board, they don'tthink apologetics is important, and so how
do I proceed? And what Ido is. I typically say, hey,
listen, let me send you someof the curriculum to show them,
(33:49):
like, this is what it is. Here's a list of the courses.
Here's one discussion guide to show them, this is the kind of thing that
it is. You know, here'stheir website so they you know, because
as a pastor, I was alwaysskeptical when people would say, Hey,
there's this great ministry out there andI want to use their stuff. I'm
like, hold on, because I'mthe gatekeeper of theology at the church.
Like I don't want to just letanything in. So I try to affirm
(34:13):
their pastor in that say hey,that's a good thing that they're not just
like yeah, do whatever. Andthen I say, go show them what
this is and why it's important.And I even have a video to pastors
about what it is and why it'simportant. And so a lot of times
that's worked well, where the pastor'sgoing, wow, this is great stuff.
I didn't know about str but whatI'm seeing looks great, and so
(34:35):
that that's worked. Now. Ido have some people who say my pastor
says, we don't need to doapologetics because it's just an academic thing.
And if we just preach the gospel. That's enough. And at that point
I say, hey, listen,you can't force your pastor to have a
ministry in the church when he's incharge. There's nothing you do now if
you want to have a home group, or if you want to do this
(34:57):
at another church, or you wantto do this with a you know,
collaboration of people at a community centeror whatever, I'm okay with you doing
that. But yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't keep, you know,
annoying your pastor about it when he'spretty clear on he doesn't think apologetics is
important. Do you think maybe somebodyin that situation who just really feels like
God is directing him in that directionmight in some circumstances consider finding another body
(35:23):
that might be open to that.Yeah, and I I I thought about
that a lot, But I don'tfeel like I don't know these people well
enough to say, hey, youmight want to find a different church.
Yeah, that's a big thing,right, So I don't ever say that
to people, but I do say, is a maybe another church in your
area want to let you do this? There all suggest that what if they're
(35:46):
a Unitarian Universalists, would you orthey're Mormon or whatever. You should go
to the church, not to somecult. Yeah. Also that yeah,
yeah, And I know that's athat's a tricky question, and I'm not
trying to put you on the spot. It's just I think I think you're
right, though it would be acase by case basis right. In some
(36:07):
cases it probably wouldn't be the rightmove, and in some cases it might
be the best move. But youcan't give a universal yes or no with
that. Well, and I justdon't know. If people ask me,
what would you do in my situation, because I you know, my pastor
doesn't want it to have apologetics here, I say, well, I mean
apologetics is commanded in scriptures, SoI'd go to a different church. But
(36:28):
if they don't ask me, Idon't. That's just a tough thing to
do, right, You got familiesinvolved. And the other's truth is,
I think if people don't start doingmore apologetics in the church, those churches
are going to die anyway because they'renot being effective and they're not they're not
giving people something. And so yeah, but to tell someone, hey,
you should change churches, I justdon't know people well enough to do that
(36:50):
through email. Yeah, And Ithink that's fair, and again, didn't
mean to put you on the spot. I was just just curious what you
thought about that. I don't feelput on the spot. It's a great
question. Okay, good, andthen kind of my last question that I
had in mind. But by theway, this has been great, super
helpful and exactly what I was hopingfor. So I just want to say
that before I forget to mention thatI've taught enough apologetics classes in the time
(37:13):
i've been a Christian to know thatsometimes you encounter some difficult personalities. People
get very passionate about doctrinal issues,and sometimes it can be difficult to know
where to go. Let's imagine I'mrunning an out post and I've got a
personality in my class and I'm notexactly sure how to deal with with him
(37:37):
or her. And just for anexample, let's go with let's say eschatology.
You know, there's a big discussionabout eschatology and I'm trying to say,
hey, it's okay to have differentviews, and this person just won't
allow that to rest. Is therea situation, Is there something or somewhere
where I can reach out to someoneat str and just say Hey, you
(38:00):
know, I am trying to dealwith this person. I don't really know
where to go. Can you counselme? I know obviously you'd go to
your pastor first, but I'm saying, is that also something that str offers?
And you know, and I'm thinkingin situations that are more extreme not
the norm. Yeah. So oneof the last thing I tell every outpost
(38:23):
director in our meeting after they've beenaccepted and I've got all the references and
I walked them through how to runit. The last thing I always say
is, hey, me and mysecretary are a resource for you. Anytime
you have a question about whatever,like you forgot a password, email us.
We get back to people regularly aboutthat kind of stuff. If you
(38:44):
havn't a problem, if there's atheological issue that comes up, anything you
need to help with difficult persons,contact us, because we are advocates for
you. That's our job is wewant to make sure these run well and
we set people up for success.And so if people have reached out to
me about difficulties in their groups andhow to manage a small group, right,
and so I'll walk them through thingsI've done, things I've read about
(39:07):
but also talking about hey listen,you know Matthew eighteen says this, you
go to the person in private.If they don't listen, you take another
you know, you might have totake it to the pastorn and say they're
being really difficult. But you know, also deciphering between are they being difficult
or are they just really excited aboutit and want to talk a lot,
right, So helping people think throughthose things, especially if they haven't led
a group before, it's kind ofcool. But yeah, me and I
(39:30):
got a secretary in January to helpme answer all the emails because they're getting
overwhelming. But we want to makesure we stay on top of it and
we help people with what they need. So absolutely, yes, we are
available for our outpost directors to contactus anytime, really about anything. I
think that's great, especially something yousaid there is the main reason why is
(39:51):
because I could see somebody thinking,well, I've never led a small group,
you know, but if they knowthat they had you and your secretary
to be able to reach out towith questions, especially initially, I think
that would offer a lot of comfortand support and maybe make them more willing
to do so. So it soundslike, you guys just have a great
program going. If I might say, I think it's pretty good. Yeah,
(40:14):
I'm pretty proud of what we've done. And you know, in a
year and a half we're up toone hundred and twenty groups running, you
know, And some people sometimes askme to like, well, what's there's
like some there's some misconceptions about thiswhole thing. So some people say,
well, is there already one inSan Antonio? And I'll say, yeah,
but I want to have like onein every church. It's not like
(40:35):
each town gets one. You know, that's not the idea here, You're
gonna have them all over the place. You'd have four of them in one
church if the church is big enough. You know, that's not the idea.
So we want to have them allover. But then the other thing
that they they'll ask me is alot of like, well, I'm not
you know, the I'm not qualified. I haven't gone to school for this.
