Listening and Loving Those with Questions
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Lisa Fields on City to City’s How to Reach the West Again podcast. In the discussion, Fields shares about the evangelistic strategies of the Jude 3 Project, an apologetics organization that seeks to engage the Black Christian community.
BRANDON J. O’BRIEN: The mission of the Jude 3 Project is to address the intellectual struggles of Black Christians in the United States and abroad. Can you tell us about the work that you do and the different efforts you are part of?
LISA FIELDS: In short, we try to equip churches and laypeople in apologetics. We do that through a number of ways—through podcasts, conferences, curricula, online courses, mini-series on social media, and events at universities. Essentially, we want to help Black Christians know what they believe and why, and we use all those tools to do so.
BJO: Your mission statement specifies a Christian audience. When we talk about evangelism and apologetics, we often assume an effort to engage people who are not Christians.
LF: Yes. We help Christians know what they believe—and why—in order to live it out and they can engage skeptics. We’re preparing people to engage their own culture, which I think is a practice often ignored in Christian culture. We want to be able to point skeptics to a church that's healthy enough to handle their questions and treat them with care. And not a lot of churches are ready for that. That's why we primarily focus on equipping the church, but we do, in tandem, engage non-Christian culture.
BJO: You also specifically target the cultural issues and intellectual struggles Black Christians face. Are the questions different from what people consider traditional objections to Christianity?
LF: I think the most pressing one we address is the question, “Is Christianity a White man's religion?” A number of different Black religions have formed on the assumption that it is, such as the Nation of Islam, the Black Hebrew Israelites, and other groups. These groups have differences, but at the core they say Christianity is a religion for White people, and they need to find their own faith that validates their own identity.
BJO: A frequently-mentioned challenge to having a missionary engagement with the West is the way people form and think about their identities.
LF: Yes. Identity was the first thing the enemy used to lead people in deception in the garden. He told Eve she could be as important and wise as God. In the same way, the enemy doesn't have new tricks, he just recycles the old ones. Some Black people are willing to join groups like the Nation of Islam because their identity hasn't historically been affirmed, particularly in the U.S., where we were known as three-fifths of a person and a less important part of the biblical narrative of creation—or completely absent from it.
Because of that, people look for a faith that's going to affirm them, that's going to say that they are human, or even that they're the ones who are closest to God—all sorts of different ideas that give them identity. But if people don't treat you like you're human, you don't want their faith.
BJO: There are some who would be cautious about saying that there are particular Black concerns or particular White concerns when it comes to identity formation. How would you respond to that objection?
LF: The distinctness in our different nationalities or ethnicities shows the handiwork of God, that He didn't want us all to be exactly the same. To ignore our ethnicity would be to ignore God's divine creativity. And as we see in Revelation, including a multitude of ethnicities matters to God: John mentions that he sees every nation, tribe, and tongue worshipping God. If they matter to God, they should matter to us as well.
BJO: The overarching vision of How to Reach the West Again is to explore a missionary engagement with Western culture. But people of African descent, both in the United States and the rest of the world, have a complicated relationship with Western culture. Geographically, Black Americans are part of the West, but their relationship and experience within the Western story is unique.
LF: I think it's a very complicated relationship. First, because we were kidnapped and brought over here as slaves against our will. That creates obviously a conflict between us and this dominant Western culture—and how we view the faith of those part of the dominant culture, especially when that faith is used to marginalize others.
BJO: Are there particular narratives among Black Americans that create different apologetic questions or evangelistic obstacles than the types of secularism and expressive individualism many are accustomed to talking about?
LF: Social injustice. I remember a student I met on one of Jude 3 Project’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities tours. He wanted to know if God even cared about injustice because of the ways he had seen forgiveness preached. He thought the concept of forgiveness, as he had heard it, was a scapegoat people used to avoid justice.
That's part of the apologetics we have to wrestle with. God does care about injustice—so much so that he sent his son to die for us. But that doesn't negate the fact that we are to fight for justice on earth. You can't read the Old Testament without stumbling upon passage upon passage about God caring for those treated unjustly. And so, I think it is sometimes a poor reading in the West to glaze over how God feels about injustice and only highlight His call to forgiveness.
There are young people leaving the church and joining problematic groups because they don't hear the church addressing these things.
BJO: Is that an exodus from historically Black churches, from predominantly White churches, or both?
