Audio only:
In this episode, Trent Horn lays out three criteria for evaluating public Christian witnesses: personal holiness, bold proclamation, and substantial reach.
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Transcript:
Trent Horn (00:00):
There are many people who promote the Christian faith on a public platform, but who is the best witnes of the faith in this area and what can we learn from this person? To answer that question, I’m going to lay out three criteria for what makes someone the best at publicly sharing the Christian faith. So let’s start with number one, personal holiness. When looking to see if someone is a good witness of the faith, we should always ask, does this person demonstrate the work of the Holy Spirit in their life through identifiable fruits of the Holy Spirit? In other words, does this person’s life exhibit, as Galatians 5:22 says, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And is their witness generally free of what that same part of Galatians calls the works of the flesh? Things like imnity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, and dissension.
(00:51):
This is important because evangelism is not about helping people get the right answers on a theology test. It’s about helping people become new creations in Jesus Christ. That’s why St. Paul says, “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. The best Christian witness will show as Paul says that love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice it wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Number two, bold proclamation. It’s not enough to just have the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Many non-Christians practice love, joy, patience, and the rest.
(01:43):
You could be the most joyful, most patient person in the world, but if you never speak the name of Jesus to another person, then you haven’t given anyone good news. You haven’t given them the gospel. That’s why our Lord said, “So have no fear of them for nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body and hell. Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my father who is in heaven. The best public Christian witness will exemplify Christian virtue but not shrink away from proclaiming Christian doctrine.
(02:34):
Our goal should be that the only thing that offends someone when we speak about our faith is the truth that we are sharing with him. And finally, number three, substantial reach. On the one hand, evangelism isn’t a popularity contest. If you share the faith with even one person and that helps that person come to have eternal life, then you’ve helped bring about an infinite amount of goodness in the world. On the other hand, it’s not bad to be able to share the Christian faith with large numbers of people since this fulfills the great commission where Jesus said to the disciples, and by extension you and me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And low, I am with you always to the close of the age.
(03:19):
By the way, if you want to help us reach more people here at the Council of Trent, then please click the subscribe button and make a gift to support our work at trenhornpodcast.com. On average, we get about three million views a month at the channel and we want to increase that to help more people learn about Christ in his church. And the best way you can help us do that is by supporting us at trrenthornpodcast.com. So now we have the three metrics. Who would I say is the best public witness of Christianity in the world today? It’s a tie between two people, but before I reveal who they are and what we can learn from them, I need to make an honorable mention on this list. Pope Leo the 14th. St. Peter urged his fellow presbyteroy from which we get the English word priest to quote, clothe yourselves all of you with humility toward one another, which is something Pope Leo has modeled in his own pontificate.
(04:07):
He has also boldly, yet graciously condemned the evils of our day. And when it comes to reach, well, it’s indisputable that the Pope is the most famous living Christian on the planet, but he’s not at the top of my ranking in this episode because the main reason the Pope is so influential is because of something the average viewer of this channel will never have. The gift of being the successor of St. Peter and the earthly head of the church. Instead, I’m going to focus on two people who are great models of evangelism that we can imitate and those two are Father Mike Schmitz and Wes Huff. Now, there are many great Christian apologists and evangelists that are on the top of my list, so it was hard to narrow it down, but these two are my favorite current examples of a virtuous, bold and effective Christian witness.
(04:51):
For those of you who don’t know, Father Mike Schmitz is a Catholic priest in the Diocese of Duluth, whose videos on ascension presents have received millions of views. His podcast, The Bible in a Year, was at one time the most downloaded podcast in the world and has now been downloaded over one billion times. Wes Huff is a Protestant author who specializes in New Testament manuscripts and has been seen by millions of people on huge podcasts like the Joe Rogan experience and diary of a CEO. Even atheists have recognized Wes’s reach. When it comes to reach, I would say that these two are in the top tier of recognizable Christian evangelists. They aren’t the most recognizable, but that’s okay because many of the most recognizable Christians in the world aren’t necessarily the ones you should be imitating. For example, Joel Osteen is probably the most watched preacher in America.
(05:39):
His sermons reach an estimated seven to 10 million views every week, but Osteen is popular because he preaches a version of the prosperity gospel, which ties faithfulness to guaranteed material rewards. In his book, Your Best Life Now, he says this. God wants to increase you financially by giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity. Until you learn how to enlarge your vision, seeing the future through your eyes of faith, your own wrong thinking will prevent good things from happening in your life. For more on why this is totally bunk, see my previous episode on four bad Christian bestsellers and my debunking of the prosperity gospel. So it’s easy to become a popular Christian if you don’t challenge the world’s love for popular sins. Father James Martin is popular among liberal media establishments because he promotes an ambiguous message on sexuality that makes it seem like the church doesn’t really care if its members engage in sins like sodomy.
(06:34):
However, Father Mike and Wes Huff are willing to boldly proclaim the entire Christian faith, including the parts that people don’t want to hear, but they proclaim it in a way that is kind and not motivated by cruelty or a desire to frustrate those who disagree with them. Now, some Catholics might object to me praising Wes Huff because he also publishes content that defends Protestantism and he recently published a lengthy critique of Catholicism, but that isn’t the primary focus of Wes’s work. When he’s on secular podcasts, he sticks to defending mere Christianity. There are many Protestants who like Father Mike, even though Father Mike does a lot of Catholic apologetics, which makes sense because he’s a Catholic priest. Yesterday, Wes briefly reviewed the script from my reply to his video on Catholicism and my plan is to air that reply by the end of this week.