(40:57):
I haven't And and this is whatI tell them all the time.
None of us know everything right,And you have to learn how to say
I don't know, but I knowhow to find out the answer. And
if you can point people to SCRdot org, or cross examined or reasonable
fifth or whatever to find the answer. That's what we need happening in the
(41:17):
church. You know, for solong people have asked questions or voice their
doubts only to be told, oh, just have more faith and be quiet
about it. But you can't dothat, and there's no excuse to you
because there's so many resources like yourwebsite, like our website, people can
go find the answer. So ifyou have one person in the church that
can direct people to the resources,that's a home run. You don't have
(41:38):
to know anything except where to go. Yeah, and so I try to
I try to help people understand thatthis isn't about being an expert. None
of us know everything. And ifyou just start and honestly, if you
start leading these groups and you don'tknow much, you're gonna learn a lot
through the videos and through the discussion. So it's I don't know, I'm
(42:00):
pretty excited about it. I'm hopingthat it continues to grow and as we
develop more and more, we wantto do more training with our people and
have some intentional study, kind ofa next level of leadership. So we've
got plans for the future. Butyeah, for this last year and a
half, it's been going pretty well. Oh one other thing. Sometimes people
ask me, is there a certainsize requirement, And I'm like, no,
(42:22):
Like, there's there's this couple inMaine. They've been running one out
of their church. There are Christiansin Maine, by the way. I
didn't know if you guys knew that, but there are. I thought that
was like Bigfoot, like everybody keepsclaiming it. But legend is ok,
okay, all right, So weactually have two outposts in Maine? Is
that crazy? And this this coupleleads one in the church and they have
(42:44):
a few, you know, twothree people from the church come and then
I've got other groups to have eightypeople coming, right, And so it's
it's just all over the map.And it's not the type of thing either
where I'm asking for attendance. I'mnot asking did you ask questions three on
video two? It's nothing like that. This is a tool we are giving
(43:04):
the church to equip their people.Excellent. Well, it's been really informative
and helpful. Robbie. Ye.Everything you've said is like, well,
I could do that, I coulddo that. That would it sounds really
fun. So everything you've said haskind of been like quite exciting because it
just you know, it makes yourbrain pop with the possibilities and the option.
So I hope our listeners are havingthat same sort of stuff as they're
(43:29):
listening too. So as we wrapup the interview, would you mind just
pointing our listeners to where they mightfind out more and the resources they need
to get started. Yeah, Soif you just go to our website str
dot org slash outposts, or youcan just go to SCR dot org and
click on the training tab and thenoutposts will pop up. You go on
there, there's a find an outpostwhere there's a whole map of the world
(43:52):
where all of them are. There'sa start and outpost tab where you can
click to fill out the form andget started on your application, and then
there's a video kind of explaining whatit is. So that's the place to
do it, and once you apply, you'll get that automated email with the
requirements and you can get started ondoing it. Super well. Robbie,
thanks for joining us for the interview. It's been a real pleasure and we
(44:14):
wish all the best with str andhope to talk to you again in the
future about you know anything you're doingin the future new initiatives, let us
know. We'd love to help promotethat. Oh I love it, guys,
and hey, I just wanted totell you. It was probably for
about a five year period I hadyour page as my homepage when i'd open
up my browser Apologics three fifteen.That was always my thing because I'm always
(44:35):
looking at the new stuff. SoI appreciate what you guys do. Thanks
so much, Thanks for listening tothe podcast. If you have a question
you'd like us to address, orjust a message for us feedback good or
bad, you can either email usat podcast at apologetics three fifteen dot com
or leave a voice message for ususing speak Pipe. Just go to speakpipe
(44:55):
dot com slash apologetics three fifteen toleave us a message. And remember,
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Also, if you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leave a review in iTunes
or the podcast platform in your choice, and please share this episode with a
(45:16):
friend if you've found it useful.Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources
at apologeticspree fifteen dot com, alongwith show notes for today's episode. Find
Chad's apologetic stuff over at Truthbomb Apologetics. That's truthbomb dot blogspot dot com.
This has been Brian Auten and ChadGross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast,
(45:36):
and thanks for listening
Hello, and welcome to the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auden
and Chad Gross. Join us forconversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,
evangelism, and the Christian worldview.Once again, the eyes of the
nation have turned here to this tinyvillage in Western what's floying blah blah blah
(00:26):
blah blah. Hello and welcome tothe podcast. This is Brian Auten and
I'm Chad Gross. And joining ustoday is Robbie Lashua. He's here to
talk about an initiative called str Outposts. Now, normally we record these things
before the interview, but this onewe're recording after because hey, we got
caught up and we didn't have time. But I'm really glad that happened because
(00:48):
I'm really pumped about this interview.It was super enjoyable, but it made
me think, Wow, this issuch an amazing initiative. It makes me
want to start one my own church. But you know, if you think
about training yourself to address the issuesthat are happening in culture and being able
to equip Christians to defend the faithand give them tools and training they need
(01:10):
to share and defend their faith inthe culture, the standar reason outposts.
What an excellent way to do that. So Ched tell us a little bit
about the interview. Yeah, soI have been kicking around the idea of
approaching my pastor about starting either areasonable faith chapter or an str Outpost or
something along those lines. And sowe reached out to Robbie and they graciously
(01:32):
accepted, and he came on andwe were able to talk about what exactly
an str outpost is, which genericallyis an apologetic small group. Also,
what are the requirements to start one, and the supports that str offers,
which are many, I might say, And finally, what to do if
perhaps your church is a bit reluctantor your pastor is a bit reluctant to
(01:53):
begin And yeah, I like you. Brian was very impressed of the user
friendly of the program. I thinkthe program is so needed and I totally
agree with Robby and one of thestatements he made, many of the statements
he made, but particularly one thatsticks out. He said that, you
know, churches that don't start toembrace apologetics and engage in apologetics are going
(02:14):
to begin to die because these arequestions that people are asking and we the
church need to have answers, andI think str Outposts is a great way
to provide those answers to lay people. And so, yeah, this is
an interview that I hope listeners willtake to heart. I hope that they'll
consider starting one in their own church. And yeah, super interview, really
enjoyable. Thank you Robbie for that. Let's go to the show notes for
(02:37):
the details and find out more atstr dot org. Let's go to the
interview. Let's get ready, switchme on. Well, Robbie Lashua,
thanks for joining us for the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Guys, this is great. Allright. Well, you're part of the
ministry of Stand to Reason. Canyou tell us a little bit about how
you got involved and what your roleis there. Yeah, so it's kind
(03:00):
of a crazy story. It goesback to COVID, right, because everything
starts with COVID. Now. Soduring that whole thing, I was doing
a lot of hikes. I livein Arizona and I like to hike a
lot, so you know, hecouldn't do anything else. So I was
outside a lot, praying a lot, thinking a lot, And in Arizona
there's not really a lot of apologeticsministries at all, and so I thought,
(03:21):
you know, maybe it's time forme just to start an apologetics ministry.
