Book Review – Tactics by Greg Koukl - Cave To The Cross Apologetics

The “How To Say It” Guide For Christians

Cave To The Cross Apologetics podcast did this book. All episodes can be found here. Now read the Tactics book review.

Tactics, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Gregory Koukl

Synopsis:

In a world indifferent or even opposed to Christian truth, followers of Christ must be better equipped to communicate the timeless of the Christian faith. But how do you have a conversation with someone who is intent on proving you wrong and won’t accept the Bible as a source of authority?

In Tactics, Gregory Koukl demonstrates how to artfully regain control of conversations, keeping them moving forward in constructive ways through thoughtful diplomacy. You’ll learn how to maneuver comfortably and graciously through the minefields of a challenging discussion, how to stop challengers in their tracks, and how to turn the tables on question or provocative statement. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to get people thinking about Jesus.

Drawing on extensive experience defending Christianity in the public square, Koukl shows you how to:

Initiate conversations effortlessly
Present the truth clearly, cleverly, and persuasively
Graciously and effectively expose faulty thinking
Skillfully manage the details of dialogue
Maintain an engaging, disarming style even under attack

Tactics provides the game plan for communicating the compelling truth about Christianity with confidence and grace. (Taken from GoodReads page)

Review

What Koukl does here isn’t your normal apologetics but it’s the process of having the conversation with others about Christianity. So not quite showing you a positive or negative case presentation but how to respond in the best way possible to those who have questions or criticism of Christianity.

Koukl inspires Christians to be measured in their approach and provide a loose process with responding to others or engaging in conversation with others. So having an understanding this isn’t the “what to say” but “how to say it”. What he also does well is to encourage people to do an internal critique of the other side well. While Koukl isn’t a presuppositionalist, he has some good work here that would benefit someone who subscribes to that apologetic method. The book also adds a lot of examples which is perfect for the material laid out. While some may not like the little depth he goes into important issues, it’s good to know that’s not the purpose of the book and those subjects should be tackled in other books.

Overall, this was a great book that really gave me a lot of ideas to think about my own presentations. The hardest part is actually trusting “the system” as we all tend to want to give the immediate reply rather than seeing if there’s a better way. I would recommend this book and the Cave To The Cross Apologetics podcast that covered the book chapter-by-chapter (biased plug there).

Final Grade

A-