Why Rural Churches Need Apologetics Training
Introduction
Though I’m not focused only on rural ministry, my primary place of ministry at this moment is in a rural town in Central Pennsylvania (truly, I’ve taken to calling my town remote and not just rural). Ramey, which is the town that my church meets in has a population of approximately 400 people.[1] Houtzdale, which essentially acts as a cultural and economic hub for the surrounding communities, has less than 800 people.[2] Many who live within our communities have lived within these communities for the entirety of their lives, very few choose to move into the community, and those that do tend not to stay for long—there’s a sense of stagnation in remote communities.
This stagnation often results in congregations who are internally comfortable, but missionally misaligned; friendly to one-another, but isolationist towards other people; and culturally conservative, but theologically stunted. In fact, many rural congregations seem like healthy churches until you start digging into Scripture more intently, come from outside the congregation, or start asking questions that challenge long-running ideas.
If that congregation is content with being missionally misaligned, isolationist, and theologically stunted than none of this really sounds like a difficulty. Rather, when people start to push back against the church’s long-running ideas, the average congregation would rather fight back than accept that they could be wrong. This post is not for churches that would rather stay missionally misaligned, isolationist, and theologically stunted. This blog is for churches that want to turn the tide of stagnation and missionally reach their surrounding communities.
With that said, just being a church in a town isn’t sufficient to reach the community—at one time, churches were seen as the center of society, but now, your church building means little to most people in the community. In fact, there are whole generations of people who have never stepped foot in a church let alone your church. Instead, you need to go to them and you need to understand that unlike previous generations who had a cultural touchstone with Christianity, younger generations typically don’t. This is why you need apologetics—even in rural churches.
Does Rural Ministry Need Apologetics?
At one time in the United States, it could be assumed that the majority of Americans had some foundational knowledge of Jesus Christ. Even if they weren’t regular church attenders, they knew enough—through school, occasional church attendance, and even media—to at least understand definitions and ideas. In fact, for much of American history, the majority of apologetics methodology focused primarily on just connecting the dots—helping unbelievers connect all the various ideas and definitions that they have about God into a cohesive understanding of Christianity.
That time is gone and has been gone for a while—urban centers have already recognized that a Christianized America is no more, but rural America is just now starting to catch up. The reality is that the ideas of Christendom, where Christianity is the dominant worldview that influences not just Christians, but politics and other areas of life is gone.[3]And yet, most rural churches still think in terms of the ideas of Christendom—where Christianity is still the dominant worldview when it simply isn’t.
We live in a world that is highly pluralistic—we have a plethora of worldviews represented throughout society around us—and postmodern—the concept that all truth is relative. Christianity teaches the opposite—that there are really only Christian versus non-Christian worldviews—and that truth is objective—God is the revealer of absolute truth. With these fundamental differences, Christians now need to learn how to evaluate other worldviews for the purpose of confronting them while pointing the individual towards Jesus Christ. The task of apologetics is to answer and remove objections concerning Christianity for the unbeliever; thus, without apologetics, Christians won’t be able to answer and remove objections concerning Christianity for unbelievers. Without new converts, local churches will struggle to grow and without growth, that local church will eventually close—this is why apologetics is so important, even in rural contexts. Apologetics isn’t optional—it’s vital for Christians to fulfill the Great Commission.
How Should We Teach Apologetics in Rural Ministries?
There are a variety of ways that apologetics can be taught in rural ministries, but it always starts with the church’s leadership. If the church’s leadership thinks that apologetics training is important than they will teach apologetics in their local church. If the church’s leadership doesn’t think that apologetics training is important, then they won’t teach apologetics in their local church. The issue is that if we live in an increasingly pluralistic world, which we do; and if Christianity isn’t the default worldview anymore, which it isn’t then church leaders who refuse to train their congregations in apologetics are setting them up for failure.