I'd been in church. I'd beena pastor for fifteen years, youth
pastor, then I was pastor ofapologetics at my church. But yeah,
I just felt like I want todo apologetics kind of full time and so
praying about it, talking with peopleabout my pastor, my wife, you
know. And so I started tocreate my own ministry. I was getting
my nonprofit status. One of myfriends, man, he gave me like
(03:46):
hit branding for my website. Hewas making me an app, he was
making me the website like all free. It was awesome. So We're going
full board into this thing. Andmy church gave me a year where I
could stay on staff and keep doingmy job, but I could have a
year to get everything before I launched. And so I'm in the middle of
that, and I was talking withAlan Schleman a lot, because we've been
friends for a while, and justasking him, you know, I know
(04:08):
how to do a church, butwhat is a parachurch organization, nonprofit business
model? And so he was talkingme through how str does things. And
a few months into this process.Alan calls me out of the blue and
says, hey, so I wastalking with Greg, and would you consider
having a conversation with us about maybecoming and just working at STR instead of
(04:30):
inventing your own thing, because you'rekind of like minded with us. We
already have the infrastructure and you couldjust come right on board and start doing
ministry unless you want to be anentrepreneur and create a thing, and I
don't want to do that like that. That was the worst part. I
just want to get to ministry rightright. So I talked with my wife,
talked to my pastor, prayed aboutit, thought about it, and
I was like, this is crazy. Never in my wildest dreams would I
(04:55):
think I'd work at STR. It'skind of still surreal to me after two
and a half years. Yeah,So Alan and Greg drove out to my
house in Phoenix and for a daythey pitched to me the future of STR
and why they want me to workthere, and so, yeah, we'd
prayed about it, and then Istarted working there in twenty twenty two.
So January first, twenty twenty twowas my first day with STR. So
(05:16):
that's kind of how it happened.And then what I do is, you
know, I'm I'm an apologist anda speaker, a content creator. So
I do stru courses, I speakaround the country, I write blogs,
you know all that stuff. Butone of the things that is unique to
my role is I am the outpostcoordinator. And so outposts are our version
(05:36):
of chapter groups in local churches acrossthe world, and it's really providing small,
grout curriculum for people to take theirchurch members through and disciple them in
good apologetics. And so we've beenrunning that for a year and a half
now and we have one hundred andtwenty outposts worldwide. We're in five different
(05:58):
countries, We're in thirty three state, so it's been going. It's been
going great, and a lot ofpeople are getting disciples in apologetics through these
outposts. So you said something,I'm going to go back a little bit
and this doesn't directly relate to whatwe're going to talk about today, which
is the str outpost for listeners whoare interested. You did you did I
catch you correctly that you said thatyou were a pastor of apologetics. Yeah,
(06:25):
yeah, that was my title atmy church. So I was you
pastor there for six years and oneof the things our church man, my
senior pastor. I still go tothe same church, even though I don't
work there anymore. I still gothere. I'm an elder there. I
love that church. And our seniorpastor's been there for twenty eight years and
he started this thing there called SMIStudent Missionary Internship, And it's basically that
(06:48):
every year with our high school group, we don't go to camps. We
go on a mission trip, butthey have to complete a long training period.
It's from February first through June todo training. Every week. They
got a memorize scripture, they gotto read books. There's about fifteen different
things they have to pass with aeighty percent or better or they can't go
(07:09):
on the trip. And so whenI got there, this thing had been
going, you know for I don'tknow, nineteen years, eighteen years,
and so I came in and Isaid, well, kids need apologetics.
So I started doing apologetics trips.You know. We went to Berkeley with
Brett Kunkle and did an atheist trip. I took kids to Salt Lake City
to do Mormon apologetics. And sowe were doing this and what happened was
(07:31):
parents would come to me upset becausethey'd say, my kids inviting Mormon missionaries
over to our house all the time, and they're debating with them and talking
with them and showing them the truth, and the Morments have nothing to say.
And I don't know this stuff asthe parent, Like where's the training
for me? And so I startedteaching adult classes at church. Right,
I started doing kind of the bigapologetics issues, problem of evil, resurrection,
(07:57):
LGBTQ stuff. Hermeneutics kind of blossomedinto Okay, maybe you could do
this full time. So that's whatI started doing. I became an associate
right and I was over all adulteducation. I taught apologetics classes. I
preached second most out of anybody onstaff. And then I created a podcast.
I had a podcast for the churchcalled Christ Culture and Coffee, and
(08:20):
I think we almost we almost hadtwo hundred episodes. So it was weekly
podcast just on apologetics issues, likewhat you guys are doing, interviewing Gary
Habermass and Greg Cochol and you know, all all the top guys. And
yeah, it was really cool timefor me just to focus on apologetics and
how it could work with lay peoplein the church. And that's why I
think this outpost thing is so coolbecause I've done it, and I think
(08:43):
pretty successfully trained a lot of peoplein the church. We even started doing
adult mission trips with apologetics emphasis.And then now I'm just trying to replicate
that, you know, other placesthroughout posts. So it was definitely a
unique role, and I don't wantit to sound like all I did was
apologetics. You know what's like whenyou work at a church, you do
a bunch of different stuff, likeI was over the Mercy Care minustries and
(09:03):
you know, all those types ofthings. But yeah, I primarily got
to focus on training our people inapologetics. Yeah, and I'm gonna avoid
a soapbox here. I just wantedto ask you to explain that a bit,
just because I think that that justis a position that is becoming more
and more critical, especially in ourculture today. And so pastors, if
you're listening, that might be somethingyou want to pitch to your church to
(09:26):
maybe have some apologists on staff oran apologists on staff, because I think
you're gonna find much fruit from it. So let's dig into outposts. So
you talked a little bit about whatthey are, about what the purpose of
them is. Feel free to expoundon that more if you'd like. But
if let's imagine somebody wants to startone of these outposts, what kind of
(09:48):
steps should they take? Yeah,so we really want to be connected with
the local church. So that's importantto us. These aren't, you know,
silos of home groups that just doapologetics for what I call apologetics junkies,
right, And we all know thoseguys like I'm you know you guys
like I love apologetics, But thisisn't just about becoming smarter. For becoming
(10:09):
smarter sake, I feel like oneof the things that I really am afraid
of or I don't want to happenwithout posts is I don't want it to
be a place where people come andhear really cool info and then do nothing
with it. And that's one ofthe dangers of Sunday School or Christian apologetics
is it can just become a newform of Christian entertainment. And I don't
(10:31):
want that. I want people tohear this and propel them into life change
so that they're reaching their community andtraining up their kids well. And so
we want it to be we wantit to be connected with a local church,
and all that means is that thechurch provides a place for them to
meet. Now, if it's youknow, a home group through the church's
home groups, that's great. Ifit's a Sunday school, that's great.
