6 Weekly Sessions
Mondays, October 19 – November 23, 2026
8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. ET
7 to 8:30 p.m. CT
5 to 6:30 p.m. PT
$299
Every Christian has been in this conversation. A friend pushes back: “How can you believe in a God who lets children suffer?” A colleague says, “Science has moved past all that.” A family member says, “I just can’t be part of an institution with that history.” These are not niche questions. They are the three or four objections that stop almost every serious faith conversation — and most Christians have never been trained to handle them.
But there is a second layer of challenge that is just as important and less often addressed: the stories our culture tells about identity, freedom, happiness, power, and truth. These are not abstract philosophical positions. They are the water we swim in. They shape what people believe they deserve, what they’re afraid of, what they’re building their lives on — and why Christianity feels so implausible to people who have never examined those assumptions.
This cohort teaches you to do both.
Over six weeks, Michael Keller, senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church Lincoln Square in Manhattan and co-author of The Stories We Live By with Timothy Keller (Zondervan, September 2026), will give you a rigorous, practical framework for engaging faith conversations with confidence, curiosity, and conviction. Not by memorizing comebacks. Not by winning arguments. But by learning to listen so carefully that you can see exactly where someone’s worldview is reaching for something only the gospel can give.
What You’ll Learn to Do
- Address the three biggest intellectual objections to Christianity — suffering and evil, science and reason, church hypocrisy and harm — with logic, empathy, and genuine theological depth
- Read the cultural narratives shaping your conversations: Identity, Power, Morality, Happiness, Freedom, Truth, and Progress
- Use the Affirm → Critique → Redirect framework to enter any conversation, find common ground, expose where the story fails on its own terms, and redirect to the gospel as fulfillment — not replacement
- Diagnose where someone is in their journey (Dissatisfied / Indifferent / Cautiously Interested / Actively Seeking) and respond accordingly
- Turn everyday conversations into gospel opportunities without being awkward, manipulative, or preachy
Who This Is For
- Christians who want to be more confident and equipped in faith conversations
- Pastors and ministry leaders who preach or teach to post-Christian audiences
- Small group leaders who want to help their communities engage skeptical friends
- Anyone who has felt tongue-tied when someone pushes back on their faith
With your registration you’ll receive:
- Teaching from Michael Keller and opportunities to ask questions
- Small group breakout rooms to practice and discuss the teaching
- Practical guidance and feedback for turning everyday conversations into gospel opportunities
- The Stories We Live By by Michael Keller and Timothy Keller
- Making Sense of Us, a seven-week cultural narratives curriculum and videos from The Keller Center’s fellows
Are you on a church staff or considering this cohort as a group at a church? If so, we want you to check out this brief PDF with three ideas of how to use this cohort as a group and instructions for deep discounts.
We never want finances to hinder someone from participating. If you want to participate in this cohort and need financial assistance, please send us an email and tell us more about your circumstances (cohorts@thegospelcoalition.org).
* We are unable to offer refunds for The Keller Center cohorts
* Registration WITH books closes on October 12 and LATE Registration WITHOUT books closes on October 18.
* All sessions will be recorded and available for streaming or download at your leisure in perpetuity, so if you can’t make it live, the material is still readily available
* NOTE: we are unable to ship to those outside the United States but please use the coupon code “BOOKS15” for 15 percent off as our courtesy to international participants. You may also use coupon code “BOOKS15” if you DO NOT WANT the books for the cohort.
* If you have any questions pertaining to signing up for your cohort, group rates, elder/preaching team rates, or church rates email cohorts@thegospelcoalition.org
Modern apologetics is not primarily about winning arguments. It is about removing barriers — intellectual and emotional — that prevent people from genuinely considering Christianity. This session lays the foundation for the entire cohort by clarifying what apologetics is, what it is not, and why it matters in our particular cultural moment.
In-class Exercise Scenario
A friend says, “I can’t believe in a God who lets children suffer. If he’s real and good, he’s useless. If he’s powerful, he’s not good.”
Assignment
Identify one person in your life who holds one of these three defeater beliefs. Write down their objection in their own words. We will use real examples throughout the cohort. Also this week, ask one person “What do you think is the biggest problem facing us today?” — and just listen.