LF: Everywhere. Across the spectrum, young people are leaving churches.
BJO: It may come as a surprise to hear that there are young Black Christians leaving historically Black churches because they're not addressing these issues, when I might have assumed Black churches have been addressing these issues for a while. Why are millennial and Gen Z Christians not hearing what they need to hear in the churches they're growing up in?
LF: Many of these groups like the Black Hebrew Israelites and Kemeticism have been around for a long time. They’ve picked up momentum because of social media. They’re moving and evolving at such a rapid pace that many historically Black churches haven't caught up to speed on the questions young people are asking once they get sucked into a group like that.
While they’re on the fringe, they might ask things like, "Is Christianity a White man's religion?” or “Why is Jesus White in so many of the pictures I see?" as starting points. But once they get sucked into the doctrinal beliefs of one of those groups, they may go to their pastor and say, "I believe that Deuteronomy 28:68 means that Black people are the lost tribe of Judah." If a pastor's like, “What are you guys talking about?” then you have people saying, "How can you not know this? Why doesn't this pastor study the Bible?" And they double-down on the other group they joined.
Things like that are happening. That's why equipping the church is so important. We want to help them stop the bleeding, but many of them don't even know the context of the questions they’re being asked. Many can talk to you about Jesus being portrayed as White or other broad topics, but when you go deep into the weeds of these doctrinal things that these other groups are talking about, they may not be aware of it.
BJO: There is a long-standing pride in the Christian faith among the historically Black Christian tradition—pride about a long history of African involvement in the shape of Christian theology. There always has also been, at least for the last hundred years, a strong narrative that Christianity is harmful to those of African descent—that it’s intended to oppress, to colonize, et cetera.
How does having both of these streams of thought present influence the way you have evangelistic conversations?
LF: We rely heavily on church history to bring what the church has done in the past to the forefront. Many people aren’t aware of it. A lot of Generation Z is so disconnected from the church that you have to help them see the helpful ways it has historically impacted the community—and that's just within the last 50 years. Then we take them all the way back to key figures like Athanasius, Augustine, Perpetua and Felicitas, and show them their examples.
BJO: One of the things I find interesting about the appeal of movements like Black Hebrew Israelism is that they try to root contemporary Black identity in something ancient and historic, trying to help a population who has lost connection with their place of origin.
This is interesting because when many of us assess Western culture more broadly, we often see people not being interested in the past, disregarding place, and trying to form their identity through sheer force of will. This kind of Black consciousness feels different from that. It's about being part of a community and being part of history. Is there a way to leverage that impulse of trying to be rooted in something in the evangelistic work you're doing?
LF: As you were saying, a lot of Americans are so tethered to American identity that they may not deeply care about whether they're originally from Scotland or Greece or wherever. For them, their American identity is a "success story" for majority culture.
Many African-Americans haven’t experienced that same success story. They want to tether themselves to an identity where there's power, prominence, and prosperity—all the things that the "American dream" promises. It’s been hard to fulfill that desire—take things like Ancestry.com, for example. Most Americans can trace their family tree’s history for the most part, but it's not so simple for African-Americans. I think understanding that helps give empathy to those who are reaching to know their history and connect with people like them.
That desire is understandable—even biblically, genealogy is so important. Many books of the Bible feature long genealogies because ancestry and history mattered. If it was so significant for it to be documented in the scripture, how much more does the human heart want to be connected or know their history? I think that’s important to keep in mind when engaging with people who feel that way.
BJO: You and the Jude 3 Project are mostly concerned with equipping the church and helping them answer these apologetic questions, but how do you see that impacting the rest of majority culture Christians in America? Your mission statement is about equipping people of African descent to understand what they believe and why, but the process of doing that for a particular population may also expose things to a broader Christian audience.
LF: I definitely think the work we’ve done has been impactful. We've had larger majority churches go through our curriculum, Through Eyes of Color, which focuses on equipping people to deal with problems in the African-American context, but they’ve said they were richly blessed by it. Many of our majority culture friends and audiences of other nationalities actually tell us that we have their favorite apologetics platform! Perhaps it’s because we're dealing with nuanced, on-the-ground questions versus higher-up, abstract questions. Everybody is wrestling with the concept of injustice right now—whether they’re Black, White, Asian, Latino, or any other ethnicity. People want to know how to navigate it. And I think people like to see different voices speaking about an issue because it brings a more holistic approach.