(10:52):
If it's a once a month eventat the church. We've created this to
be flexible because we want to beall around the country all you know,
all around the world, and everyplace has different cultures and contexts and how
churches run ministries. So we madeit to be really flexible in that way.
And so if somebody wants to startone, what they have to do
is go to our website str dotorg. Under the training tab, there's
(11:15):
a little thing you can click foroutposts, and then there's a start and
outpost and there's other info on there. They could look up where they're all
at, they could look up whatit's about. There's a video intro thing.
But then they just fill out aform. It probably takes four or
five minutes to start an outpost andthey apply and then what that'll do is
it'll kick them in automated email withall the requirements that they have to fulfill
(11:37):
to start one. And it's notit's not hard, but there are It
might take a little time. Sowhat we require is that people read Greg
Kochel's book, The Story of Reality, and then there's a questionnaire that comes
with that. There's one question perchapter that I have them answer and send
me their answers. They have tosend me their testimony of faith. They
(12:00):
have to send me two references.I can check with them on one of
them being a pastor at the church, and then they have to agree with
the standards and statement of faith.And so that's the application process. Once
people send me all their documents,then I meet with them on Zoom.
We talk through what it looks liketo open an outpost. I give them
the keys to the kingdom and thecurriculum, and then they're ready to go.
(12:20):
In addition to running their outpost,we also have Zoom meetings occasionally with
different regions just to talk about howthings are going, what's working well,
what's not. And then we havean annual in person conference that's completely exclusive
actually to outpost directors. And soonce a year we invite them all to
come to Southern California and all ofthe guys at str we put on a
(12:43):
conference with insider information for them becausethey're teaching our stuff. Right, Like,
we're not going to have Cocal dotactics to these people who are teaching
tactics to everyone at the church,right, So we do new stuff we
haven't done before, insider information becausewe want to keep them up to date
what's coming and how they can effectivelydisciple their people. And so, yeah,
someone wants to start it, yougo to the website, you apply.
(13:05):
You have to talk with your churchand make sure they're cool with doing
this, and we really want toincorporate it into what the church already does.
Like I said, if Sunday schoolis a big thing, hey,
you can run this as a Sundayschool. If small groups are a thing
and this would fit in with that, you can run as a small group.
I even though some churches who takelike five or six of the big
apologetics topics and they just put themon a rotation because they want everyone in
(13:28):
the church to go through those fiveor six topics. It's good idea.
So it's pretty easy to start.We didn't want to make it too hard,
but I did have to have somekind of vetting process for people,
just to make sure if our name'son it, that things are going well
and that people are qualified to leadthem. Robbie, you mentioned they're you
know, making it sort of likea form of a Sunday school or things
like that. Tell us a littlebit about some of the opp posts that
(13:50):
are out there, because you know, we've talked to different ministries that have
sort of chapters and things like that, and we find those to be very
useful options that people might explore ifthey're looking to get apologetics in their church
or their communities and things like that. And so it could be in a
church, but it can also bein different settings. So give us some
rundown of sort of like what varietyyou might find these groups at. Yeah,
(14:13):
I mean most of them are runout of churches as a small group
or a class. You know.Some of them run as like an eight
week class in the fall, eightweek class in the spring. It just
depends on every region because church attendantsand church classes are different depending on the
culture that you're in, you know, around the country and around the world,
and so there's so many different wayspeople run them. You know,
(14:33):
some people do a once a monthApologetics night and that's where they do outposts.
So it really depends on the scheduleof the director and we emphasize fit
it in with what the church isalready doing. We don't want to make
this a burden on the church.We want it to be a benefit.
And if we can fit into whatthey already do and their flow of ministry
and their seasons and their schedules,then that's a huge win for us.
(14:56):
And that's why we made them soflexible, so that people can fit them
in to what their church is alreadydoing. When I was working at a
church, you know, there's somany parachurch organizations that want to be in
your church. You get mailers allthe time and calls and drop ins,
and it gets quite annoying after awhile. But the worst was when people
would act like, if you're notdoing our program, you're not doing church
(15:18):
right, and that's just completely nottrue. The church is really important,
very important. It's it's God's vehicleto reach the world and to change culture
and to equip the saints, andso if we can come alongside and help,
that awesome. But you know what, there's some churches that already do
really well at apologetics, and tostart an outposts might just be more of
(15:39):
the same thing. So it's definitelynot something that every church has to have,
but as you know, the deficiencyof good apologetics training is so prevalent
in the American church that we reallywant to impact people with it and and
our target audience for these because becausethere's a difference, Like I've met with
Tyson James, you know, fromReasonable Faith. He's in charge of their
(16:00):
chapter groups. I love what they'redoing. That is so awesome. Outposts
are different than that because Reasonable Faithis like kind of high level apologetics philosophy.
What Outposts are targeted at is traininglay people in the church. That's
really our goal is, like peoplewho've never heard of apologetics. This is
for you. How do you talkabout homosexual aiding in the Bible with your
(16:21):
kids? How do you talk abouttransgenderism? How do you know that Jesus
rose from the dead. We're reallytargeting lay people in the church who love
Jesus and read their Bibles and cometo church, but they're not equipped to
compete in the marketplace of ideas andculture. So that's that's who we're targeting.
That that's kind of what we're goingafter. You know, that's that's
really great that you mentioned that,because you know, we have talked to
(16:44):
different folks on the podcast. Wetalked to Tyson James, and we're all
for all of those things, butwe want to we want to present people
what are all the different options forme. And so clearly there's some people
who are going to really latch ontothat Oh yeah, reasonable faith chapter that
that's totally my thing. I lovethe work of William and Craig or something
like that, but it's not.It is clearly not accessible to everyone.