(07:18):
However, I do appreciate how Wes Huff and other people like William Lane Craig defend mere Christianity on large public platforms because sadly there aren’t very many Catholics who focus on those subjects. A fair number of Catholic apologists spend almost all of their time discussing Protestantism or Orthodoxy and focus very little on these secular foundational issues to the gospel. I’m grateful that Wes Huff does do that and so he serves as a good model for evangelism in that respect. As I said, there are other Catholics and Protestants who reach more people than Wes Huff or Father Mike, but just because many people say influencer X is the reason they converted, that doesn’t mean this influencer is a good public witness of the faith. If that person lacks the fruits of the Holy Spirit or teaches false doctrine, then he may have only converted people to a counterfeit Christianity, one that accepts the Nicing Creed but treats vices like greed or wrath as virtues.
(08:17):
But this doesn’t mean that aspiring evangelists and apologists should simply copy Father Mike or Wes Huff. The Protestant theologian Randall Rouser noted back in 2015 how many evangelical apologists had turned into clones of William Lang Craig or Craig clones as he called them. And while Craig is one of the best living Christian apologists, the body of Christ isn’t served by simply copying his arguments and demeanor or those of other prominent influencers. In one Corinthians 11: one, St. Paul says, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” So we should imitate saintly Christians in virtue of how they imitate Christ, especially in exhibiting the fruits of the Holy Spirit. That’s why as a Catholic, I love the communion of saints and looking at all the saints in their diversity of holiness and how we can imitate them, we can imitate Christ. But we shouldn’t worry about exactly copying a saint or even a popular influencer because the body of Christ needs diversity.
(09:13):
For example, Wes Huff is good at reciting apologetic arguments without seeming like someone who only spends his time reading books. Father Mike, on the other hand, is great at emotionally connecting with people through his sanguine temperament and breaking down theology so it’s understandable to ordinary people. So please do not think that you can’t be a good witness of the faith because you can’t bench press the equivalent of a four cylinder engine or you don’t have cheekbones that can cut diamonds. St. Paul says in one Corinthians 12, “For the body does not consist of one member but of many.” If the Trent Horn should say, “Because I am not a Father Mike, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the redeemed Zoomer should say, “Because I am not a Wes Huff, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
(09:57):
Now, that’s more of a dynamic translation, but you get the idea. Each of us has been given special gifts and callings and when we invest in those gifts, we can attract people to hear what we have to say about Jesus because those people already like what we have to say in general as a person. And don’t think for a second that you need a big social media channel or a platform to be an effective Christian evangelist. Most people who become Christian or return to the church do so because other people in real life talk to them or invited them to church, which is more difficult to do than merely liking a post on social media. And it’s easier for someone to accept this kind of invitation when they already respect and look up to the Christian who has made that invitation for them to come to church.
(10:43):
Although more authentic Christians on large social media platforms isn’t a bad thing, especially because no single person is going to appeal to everyone. Some men might find Father Mike or Wes Huff too squeaky clean and so they might relate more to someone who is, how shall I put it, rough around the edges, someone like Mel Gibson or Shai LeBuff, people who show how God can write straight with crooked lines. In fact, in my previous episode on Wes’s appearance on the Joe Rogan experience, I compared the strengths in Wes’s polished apologetic approach to the graphic honesty of Mel Gibson’s raw personal testimony. I’ll leave a link to that episode in the description below. And so what this means is that we need more people who can speak to all kinds of different groups of people. It’s sort of like Christian music. It’s great to have popular praise and worship artists, but some people detest that kind of music.
(11:31):
They like heavy metal or hip hop. So the body of Christ is served by Christian groups like Striper or the hip hop artist Lecrae who belong to that style. Heavy metal evangelism, if you will, serves a similar function. But along with different temperaments, we need more Christians to witness the faith publicly that go beyond the mold of someone like Wes Huff or Father Mike. For example, we need evangelists who speak to all the different regions and languages of the world. Matthew Levagna is the best Catholic apologist in France and probably one of the best in Europe overall. Check out his channel link below, even if you don’t speak France as he has English language interviews and we need more women in this space like a lot more. For the first time in modern history, young women are less religious than young men and the social media landscape for these women is overrun by things that either don’t build up their faith like true crime podcasts or actively undermine their faith like the Call Her Daddy Podcast, which promotes pro- choice ideology and fornication.
(12:29):
The most relatable witness to women is probably going to come from other women. So based on personal virtue, boldness and substantial reach, the best female Christian witnesses of the faith, I would say is also a tie between Ali Beth Stuckey and Lila Rose. I disagree with Allie on major issues because she’s Protestant and I’m Catholic and I disagree with Lila on minor issues, but both of these women clearly have hearts geared towards leading people to Jesus Christ. In contrast, Candace Owens has a larger reach than either of them, but Owen spends her time not leading people to Christ or Christian virtue, but leading them into sinful calamni and conspiracy theories, absurd falsehoods, which I’ve previously covered on the channel and vicious backbiting, which is why Christians should avoid her content. Instead, we should all pray for the Holy Spirit to help each of us grow in the fruits of the Holy Spirit while being bold in our conversations with other people when we share our testimony.
(13:24):
And we should ask God to help us share the faith based on the unique gifts that he gave us, but God will also help us grow in areas where we feel deficient, such as if we have a short temper, God can help us grow in patience. Or if we feel like we don’t know enough about the faith, God can help us grow in apologetic knowledge by guiding our intellectual study of the faith. Finally, if we trust God and we share our faith with joyful honesty, God may present each of us with opportunities to reach large numbers of people that we never thought would happen since our Lord said this, well done, good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Keep that in mind because God is calling you, yes, you to step forward into the public square, maybe just with a single conversation with a friend or a family member, he wants you to take that step and be a witness to his glory and don’t be afraid to take that step.
(14:23):
So thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.