Years before I learned how to listen to doubters, I was just another overcaffeinated church planter in a hurry to save my city. One day in February 2015, I walked into a coffee shop in downtown Denver, and asked the owner what might have been one of the most spiritually presumptuous questions imaginable: “What church do you go to?”
Unfazed, he said, “I don’t go to church. I’m an atheist.”
I had taken the weekend to drive up from Dallas to Denver with a handful of volunteers, looking for a neighborhood where we could start a faith community. So there was more than a little self-interest in my follow-up: “Well, if you did go to church, what type of church would you go to?”
“If I went to church,” he said, peering over the top of his steaming espresso machine, “I’d go to a place that let me ask questions and didn’t judge me for thinking differently.”
Just then, my friends called me to the door. It was time to walk the streets, to find the neighborhood where God might be whispering, Here.
But then the irony of the situation set in. We had come to start another church, and an unbelieving coffee shop owner had just described the only kind of church he’d ever walk into. What if the church we were called to start didn’t look like a church at all, but more like a gathering of quiet skeptics whose doubts were treated as holy ground?
Related: 6 Things Believers Do that Drive Unchurched People Crazy
Months later, I met the owner again, and reminded him that he said he would attend a gathering that allowed questions and didn’t judge people for thinking differently.
“And I still would,” he responded.
“What if you and I started a gathering called The Doubters’ Club,” I offered, “where you, an atheist, and me, a Christian, invite our friends who don’t think like each other, and we talk about issues that matter.”
His face lit up as he gripped a chair and bounced up and down a few times. He wasn’t just in; it was the community he was looking for. Here is what we came up with:
• Each meeting was going to be co-moderated by two people who don’t think the same way. This was not a debate. This was going to model friendship and help all parties involved to pursue truth together.
• We set ground rules from valuing respect above being right to listening without interrupting. The ground rules were going to be key to the success of every meeting.
• It wouldn’t take place in a church building. Let’s keep it open and dangerous.
• We would invite people who don’t think like us. Keep the conversation going.
• The group gets to vote on what they want to talk about. There is no curriculum. This is the theological and philosophical Wild West.
It was going to be exactly what we both longed for. Curiosity was catching fire, and I wasn’t about to let it burn without me.
In the years since those initial conversations, more than 150 Doubters’ Clubs have taken root around the world, and more are still being planted.
Obstacles to Understanding
Over the past decade of setting tables where skeptics and churchgoers sit side by side, I’ve gathered a few hard-earned insights about the art of loving those who see the world differently. But before we can talk about how to listen, we must first talk about what others are hearing when we talk about our faith. These two obstacles, I believe, are compromising the conversation.
1. The Bible (more specifically, our dogmatism around the Bible)
The Bible is full of uncertainty, disinterest and even apathy. Unanswered prayers, and prayers answered in ways no one asked for, appear from book to book. I like to think of the Bible as a library of 66 books. Each one carries intense and often uncomfortable stories that show what it feels like when our spiritual scaffolding starts to crumble. They remind us that people in the past were often far less certain than they should have been.
From Moses wandering in the desert, to Job sitting in the dirt picking at his scabs, to John the Baptist questioning Jesus from a prison cell, we haven’t been taught that faith can look like this: dry deserts, scars, honest questions about Jesus.
Whether it’s been explicitly taught or subtly caught, most of us have not been prepared to embrace a faith that stays committed in the face of uncertainty. Instead, we’ve been told that the stronger our certainty, the stronger our faith. Ironically, that kind of faith can become ossified and brittle and often looks to the rest of the world like close-mindedness or stubbornness.
While spiritual leaders work hard to protect people from doubt, the human experience keeps calling for something different—more questions, more wrestling, more mystery. Because in real life, the sick aren’t always healed, the addicted aren’t always delivered, and broken relationships aren’t always mended. The only thing that seems certain is that certainty itself doesn’t change our reality.