(17:07):
Some people are just gonna be like, that's the last thing for me because
that's over my head or something.But I like what you're saying there because
basically saying, hey, the entireculture is dealing with these issues, and
this is for everybody in your churchto bring it down to everyone's level and
make it accessible. So I thinkthat that's super I'm really glad you mentioned
(17:27):
that, because the last thing wedon't want people to think is that,
oh, well, this is here'ssomething that people can't imagine themselves being able
to reach for or you know,facilitate or something like that. They're not
this is no, this is goingto be over people's heads. No,
exactly the opposite, you know,yeah, exactly the opposite. Well to
be honest with you. So,like I've interviewed all of our one hundred
(17:48):
and twenty Outpost directors and so wehave some of them who who have PhDs
in philosophy and apologetics, right,So that's that's one side of the spectrum.
And then we have people who heardabout apologetics two weeks to go at
a conference and they're like, mychurch needs this. And the beauty of
Outposts is it's so turn key.People on all spectrums can take it and
(18:10):
start implementing it at their church rightaway, which is really that's what I
wanted. I didn't want it tobe hard for people to use. So
what I hear you saying is isif there's somebody listening right now and they're
thinking, Wow, this is great, I think my church needs something like
this. But I'm not an apologeticsexpert. I don't know a whole lot
(18:30):
of apologetics. If I understand youcorrectly, you're saying that should not hold
them back. No, it shouldn'thold them back because here's how the curriculum
works. What we use for thecurriculum is our stru courses. So we
have twenty four of these courses now, and we create one to two new
courses every quarter, so we areoutpacing how fast we go, how fast
(18:52):
people can go through them. Butthe course is kind of a misnomer.
It's not like a college course rightwhere there's seventeen hours of lecture. It's
nothing like that each course. Mostof them are kind of formalized at five
videos that are between eight to fifteenminutes long each and so not tons and
tons of content. The one complaintI got from a lot of people I
(19:17):
interviewed about apologetics in their church,first of all, if they had it
right, so it was it's toughfinding people who have apologetics in the church,
which is but a lot. Butyeah, it's not. Yeah,
they would all say, first ofall, I don't know where this has
been all my life. I loveit. Why haven't we known more about
this? So first of all positiveexperience. But the one negative I kept
hearing is but there was just somuch information. I wish I could remember
(19:40):
it. I wish I could rememberit. And every apologetics conference I go
to, people say, I know, what's like drinking out of a fire
hydrant. Right, It's so muchinformation coming at you. And that's the
danger of apologetics, is it isinformation heavy because that's what it is.
It's content, it's information, it'sarguments, and so I was thinking,
how can we not scare away laypeople with this ministry, right because we
(20:04):
want them having a steady diet ofthis. And so how it works is
with our scru courses. Again,each videos, you know, eight to
I think the shortest video we haveis two minutes. The longest one we
have nineteen minutes. So a groupcomes together, they watch one video from
the course, not the whole course, just one video, you know.
They take ten minutes they watch it, and then we've created small group curriculum
(20:26):
to go with that, discussion guides, where there's questions, where there's exercises,
where there's homework. And that's reallythe bread and butter of it because
if people can watch a little andtalk a lot, they'll be able to
retain the information. So that's kindof our methodology. It's more of a
marathon type ministry than a sprint ministry. That's why I don't have any certificate
(20:47):
of achievement. I'm not trying toget people to blitz through this. That
is not the goal. The goalis to have this at the church as
a place where people can come asktheir questions, get their doubts answered,
or be directed to somebody or someorganization who can help them with their questions.
I like that too, because unfortunatelywe're we don't read as much as
(21:08):
we used to write just as aculture as a whole, and so I
think that makes it more digestible too. But I love that aspect as well.
Is it making it easier to ifyou dive in, If you do
a little bit and you do adeep dive, you're going to be more
apt to remember it. So Ilike that. Now, as far as
resources go, let's say someone startsan str outpost. Are they committed to
(21:33):
using exclusively str resources? Are theyallowed to supplement with other materials? How
does that work? Yeah, that'sa great question. I don't know how
it works. So that's that's oneof the things I know. Well,
if you don't know, no,I'm just kidding. We're figuring. We're
figuring this out as it goes,you know. And so like, Okay,
we love what William lan Craig does, right, We love what Turk
(21:56):
does a cross examined. We loveyou know, there's all these organis reasons
to believe all of them it's great, we study that stuff, we use
their resources, and so I've kindof just not really said what people are
supposed to do with that. AndI know outpost directors who will supplement and
they'll show a Bobby Conway video toopen the thing great, Like I don't.
I don't. I don't have anyproblem with that. But as str
(22:19):
I'm trying to think through what arethe guardrails I should put up so things
don't go off the rails. Butthe other side of it, guys,
is this isn't standard reasons ministry.This is God's ministry. This is God's
church. These are God's people,and I don't want to be cavalier or
reckless with that. But the truthof it is we're providing a tool for
(22:42):
people to use in the local church. And there's other tools out there that
are good. So I don't wantto be territorial or say only use our
stuff, because there's a lot ofother good stuff. But I'm also trying
to formulize if our name's on it, how do we you know, not
go off the rail. So,Chad, that's a great question. I
wish I had an answer no.No, they might have the answer No.
(23:07):
I understand that, and I appreciatethe transparency and just being real.
I mean, it is kind ofa new ministry. And if there's not
a hard fast answer, that's okay. And I hear you saying that there
is some freedom. I'm just assumingthat you know, the materials that are
used, if they're brought in fromanother ministry, should at least be consistent
with Yeah. For example, themission statement of str in the church.
(23:32):
Yeah, and that's where the peoplepeople have to sign our mission statement.
And it's a mere Christianity. Wedon't get into doctrinal distinctives, right,
We're just very basic. This isthis is classical Christianity, and so people
have to people have to agree tothat. And I've had I've interviewed people
who don't agree with our doctrinal statementand sometimes as they don't understand something or
(23:52):
a little nuance. But one timea guy, I had a guy reach
out to me and he said,I'm a Unitarian Universalist, I don't believe
in the TREN. Is that goingto be a problem. And I said,
yeah, that's going to be ahuge problem. Like you can't be
an outpust director and you really shouldreconsider your position like, and I did
an stru course on the Trinity,right, so I sent him the link.
