How Apologetics Saved My Faith from Deconstruction with Alisa Childers

追加: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]your father passed away not long ago and I think it was probably a fairly long illness a battle with cancer. Mhm, it was in fact it was well it was I guess long is relative because it was about 9 months from the time he was diagnosed and then he was in hospice for about 3 months and for a lot of that time fairly active so it really wasn't until maybe the last month that he was starting to become more bedridden that was like the last 2 weeks and um so yeah it was um it was the sweetest couple of weeks of my life hardest couple of weeks of my life I actually went over to stay with my mom and dad my mom has her own health issues so I slept in the room with my dad next to my dad's hospital bed and that was just an experience that I will treasure forever it was hard and sweet and holy and all the things. Well my dad's been gone for for about 25 years now 26 years and he died of congestive heart failure so it was a elongated process but I I learned more about my dad in those last few weeks and months and and got to spend with him and we were we were very close and and it it is a precious time and in talking with you earlier I I realized we got a lot in common you're you're come from a family of four girls your dad had four daughters and so do I and so that special relationship between a dad and his daughter is is something that's really to be treasured and and so I I know that that existed between you and your dad and he was a great influence in your life. He really was my dad was one of those hippies that trusted in Christ through what is now being called the Jesus Revolution in fact he was his band he's a musician so his band was actually featured in the movie and yeah so I grew up kind of first generation Christian so he didn't have you know any kind of background prior to that in in Christianity and it was it was really sweet just growing up where he would take me around to his local concerts and I would sing a song to my track. He did a lot of evangelism. In fact, that's something about his life that not a lot of people know is that for his entire life as a Christian, even up until he died, he would go out with his friends to the Berkeley campus or in New York sometimes, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and they would set up a stage and they would sing and they would preach the gospel and witness to people that were walking around. So, I grew up doing a lot of that. So, I got to see the power of the gospel really in action as a young child and I'm very thankful for that experience. It's something I really treasure and I don't do well enough with my kids, I would say.

[00:02:34]And and all of us feel that way with with passing on our faith to to other generations. My one of my grandsons is very interested in Dude Perfect and and they are very committed Christians. I didn't realize that, but he he went to a concert and and well, it's not a concert, it's a demonstration more for them, but they came out at the end and and pronounced the gospel and and so it's very powerful these young guys to see these fellows who are very athletic and do all sorts of athletic things that I folks think are impossible to do, but they do them and then preach the gospel.

[00:03:09]So, that's the legacy that you grew up with and yet from what I know about another gospel, that you you kind of moved away from that for a while. Yeah, not on purpose.

[00:03:20]I in my heart never did, but what what what happened was I didn't grow up in an environment where I was really taught why I believe what I believe. And that's no insult to my pastors or my family. I just don't think they could have foreseen the internet and all of these things.

[00:03:35]>> for granted. Right, yes, exactly. And so, which is part of the reason I'm always so excited to come here because I attended this conference in 2016 as just a fan girl loving all of the apologetics because what had happened a few years prior to that was my husband and I were attending a new church and the pastor had already deconstructed and become a progressive Christian, but he wasn't telling people.

[00:04:00]He wasn't telling his parishioners that and so a lot of people in the church began to deconstruct as a result of these classes that he would have on the side where he would be a very different person than he was on Sunday and so I was in one of those classes and it really rattled me to my core and so you know, while I was in the class I would try to debate with him, but then I would go home and I would tell my husband, you won't believe the things that they said and the things we're reading but once we left the church and I left the class, those doubts really went deep and I didn't have anybody to debate with anymore.

[00:04:33]And I didn't know how to debate it. I was just doing the best I could but it really rattled me. I knew though, you know, what's interesting is I knew that if Christianity wasn't true, my only options were Christianity or just meaninglessness. I mean ultimately I knew progressive Christianity wasn't for me because it gave me nothing except some things I have to go do without any kind of meaningful belief.

[00:04:54]So I I went I really cried out to the Lord one night and I just said God if you're real, if if the gospel my parents gave me is true, I need information. And so SES was actually one of the first ministries I I that I found and I just remember downloading the SES conference from this conference the app to my phone and this would have been I don't know maybe 2012 or 13. I don't know how far back that app goes but it was like the first year was on this this app. And I just started binging all the lectures.

[00:05:29]And it was just like >> [gasps] >> there are answers to all of these things that the pastor was saying in this church and and it just seemed like every single lecture was answering a specific question we had discussed in the class.

[00:05:39]>> Amazing how God works that way, isn't It is amazing. So then I started following all the people that were giving the lectures and I just this whole wide world of apologetics was opened up to me and I was it was just I I my book I describe it like being a kid in the candy store who also just [clears throat] found out candy exists, you know, it's just it was amazing then I started auditing classes and the professors here were amazing to answer them. I didn't know any of the etiquette. I just was you know, I was in music my whole life and they were just so patient even if I would email with a question they'd send me resources to dig in on my own and and answer and engage and uh so I'm very thankful to SES as being part of that journey for me. I had no idea at the time that I would go on to do apologetics publicly as a ministry, but I'm just so thrilled. It's always a thrill when I get to come back because it's sort of like home base for me.

[00:06:38]>> [music]