In July of 2017, an online
conversation began between myself (Joel Furches), Tyler Vela of The Freed
Thinker, Chad Gross of Truthbomb Apologetics, Adam Coleman of Tru
ID and Nick Peters of Deeper Waters. The one thing we all had in
common was that we were all Christian Apologists with our own small ministries
– emphasis on "small." The conversation went thusly:
Wouldn't it be nice if unrecognized
but talented Christian Apologists received enough exposure so that the church
was aware of these dynamic resources in its midst? In a world where Atheists
are more vocal, and often more informed on the Bible than Christians, some of
the most important resources, that sit elbow-to-elbow with you at church, go
unnoticed. And if Christians began to take advantage of their local Apologists,
the gradual crumbling of the American church might slow and then stop. The
church might actually experience growth if it knew that there were
dedicated people who had answers to the questions hammering it down by the
culture around it.
Certainly, there were big name,
celebrity Apologists who had the lime-light, but was this really enough? These
small voices in the crowd were worth mentioning and the Gospel is Mentionable.
This conversation amidst we
small-time voices began as idle speculation and light-hearted joking. The
conversation grew so lengthy that I decided to create a separate Facebook group
just to keep the discussion going. But I made a mistake. I created a page
instead of a group. The difference is that a Facebook group is just a place for
like-minded people to post and discuss on topics on which they share interests.
A Facebook page is a front for a business or organization. By sheer accident, I
had given us a face for an organization. Thereafter, we actually began to talk
more seriously about The Mentionables.
By this time, Chad and Adam had
dropped off the discussion. I wanted a team of four, so I tagged in another
small-time apologist I had interviewed in my years as a Christian journalist:
Neil Hess of Soul Winning Ministries. He joined, and began hosting a
joint podcast under our name.
Soon we had a YouTube channel, with
regular talks and videos being added, and all of the social media feeds with
regular updates. We began to receive endorsements from some of the big-time
Apologists, like J Warner Wallace and Sean McDowell. We had our own website,
and hosted an occasional live-stream show on Facebook and YouTube.
Excited as I was by this gradual
snowballing of events that seemed to have begun a grassroots movement amidst
the smaller voices in Apologetics, I mentioned the events to a friend of mine
from college who now lived two states away from me in North Carolina. By the
next day, he had arranged an Apologetics conference for our group on his own
initiative.
Shortly after this, Chad and Adam
came back onboard the team, and we now had six members. I felt this was plenty
for a speaking team, but new people kept expressing interest in the group.
The whole point of the movement had
been to give voice to your friendly, neighborhood Apologist, and I didn't want
to turn away any talented amateurs, but I already had six members, and the team
was beginning to look a bit bloated. What to do?
This was when the idea of the Network
emerged. For new Apologists who expressed an interest in joining The
Mentionables, I began placing them in a national catalog of Apologists. Now
anyone can go into the catalog, locate an Apologist close to them, and find out
what this Apologist does, the services they offer and the topics on which they
speak.
Better still, small time apologists
from around the country could search the catalog finding the services these
Mentionables offered – things such as audio and video editing, philosophical
advice, and guest writing – and then take advantage of the services they
needed.
With a conference and podcast under
our belts, I began to look for other projects and opportunities for our group
to do. We began to seek out and record friendly debates with atheists for
broadcast on our podcast. A few of us began to make appearances at local
conferences – not as speakers, but with tables at which we sold books authored
by team members and offered promotional material about the group. We began to
receive questions from fans and listeners who had Apologetics or theology problems
and wanted answers. I would throw the question out to the entire network, and
then publish every answer I received on the groups blog. This way readers had
the advantage of getting several perspectives on the same question, rather than
one man's opinion. This became our "Question of the Week" program.
It was this model that carried over
to a signature team project. In November of 2017, I came across an
article on Hubpages, a publication for which I also write. The article was
titled "40 Questions to ask a Christian." It was written by an
atheist, and the forty questions (which actually turned out to be only 39) were
tactical tricks which attempted to disarm and silence the Christian to which
they were posed. This gave me a brilliant idea.
I made the suggestion to the network
that we work on these questions together in a similar fashion as what we did
with the Questions of the Week: we each give our own individual answer, then
put them together to give readers a well-rounded response.
The project took off and bore fruit.
A few months later, two of the Mentionables were invited to
attend and speak at an event. They were told “have materials for the children.”
In a world where we talk about philosophy, theology and
science, the kinds of material produced isn’t particularly appropriate for
children.
But children do ask
hard questions. Sometimes much harder than the questions asked by adults. The
team collected these questions, and began to provide answers. These were real
questions really asked by actual children. Questions parents often couldn’t
answer, and passed along to the team.
The team continues to do projects and build momentum. Who knows what the future holds?