(24:14):
I'm like, you probably should watchthis, man, because it's pretty
important and it's scriptural. So wedo deny people if they don't agree.
But well, that's kind of athat's I mean, that's not like the
Age of the Earth. I mean, that's that's a pretty big deal.
That's pretty it is. Well,and the other thing too, is And
this, because I think this isimportant, is we're not going to create
(24:34):
stru courses about doctrinal distinctives. We'renever going to have one called modes of
Baptism or are the signs gifts fortoday? Because that's not our thing.
We're dealing with apologetics. And andwe have already an outpost. You know,
we have Calvaries, we have Methodists, we have Presbyterian, we have
Lutheran, we have Assemblies of God. I've got some hyper charismatic churches out
(24:56):
in the South. We have Baptists, Southern Baptist, you know, Conservative
a Baptists, all these different denominationswithin Protestantism, Anglican. And I think
I could be wrong about this.I don't know what you guys think,
but I think that the local churchis supposed to indoctrinate their people. I
think that's the goal. Like thisis where we land on end times stuff,
(25:18):
this is where we land on sciencegifts. They should be transparent and
indoctrinate their people with their doctrinal distinctives, with their denominational distinctives. I think
that's great, and so as standardreason to come in and say, hey,
you know, some of us don'tlike this open handed issue within Christianity.
You know, that's not our rolewith apologetics, and so we do
(25:41):
leave flex for them to teach theirdoctrinal distinctives within their outposts according to what
their church is, because I thinkwe are subservient to the church. But
at the same time, I dorequire three things of every outpost meeting.
They have to watch one of ourvideos, they have to go through the
discussion guide, and they have totake time time to pray together. So
(26:02):
if they show a Bobby Conway videoor a Red Pen Logic video, you
know, or Frank Turk or whatever, that's fine, but those are three
things have to be happening on aconsistent basis. You mentioned the different curriculum
and stuff. So let's say Isign up I'm like, yeah, I'll
be a director and starting next week, what did the materials look like?
Is it like, oh, here'syou know, an outlaw, here's teaching
(26:22):
outlines or what does that look likeexactly? Yeah. So I have an
outpost director's handbook that i'd send you. I talk with you through all of
the ins and outs of it.But there's not a schedule of events because
each church and the people of eachchurch are probably at a different place as
to what they need to study,especially on regions of the country, I
(26:45):
mean all that regions of the world, right, And so I leave it
up to the outpost directors to pickwhich courses they want to do, as
long as there's a discussion guide togo with it, because I have to
create the discussion guides because stru existedprior to outposts, and so I'm playing
catch up on some of these courses. But as long as there's a discussion
guide, they can pick whichever coursethey want to start with. They have
(27:07):
the progative to pick when they redoa course. You know, because these
minishes are cyclical, you're gonna havepeople coming in and out, and so
you might get to a place andsay, man, we need to go
through the resurrection again, because thesepeople weren't here for that, and so
I leave that up to each individualoutpost director when they should do that.
But there is no set schedule ofthe curriculum and the order you need to
(27:29):
go through it in Okay, Sofor instance, I have in the past
run a reasonable Faith chapter and sonow I was one of the very first
ones, and so maybe they've gota lot of more resources and helps now,
But the way I would run thingswould be like, well, I
think i'll teach you this, andhere I'm going to come up with all
the I'm going to have to makethe PowerPoint. I'm gonna have to select
(27:52):
videos. It was autonomous at thetime. Now as I say, there's
more materials now for something like that, But it sounds am I getting it
right? When I say, oh, if it's an str outpost, it's
kind of like, oh, here'sthe topic. Resources are provided, and
we're going to go through this material, this this set material, and we're
going to talk about a video andwe're going to talk about and we have
(28:15):
a discussion guy to go through it. So it's it's basically plug and play.
Is that is that right? Plugand play and we made it simple
like that. So again, sopeople who are well versed in apologetics,
like like if you if you guysstarted one, so you two guys who
know this stuff, you wouldn't evenhave to look at it before you used
it, Like I mean, youmight want to, but you wouldn't have
(28:37):
to video and with the questions.It's it's pretty user friendly. That's great
because that's you know, for me, that's that's a barrier to entry,
you know, because am I quoteunquote qualified to do that? Yeah,
but here's the barrier to entry forme starting some group or something in my
church. Do I have the timeto put together power points? I have
(29:00):
the ability. I don't have thetime of the bandwidth. But if we're
going to be at church anyway,no problem talking about this, no problem
facilitating this. Oh SDR has plugand play resources, snap that up,
because we could get this started tomorrow. You know that. That's wonderful.
I am so thrilled to hear thatbecause I knew about the SDR outposts and
(29:21):
I just was like, oh,it must be another sort of chapter thing,
you know, my ignorance and Ilooked into it. That's why you're
here. But that's really encouraging.That's I mean, that is that's super
So I'm yeah, I'm on boardwith pretty one other thing too that I'll
mention that we're going to be startingin the next month is so so.
One of the things when I waspastor of Apologetics and youth pastor I noticed
(29:42):
is that people will train harder ifthey know a test is coming. Right.
When I told kids we're going toBerkeley to talk with atheist professors,
they studied really hard. Yeah,and the same with parents. Right.
So, so what we're doing withoutposts is this the second we're calling outpost
engagements, and it's just another toolfor people to use to train their people.
(30:06):
And what it is is there's there'skind of three tiers to it.
So the first tier is what we'recalling, you know, outreach engagement.
And we've partnered with Racio Christie.You guys are familiar with Racio Christie,
right, They're a big university apologeticsorganization. Well, they're in one hundred
and ninety campuses around the country,and so I was talking with Eric Scott
(30:27):
and what we've done is we've partneredwith them to where all of their directors
that are on the college campus,know about outposts and know that our outpost
directors may be contacting them to taketheir outpost people out on the campus to
evangelize, to table with them,to you know, to get in conversations
(30:48):
with non believers, because I thinkif you train them, hey, here's
these three courses to go through onatheism, on you know this, and
that. Now, take your peopleto the local college and let them use
their tactics, let them practice,and then come back in debrief. So
we've partnered with Rational Christie to makethat work. We've also partnered with an
organization called Justice for All, whichis a pro life organization that goes out
(31:11):
on college campuses. So you couldtake your people through making an abortion unthinkable,
and then you could go practice atthe college right with Justice for All.
