I once heard Oxford theologian Alister McGrath suggest that instead of leading with logic and argument to prove Christianity true, we lead with a story to make people wish it were true--a story that appeals not only to reason, but the imagination. In the same vein, Bishop Robert Barron, in his 2017 Erasmus Lecture, endorses the approach of Hans Urs von Balthasar who recommended that we lead with the beautiful over the true and good. In either case, we have a story that is better than the other side and we need to tell it in a way that is more compelling.

I'm reminded what someone once said about evangelism: the job of the evangelist is not to give people a drink or even lead them to water; it's to make them thirsty. Of course, that requires knowing people enough to know what will trigger that thirst.