The Bible was never meant to be used that way. Faith is not about psychological certainty; it’s about confidence—choosing to move forward based on the trust you have (Heb. 11:1).
The Bible isn’t an argument for God’s existence (though it does reveal his character). It’s not a science textbook or a math book. It’s a record of human experience—a reliable and honest mirror reflecting our thoughts, emotions and motives. And it’s worth saying, especially for the skeptics in your life: The Bible isn’t a book of spells. We aren’t delivered, saved or healed by reciting a verse.
The real barrier isn’t that Christianity has a sacred text; every worldview does. The problem is when we practice a hermeneutic of certainty—when we treat our interpretations as the standard for who’s in and who’s out.
When our interpretation becomes the price of admission for following Jesus, we risk helping people lose their way. Faith has always been about embracing truth wherever it’s found—including, but not limited to, the Bible. None other than John Calvin said, “All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God.”
2. God (more specifically, his spokespeople)
If you’ve ever talked to someone who’s skeptical about God, chances are their doubt isn’t abstract; it’s personal. It’s tethered to hypocrisy. To hurt. To a pastor’s betrayal or a church’s silence when it mattered most. Maybe even to your own story.
We tend to patch those wounds with quick fixes: “Most churches are good” or “Think of all the good Christianity has done.” But that logic would never fly anywhere else. You can tell them about the hospitals built in Jesus’ name, but it doesn’t erase the Crusades that were, too. You can point to changed lives, but it won’t undo the abuse justified from pulpits.
So yes, I side with the skeptics here. When someone says “God told me …” I wince. Those words carry the same weight as Scripture in the ears of those listening, and that’s a terrifying kind of power.
As someone who has been credentialed with a Pentecostal fellowship, I still bring this critique from within. History shows us that speaking for God rarely heals the world, but it can easily wound it beyond recognition. The poor have been fed and enemies killed by the same name. And as much as we’d like to think those days are behind us, they’re not. Not yet.
The Work of Listening
Once we recognize that these two topics demand a new approach, it transforms the very terrain of our relationships. Suddenly, conversations that once felt impossible are full of possibility. And here is the critical point: If the soil of a human heart is wounded, you don’t start with planting seeds. You tend the soil. You acknowledge where it’s tender. You treat it with care. Not only should we change how we talk about the above topics, but also how we listen. And that’s where the real work begins.
Over the years, through The Doubters’ Club, I’ve learned that there are three things a person must keep in mind if they want to lovingly engage with someone who believes differently than they do. None of these are complicated, but all of them are costly.
1. Remember, People Aren’t Starting at Zero.
When we enter into a conversation about faith, we often assume the other person is a blank slate, or worse, that they are simply “misinformed.” But no one enters these conversations empty-handed. Everyone carries a lifetime of experiences, memories, hopes, disappointments and a thousand small but formative moments. People are always learning how to build a worldview based on how they are interpreting the world.
And, this is important, they’re not the only ones with bias. We have our own stories. Our own filters. Our own reinforced beliefs. Every time we skim a headline, nod along with a sermon, scroll our preferred news feed, or repeat something a trusted voice said, our worldview is reinforced without us even noticing. So when two people sit down to talk about God, justice, suffering, meaning or Scripture, what’s happening is not the exchange of raw facts. It is, quite literally, two completely different stories trying to get on the same page.
Proverbs 20:5 suddenly becomes clearer: “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” Someone’s beliefs (or unbeliefs) are not surface-level decisions. They are rooted in lived experience, pain, questions, identity and hope. As are yours. To engage someone lovingly is not to stand in the shallows and offer answers. It is to patiently wade into the depths of their story.
2. Ask a Core Question.
In The Doubters’ Club training we teach people to carry one core question into every conversation. A core question is something your mind returns to when the conversation becomes tense or confusing. A question that slows the heartbeat and opens up the room. Practically, it does two things:
• Genuinely increases curiosity
• Doesn’t compromise your values
Here’s an example of a core question: “What’s the story behind that belief?”