In reality, apologetics training needs to be intentional and integrated in every aspect of the local church. Pastors need to develop apologetics into their Christian education curriculum and regular preachers and teachers need to be aware of apologetics-related issues in the texts of Scripture that they’re preaching and teaching through. If we’re to train our congregations to better defend their faith and help unbelievers with their unbelief, then pastors need to be aware of the apologetical issues and how to integrate training for those issues in every aspect of their ministries.
Pastors need to be intentional, consistent, and fervent in providing training to their congregations because their congregants will find themselves in more and frequent situations in which unbelievers will question them concerning their faith—especially since it is now so easy to find common objections against Christianity repeated throughout social media platforms with very little pushback from well-trained, apologetics-aware Christians. Pastors need to be proactive by providing robust theology (preferably from a confessional foundation), philosophically-rigorous, and culturally aware sermons and lessons that push their congregations to grow rather than just be entertained.
The Primary Difficulties
Of course, there are three primary difficulties that come in mind when this assertion to teach apologetics is presented: (1) apologetics can seem overly academic, (2) many pastors aren’t equipped to teach apologetics, and (3) most rural believers don’t see the importance of apologetics. This could discourage churches from putting an emphasis, but these difficulties don’t negate the importance of apologetics.
While apologetics can be overly academic, this issue is really more because of the presenter rather than the listener. The role of any public speaker (including preachers and teachers) is to make the material accessible to the hearer. Apologetics can be taught—we know because it has been taught for several thousand years. The teacher of apologetics needs to learn contextualization. For instance, in a rural context, focusing a lot of time to deal with Plato’s forms or Aristotelian ethics might not be beneficial. However, there are elements in Plato’s forms that can be utilized to help believers reach unbelievers (e.g., consider the Cave Allegory as an illustration of the Gospel or how Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics can be utilized to start a conversation about ethics in general while pointing to true biblical ethics). It really depends on the congregation itself. Apologetics, while it can seem overly academic, only seems that way when it isn’t contextualized.
Many pastors simply aren’t trained in apologetics. Even those with seminary education typically have only taken one or two classes that lay out foundational ideas in apologetics (this includes pastors with Masters of Divinity (MDivs)). Of course, pastors with little formal apologetics in their seminary education can’t be blamed for this (as they do not develop their own curriculum), but apologetics training can be done outside of seminary as well. Many seminaries offer more specific programs for apologetics that are available through distance learning and there are plenty of non-seminary programs available at inexpensive ministries—pastors just need to want to be equipped. Truly, pastors with formal training are actually better equipped to teach apologetics than what they realize because a lot of apologetics issues are dealt with in other courses (e.g., textual criticism is dealt with in Introduction courses, semantics is dealt with in original languages, etc.).
The reality is that most rural churchgoers don’t understand the need for robust theology let alone apologetics. This, however, doesn’t negate the importance of robust theology and apologetics. Children often don’t see the importance of eating vegetables or going to school, but that doesn’t stop parents from making the children eat vegetables or go to school. Likewise, the average congregant might not see the importance, but that doesn’t mean that pastors should stop teaching theology and apologetics. Pastors should continue to do what they’re called to do while working encouraging their congregants to see the importance of these things.
Conclusion
Apologetics, while unfamiliar to many people in the church today, is a vital part of the Christian life. Christians need to know their faith and how to defend it if they ever plan to be effective in fulfilling the Great Commission. Of course, this all starts at the church leadership level—pastors need to champion apologetics training in their local church so that their congregations can learn how to better defend their beliefs. This training needs to happen regardless of the church’s location—urban, suburban, rural, and even remote churches all need training.
If we refuse to train Christians in apologetics, we shouldn’t be surprised when they walk away from the faith—or when the world sees the church as intellectually irrelevant. It’s time we do something about it.
[1] "City and Town Population Totals: 2020—2021". Census.gov. US Census Bureau. Retrieved June 23, 2025.
[2] "City and Town Population Totals: 2020—2021". Census.gov. US Census Bureau. Retrieved June 23, 2025.
[3] See Stanley, Hauerwas, and William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989).