BJO: One of your initiatives I find interesting is the Historically Black Colleges and Universities tour—in part because many Christians often think of universities as where people go to lose their faith. Instead, you target that context with apologetic conversations. Can you paint a picture of what that tour looks like for us and what they’re trying to accomplish?
LF: Our HBCU tour seeks to answer that big initial question we’ve talked about, "Is Christianity a White man's religion?" We kept hearing Black students say, "Hey, I have friends walking away from their faith because of this. Can you help?" So we decided to go straight to the scene and hold forums at predominantly African-American universities.
Our forums are very interactive; they include media, discussion, and Q&A. We start with a 20-minute session called “Talk Back” where we give ten students an opportunity to come to the mic and tell us what they've heard about Christianity being a religion for White people. Once you get one student talking, everybody wants to come up! But we have to cut it off at ten students.
Then, we play videos that explore the narrative that Christianity isn’t worthwhile for Black Americans, such as a speaker saying Christianity has always been forced on Africans, a professor teaching the history of Christianity in Africa, or someone talking about how some slave masters used biblical scripture to justify the slave trade. And we talk about how the Bible was misused in that context. Usually, we have a pastor or influencer come in as a guest and do that. We also have a clip of a gentleman who says that the Black church only takes from the community—that they never give to the community. Then, I talk about the true impact of the Black church.
Students love it because we're not just lecturing at them. We're playing videos that they've seen on YouTube that have been viral, then responding to them. The Q&A portion can even last up to an hour or two, depending on how many questions they have—and they always have a lot of questions.
BJO: Are there questions that come up frequently in those Q&A sessions?
LF: Yes—things about images of biblical characters being White, wondering how they can trust certain accounts of history, and things like that. But I'm very encouraged by comments like, "This is the first time I've heard this. I finally see myself in this faith. I was about to walk away, but this is helping me stay." Those really encourage me. They give me this image of pulling someone from the fire, as mentioned in Jude. We get a chance to pull many of these young people back. As they're on their way out, we get a chance to help them see history as it is.
BJO: When I think of the questions you just mentioned, it occurs to me that it’s not always the broader culture that gives people the wrong idea about the history of Christianity. Sometimes churches have given people the wrong idea. It sounds like, in the work you're doing, the church is one of those apologetic issues. Is that fair to say?
LF: Yes, spot on.
BJO: Do you feel that the broader cultural conversations about secularism are at the forefront of your evangelistic conversations or in the background?
LF: They're in the background. We just did a mini-series called “From People to Person”, and I flew in a woman who’s involved in Kemetic science—African spirituality—and walked away from the church, and a guy who identifies as Hebrew. We sat down for a conversation. It wasn't a debate. I didn't challenge them on any of their beliefs; I just wanted to hear how they got there. As I listened to the woman explain how she ended up in Kemeticism, she said her main issue was the church. And as we talked over dinner later, after we did the on-camera stuff, I asked her, "Have you ever seen a Christian practice what they preach?" And she said, "No."
She said, "One of the reasons I went to Kemeticism was because I finally saw people who at least lived what they preached. That was the most appealing thing to me."
I said, "So, it's not knowledge that's the most pressing thing for you, is it? It's experience."
"Right."
I think that's what apologists miss sometimes. Sometimes, you could go back and forth arguing with people, wrestle them down about an idea, and beat their point. But if their problem with Christianity is how Christians treat them, their experience with Christians, and what they've seen Christians do in the name of God, there is no argument you can make to convert them outside of how you treat them, how you live before them, and how you love them. That's something we have to wrestle with: that it's not just about information, it's about application.
BJO: How do you make room for those kinds of conversations in which people feel comfortable to share, and safe to share, with you? What advice would you give to pastors about creating space to listen to people who have had these kinds of experiences?
LF: I think it's simple. The answer is in the question: just create space and listen. Invite people that have left the church to come into your space and say, "Hey, share your story with me. How did you get here? What led you down this path?" Be silent and look them in their eye as they're talking and listen. That's so difficult for a lot of Christians because as soon as they hear a point that's doctrinally off, or as soon as they hear something heretical, as soon as they hear something that they disagree with, they feel like they have to correct them at that moment.