Say someone tells you they don’t trust the church. Instead of defending the church, trying to separate “institutional Christianity” from “Jesus,” or explaining how “not all churches are like that,” you return to your core question. It’s something we see Jesus do often.
In Mark 10 Jesus is walking with a crowd, important things are happening, and a blind man named Bartimaeus is shouting for his attention. Everyone else is annoyed, but Jesus stops. Instead of assuming he knows what the man needs (which he clearly did), he asks a question: “What do you want me to do for you?” That one question did more than gather information. That question restored dignity. It said, “Your desire matters here. Your story belongs in this conversation.”
A core question in spiritual conversations does the same thing. It shifts the moment from talking about someone to engaging with them. Not to trap them. Not to lead them where we already want to go. But to discover the person behind the belief. Over the years I’ve learned that real transformation doesn’t begin with answers. It begins with being seen, heard and taken seriously.
It’s the difference between: “Let me show you where you’re wrong” and “Help me understand how you got there.”
One shuts the door. The other opens it.
3. Be Open to Being Wrong.
This one sounds simple, but it’s often the hardest. If we expect others to reconsider their perspective, we must be willing to reconsider ours. It would be absurd, and deeply arrogant, to hope that someone else’s mind might change while ours remains immovable. That said, this does not mean abandoning conviction. It means holding conviction with humility. It means acknowledging that your understanding of God, Scripture, morality or truth is real but it is also in progress. To borrow the sentiment of G.K. Chesterton, I’m not saying to be so open-minded that your mind never closes on anything solid. Rather, be open to new information and where that information may lead. Remember: We are not stewards of certainty. We are pilgrims of mystery.
When someone you love offers a perspective that challenges you, instead of tightening your grip, ask yourself: Could there be something here that I haven’t seen before? And here’s the quiet miracle: When we allow ourselves to be shaped by others, they become more open to being shaped by us. We actually become companions to one another. Detour guides, if you will. In the scientific world, they call this the cognitive mirroring effect. Changing our minds isn’t based on who has the better argument, but rather, who stayed open enough to build trust through listening.
Permission to Wrestle
I was recently sitting around a fire with a family I hadn’t known for very long. Slowly, the kids drifted inside as the excitement of sports faded into the usual adult chatter: Investments, mortgages and the occasional wistful recollection of the “good old days.”
When the youngest was finally in, my friend Ethan leaned back and said, “God can just go to hell.”
He was once a pastor, and I wanted to make the theological joke that some might say Jesus has already been there, but his wife jumped in before I could. She was thinking something else.
“What am I supposed to do when he talks like this?” she asked. “He goes on these rants about how mad he is with God, and then …”
“And then what?” I prompted.
“And then Ethan goes right back to reading the Bible, praying with the kids, helping the poor downtown. Some days, I just don’t know what he believes.”
He leaned forward. “Most days, I don’t know what I believe either. What I’m reading and what I’m experiencing just don’t line up. And I’m done pretending like they do.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so blunt about it,” she said.
I finally spoke up. “That’s what we call wrestling with God. It’s what disciples do. Ethan is living like one of the Twelve we read about. Not neat, not polished by the pulpit, often messy, but I think Jesus is drawn to it.”
“So you’ve done this, too?” she asked.
I laughed. “Done this? Honestly, I don’t know another way to be a Christian. If we’re honest, aren’t we all doubters a little bit?”
A quiet moment passed. Then I leaned in. “Ethan, when you said God can go to hell, I almost made a joke about …”
He cut me off with a knowing laugh as his wife rolled her eyes. Finally, a good theological chuckle. A little spark in the dark.
Dialogue with people who think differently than us isn’t scary. It’s sacred. By staying, listening and stepping into someone’s doubts, we bear witness that even when life is confusing, our hearts can still burn within us (Luke 24:32).
In those moments Christ is close. No one can wrestle with God from far away.