Now, I also know a lotof people get freaked out about that
and never want to do it becauseit's scary. So the next tier of
outpost engagement is what I'm calling invitationalengagement. And a lot of people,
(31:32):
you guys probably know this, buta lot of people I talk to you
don't, I tell them. Doyou know you can order a Mormon or
a Jehovah's witness online like a pizzalike. You can just go here's the
website. He go say I wanta home visit, and they'll text you
and say, let's set up ahome visit. Yeah. So we've got
a lot of courses on you know, the Trinity. We've got some tim
did on Jesus identity that directly attackJehovah's witness theology. And then I'm making
(31:57):
a new course on witnessing the Mormons, and so people could go through that
and then say, hey, thehomework this week is to go order a
Mormon and have an hour long conversationwith them at your house. And here's
the guidelines. You don't drink coffee, you get donuts or cookies to give
to them, you're nice in yourkind, you ask a lot of questions.
Here's the witnessing techniques that we wentthrough, so they can go do
(32:19):
it. And then as a groupwe debrief, and I think that's really
important. We talk about what workedwell, what did you fumble on,
what arguments did you hear that youweren't prepared for, what would you do
different next time? And so thisoutpost engagement thing I'm pretty excited about because
it's giving people the opportunity to useall the stuff they've been learning, and
it's kind of pushing them out thedoor to go and to use it.
(32:42):
So that sounds outstanding. I lovethat, yeah, Robbie. One of
the things I've been pretty blessed overthe years with meeting pastors who are open
to apologetics in their church. ButI know that not everybody has had that
experience. So I'm wondering, howwould you, God, somebody, or
what advice would you give to someonewho are attending a church and perhaps their
(33:07):
pastor or their church are reluctant toallow them to start something like an outpost,
or seem disinterested in apologetics or don'tsee how vital it is. How
would you, I guess, suggestthey deal with that. Well, I've
had that happen a lot, becauseone of the things I want people to
(33:27):
do is talk with their pastors aboutthis, you know, before they go
through everything and then get excited andthen get rejected. I'd rather they got
rejected up front. And so I'vegotten multiple emails from people saying, my
pastor's not on board, they don'tthink apologetics is important, and so how
do I proceed? And what Ido is. I typically say, hey,
listen, let me send you someof the curriculum to show them,
(33:49):
like, this is what it is. Here's a list of the courses.
Here's one discussion guide to show them, this is the kind of thing that
it is. You know, here'stheir website so they you know, because
as a pastor, I was alwaysskeptical when people would say, Hey,
there's this great ministry out there andI want to use their stuff. I'm
like, hold on, because I'mthe gatekeeper of theology at the church.
Like I don't want to just letanything in. So I try to affirm
(34:13):
their pastor in that say hey,that's a good thing that they're not just
like yeah, do whatever. Andthen I say, go show them what
this is and why it's important.And I even have a video to pastors
about what it is and why it'simportant. And so a lot of times
that's worked well, where the pastor'sgoing, wow, this is great stuff.
I didn't know about str but whatI'm seeing looks great, and so
(34:35):
that that's worked. Now. Ido have some people who say my pastor
says, we don't need to doapologetics because it's just an academic thing.
And if we just preach the gospel. That's enough. And at that point
I say, hey, listen,you can't force your pastor to have a
ministry in the church when he's incharge. There's nothing you do now if
you want to have a home group, or if you want to do this
(34:57):
at another church, or you wantto do this with a you know,
collaboration of people at a community centeror whatever, I'm okay with you doing
that. But yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't keep, you know,
annoying your pastor about it when he'spretty clear on he doesn't think apologetics is
important. Do you think maybe somebodyin that situation who just really feels like
God is directing him in that directionmight in some circumstances consider finding another body
(35:23):
that might be open to that.Yeah, and I I I thought about
that a lot, But I don'tfeel like I don't know these people well
enough to say, hey, youmight want to find a different church.
Yeah, that's a big thing,right, So I don't ever say that
to people, but I do say, is a maybe another church in your
area want to let you do this? There all suggest that what if they're
(35:46):
a Unitarian Universalists, would you orthey're Mormon or whatever. You should go
to the church, not to somecult. Yeah. Also that yeah,
yeah, And I know that's athat's a tricky question, and I'm not
trying to put you on the spot. It's just I think I think you're
right, though it would be acase by case basis right. In some
(36:07):
cases it probably wouldn't be the rightmove, and in some cases it might
be the best move. But youcan't give a universal yes or no with
that. Well, and I justdon't know. If people ask me,
what would you do in my situation, because I you know, my pastor
doesn't want it to have apologetics here, I say, well, I mean
apologetics is commanded in scriptures, SoI'd go to a different church. But
(36:28):
if they don't ask me, Idon't. That's just a tough thing to
do, right, You got familiesinvolved. And the other's truth is,
I think if people don't start doingmore apologetics in the church, those churches
are going to die anyway because they'renot being effective and they're not they're not
giving people something. And so yeah, but to tell someone, hey,
you should change churches, I justdon't know people well enough to do that
(36:50):
through email. Yeah, And Ithink that's fair, and again, didn't
mean to put you on the spot. I was just just curious what you
thought about that. I don't feelput on the spot. It's a great
question. Okay, good, andthen kind of my last question that I
had in mind. But by theway, this has been great, super
helpful and exactly what I was hopingfor. So I just want to say
that before I forget to mention thatI've taught enough apologetics classes in the time
(37:13):
i've been a Christian to know thatsometimes you encounter some difficult personalities. People
get very passionate about doctrinal issues,and sometimes it can be difficult to know
where to go. Let's imagine I'mrunning an out post and I've got a
personality in my class and I'm notexactly sure how to deal with with him
(37:37):
or her. And just for anexample, let's go with let's say eschatology.
You know, there's a big discussionabout eschatology and I'm trying to say,
hey, it's okay to have differentviews, and this person just won't
allow that to rest. Is therea situation, Is there something or somewhere
where I can reach out to someoneat str and just say Hey, you
(38:00):
know, I am trying to dealwith this person. I don't really know
where to go. Can you counselme? I know obviously you'd go to
your pastor first, but I'm saying, is that also something that str offers?
And you know, and I'm thinkingin situations that are more extreme not
the norm. Yeah. So oneof the last thing I tell every outpost
(38:23):
director in our meeting after they've beenaccepted and I've got all the references and
I walked them through how to runit. The last thing I always say
is, hey, me and mysecretary are a resource for you. Anytime
you have a question about whatever,like you forgot a password, email us.