But I like to think about God’s example in moments like these. One of the most amazing things to me about God is that, especially in prayer, He lets us question his character—lets us express all kinds of frustrations about who He is—when He's demonstrated over and over again that He's exactly who He says He is in scripture. But He lets us communicate that we don't think He cares about us at all, and He doesn't say anything until He feels like He needs to say something. That's so comforting to have someone that will let us cast our cares and frustrations on Him. And if that's comforting to us, why can't we give that gift to others?
BJO: Many of us feel like being God's representative on earth means we have to give an answer or have a comment about everything. But you're describing God's representative as someone who listens patiently and endures the story and the questions before a response. We want to be prepared to give an answer, but every moment is not the right moment to deliver an answer.
LF: Yes. And 1 Peter 3:15 says, “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience…” But sometimes when you're listening, people are just venting, not asking a question. They're not always asking you to make an objection while they're venting. If they ask you a question about the sovereignty of God or the authority of scripture, yes, be prepared to answer that. But someone venting about their frustration with the church may call for a different response.
BJO: That's a helpful distinction. It seems like you're suggesting that the listening stage of the process and the evangelism stage of the process might not have to happen in one conversation. Instead, there's a time to listen and just listen, and there's a time when you're invited to give answers.
LF: Yes. People want to be heard. I always tell others, when you listen to people and hear them, they will listen and hear you back because you made them feel respected and honored. When it's your turn to talk, when they invite you into the conversation, they're going to be more prone to see your viewpoint.
We once hosted a round table discussion with four young adults who left the church—an event called “Why I Don't Go”. They told me that was the first time somebody from the church actually listened to them. And that shouldn't have been the first time that somebody listened to them voice their complaints! I think we just have to do better about being able to say, “You know what, I'm going to listen to you, and it may offend me, but I'm willing to be offended because God's not offended in prayer when I bring things to Him.”
BJO: What I hear you saying is that, in order to really reach people, we might have to stop feeling like we're getting beaten up and need to come out swinging in return for a minute.
LF: Yes, I think back to the woman involved in Kemeticism that we invited to the discussion I mentioned earlier. After the event, she told me, "I didn't know what to expect. I'm used to Christians badgering me for what I believe about African spirituality." So she came on the defense.
Instead, I simply asked her, "Tell me your story." And the more we talked, her defenses came down. She asked me a question when we were in the car later: "You seemed so calm when I was saying all these bad things about Christianity. It didn't bother you?"
I said, "No, because you're talking about experiences that actually happened to you. I'm not going to discount your experience and say that didn't happen and a Christian wasn't part of what happened. If it happened, it happened." What could I say but apologize that it happened and move forward? There was no need for me to get mad.
She told me, "Wow, this is the first time that a Christian didn't get defensive about it."
It was encouraging to both of us and it opened her up to even listen to me. I think we will have so many wins in evangelism and engaging people if we don't get defensive. The reason people are usually hostile at first is because they've been beaten down so much, and they're not used to people being open. But if we love them and allow them to talk without us getting defensive, and bring in objections with gentleness and respect when the time is right, they're more open to hear you.
BJO: What advice would you give church leaders who are trying to be more sensitive to these sorts of questions?
LF: I think one of the most helpful, underutilized things that churches do is anonymous surveys. When we did an apologetics class at my dad's church, my dad told me he wanted me to teach once. I told him I wanted to do a survey first to see where people were at, to see what our doctrinal beliefs were versus what people actually believed. One of the things pastors don't realize is that people don't usually come to church for preaching—they come for worship, they come for children's ministry, they come for community. The first thing should, perhaps, be preaching, but that's usually the last thing. And if it's the last thing, there may be some disconnect between what's being communicated from the pulpit and what the people actually believe.
Oftentimes a congregation isn’t going to directly tell its pastor what it believes, so you have to create a space where they feel safe enough to speak freely and you can gauge where they are. An anonymous survey will give them the openness to speak their questions to you and your leadership team, and help you start answering them and meeting people’s needs. They may have been in church all their lives and don't know how to study the Bible, or they may be really struggling with justice, but they may not feel comfortable telling you that. Create avenues where they can say it anonymously until they build up the courage to come directly to you.
About the Author
Lisa Fields is an apologist who combines her passion for biblical literacy with her heart for sharing God’s love to all those she meets. Having pursued her Master of Divinity from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, her time in seminary propelled her into her calling as an apologist. Now, she is the founder and president of the Jude 3 Project, an organization designed to help the Black Christian community know what they believe and why they believe.