We get back to people regularly aboutthat kind of stuff. If you
(38:44):
havn't a problem, if there's atheological issue that comes up, anything you
need to help with difficult persons,contact us, because we are advocates for
you. That's our job is wewant to make sure these run well and
we set people up for success.And so if people have reached out to
me about difficulties in their groups andhow to manage a small group, right,
and so I'll walk them through thingsI've done, things I've read about
(39:07):
but also talking about hey listen,you know Matthew eighteen says this, you
go to the person in private.If they don't listen, you take another
you know, you might have totake it to the pastorn and say they're
being really difficult. But you know, also deciphering between are they being difficult
or are they just really excited aboutit and want to talk a lot,
right, So helping people think throughthose things, especially if they haven't led
a group before, it's kind ofcool. But yeah, me and I
(39:30):
got a secretary in January to helpme answer all the emails because they're getting
overwhelming. But we want to makesure we stay on top of it and
we help people with what they need. So absolutely, yes, we are
available for our outpost directors to contactus anytime, really about anything. I
think that's great, especially something yousaid there is the main reason why is
(39:51):
because I could see somebody thinking,well, I've never led a small group,
you know, but if they knowthat they had you and your secretary
to be able to reach out towith questions, especially initially, I think
that would offer a lot of comfortand support and maybe make them more willing
to do so. So it soundslike, you guys just have a great
program going. If I might say, I think it's pretty good. Yeah,
(40:14):
I'm pretty proud of what we've done. And you know, in a
year and a half we're up toone hundred and twenty groups running, you
know, And some people sometimes askme to like, well, what's there's
like some there's some misconceptions about thiswhole thing. So some people say,
well, is there already one inSan Antonio? And I'll say, yeah,
but I want to have like onein every church. It's not like
(40:35):
each town gets one. You know, that's not the idea here, You're
gonna have them all over the place. You'd have four of them in one
church if the church is big enough. You know, that's not the idea.
So we want to have them allover. But then the other thing
that they they'll ask me is alot of like, well, I'm not
you know, the I'm not qualified. I haven't gone to school for this.
(40:57):
I haven't And and this is whatI tell them all the time.
None of us know everything right,And you have to learn how to say
I don't know, but I knowhow to find out the answer. And
if you can point people to SCRdot org, or cross examined or reasonable
fifth or whatever to find the answer. That's what we need happening in the
(41:17):
church. You know, for solong people have asked questions or voice their
doubts only to be told, oh, just have more faith and be quiet
about it. But you can't dothat, and there's no excuse to you
because there's so many resources like yourwebsite, like our website, people can
go find the answer. So ifyou have one person in the church that
can direct people to the resources,that's a home run. You don't have
(41:38):
to know anything except where to go. Yeah, and so I try to
I try to help people understand thatthis isn't about being an expert. None
of us know everything. And ifyou just start and honestly, if you
start leading these groups and you don'tknow much, you're gonna learn a lot
through the videos and through the discussion. So it's I don't know, I'm
(42:00):
pretty excited about it. I'm hopingthat it continues to grow and as we
develop more and more, we wantto do more training with our people and
have some intentional study, kind ofa next level of leadership. So we've
got plans for the future. Butyeah, for this last year and a
half, it's been going pretty well. Oh one other thing. Sometimes people
ask me, is there a certainsize requirement, And I'm like, no,
(42:22):
Like, there's there's this couple inMaine. They've been running one out
of their church. There are Christiansin Maine, by the way. I
didn't know if you guys knew that, but there are. I thought that
was like Bigfoot, like everybody keepsclaiming it. But legend is ok,
okay, all right, So weactually have two outposts in Maine? Is
that crazy? And this this coupleleads one in the church and they have
(42:44):
a few, you know, twothree people from the church come and then
I've got other groups to have eightypeople coming, right, And so it's
it's just all over the map.And it's not the type of thing either
where I'm asking for attendance. I'mnot asking did you ask questions three on
video two? It's nothing like that. This is a tool we are giving
(43:04):
the church to equip their people.Excellent. Well, it's been really informative
and helpful. Robbie. Ye.Everything you've said is like, well,
I could do that, I coulddo that. That would it sounds really
fun. So everything you've said haskind of been like quite exciting because it
just you know, it makes yourbrain pop with the possibilities and the option.
So I hope our listeners are havingthat same sort of stuff as they're
(43:29):
listening too. So as we wrapup the interview, would you mind just
pointing our listeners to where they mightfind out more and the resources they need
to get started. Yeah, Soif you just go to our website str
dot org slash outposts, or youcan just go to SCR dot org and
click on the training tab and thenoutposts will pop up. You go on
there, there's a find an outpostwhere there's a whole map of the world
(43:52):
where all of them are. There'sa start and outpost tab where you can
click to fill out the form andget started on your application, and then
there's a video kind of explaining whatit is. So that's the place to
do it, and once you apply, you'll get that automated email with the
requirements and you can get started ondoing it. Super well. Robbie,
thanks for joining us for the interview. It's been a real pleasure and we
(44:14):
wish all the best with str andhope to talk to you again in the
future about you know anything you're doingin the future new initiatives, let us
know. We'd love to help promotethat. Oh I love it, guys,
and hey, I just wanted totell you. It was probably for
about a five year period I hadyour page as my homepage when i'd open
up my browser Apologics three fifteen.That was always my thing because I'm always
(44:35):
looking at the new stuff. SoI appreciate what you guys do. Thanks
so much, Thanks for listening tothe podcast. If you have a question
you'd like us to address, orjust a message for us feedback good or
bad, you can either email usat podcast at apologetics three fifteen dot com
or leave a voice message for ususing speak Pipe. Just go to speakpipe
(44:55):
dot com slash apologetics three fifteen toleave us a message. And remember,
if you include a Ghostbuster's quote inyour question, we guarantee that we'll read
it on the podcast. We alsoensure up to fifty percent better quality answers.
Also, if you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leave a review in iTunes
or the podcast platform in your choice, and please share this episode with a
(45:16):
friend if you've found it useful.Remember you can find lots of Apologetics resources
at apologeticspree fifteen dot com, alongwith show notes for today's episode. Find
Chad's apologetic stuff over at Truthbomb Apologetics. That's truthbomb dot blogspot dot com.
This has been Brian Auten and ChadGross for the Apologetics three fifteen podcast,
(45:36):
and thanks for listening
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