Before we can engage culture, we have to learn to read it. This session introduces the concept of cultural narratives — the stories a society tells about who we are, what we owe each other, and what a good life looks like. These narratives are not merely ideas; they shape imagination, form desire, and feel so obvious that they become invisible. The overview of all seven. The Identity narrative is introduced last, as the capstone illustration, because it is the most foundational: every other narrative flows from some answer to the question “Who am I?”
In-class Breakout Scenario
A colleague says, “I just need to figure out who I really am. Once I know that, I can stop caring what anyone else thinks.”
Assignment
Practice the Affirm → Critique → Redirect structure on Identity with one person this week — not to convert them, just to listen well and ask one good question.
Power and Morality are the most unstable narrative pair in contemporary culture — and the most revealing. Our culture simultaneously holds that morality is socially constructed (there is no universal right and wrong) and that injustice is a real moral outrage that demands accountability. These two convictions cannot coexist. This tension opens the most important apologetic conversation of our moment.
In-class Breakout Scenario
Scenario A: “Morality is just a social construct. Your Christian ethics are just one culture’s preferences.” / Scenario B: “The Church has caused so much harm. How can you be part of that institution?”
Assignment
Write down a situation where you felt moral outrage this week. Then ask: what does that outrage assume about reality? Write one sentence.
Freedom and Happiness together because they’re the two ambient, consumer narratives — felt more than argued. They are also deeply intertwined: we are told that freedom is the path to happiness, and that happiness is what justifies any exercise of freedom. Jim Carrey’s line cuts to the heart of it — “I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it’s not the answer.” This week examines why the promise is broken, and what the gospel offers instead.
In-class Breakout Scenario
A friend says, “I just need to get out of this job / relationship / city. Once I’m free from these constraints, I can finally figure out who I am and be happy.”
Assignment
Pay attention to the happiness and freedom promises you encounter this week — ads, conversations, social media. Write down three examples. What do they promise? What do they leave out?
Truth and Progress are the two great promises of modernity. Science will tell us what’s true; progress will tell us where history is heading. Trust human knowledge, and everything will work out. This session enters through a vulnerable door — grief — because it is in suffering that the cold comfort of these narratives is most exposed. My personal account of Dad’s death anchors the whole session.
In-class Breakout Scenarios
Scenario A: “I can’t believe in God — I follow the evidence, and the evidence points away from religion.” / Scenario B: “I’ve lost someone I love. Don’t tell me it gets better. I need something real.”
Assignment
Find a moment of transcendence this week — beauty, music, a sunset, a human act of courage. Sit with it. Write down: “What does this moment make me want to be true about reality?”
Pure practice. The diagnostic questions. How to listen before you speak. How to transition without it feeling like a pitch. Full-length breakout scenarios. Christians who are so fluent in cultural narratives that they can recognize them in a conversation and ask the question that opens the door a little wider. This session is entirely practice-focused. No new content. The teaching segment is brief: a review of principles and a reminder of posture.
In-class Breakout Scenario
Participants bring real scenarios from their own lives — actual conversations they are in or want to have. Each group works one real scenario through the full Affirm → Critique → Redirect framework.
Every Christian has been in this conversation. A friend pushes back: “How can you believe in a God who lets children suffer?” A colleague says, “Science has moved past all that.” A family member says, “I just can’t be part of an institution with that history.” These are not niche questions. They are the three or four objections that stop almost every serious faith conversation — and most Christians have never been trained to handle them.
But there is a second layer of challenge that is just as important and less often addressed: the stories our culture tells about identity, freedom, happiness, power, and truth. These are not abstract philosophical positions. They are the water we swim in. They shape what people believe they deserve, what they’re afraid of, what they’re building their lives on — and why Christianity feels so implausible to people who have never examined those assumptions.
This cohort teaches you to do both.
Over six weeks, Michael Keller, senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church Lincoln Square in Manhattan and co-author of The Stories We Live By with Timothy Keller (Zondervan, September 2026), will give you a rigorous, practical framework for engaging faith conversations with confidence, curiosity, and conviction. Not by memorizing comebacks. Not by winning arguments. But by learning to listen so carefully that you can see exactly where someone’s worldview is reaching for something only the gospel can give.
What You’ll Learn to Do
- Address the three biggest intellectual objections to Christianity — suffering and evil, science and reason, church hypocrisy and harm — with logic, empathy, and genuine theological depth
- Read the cultural narratives shaping your conversations: Identity, Power, Morality, Happiness, Freedom, Truth, and Progress
- Use the Affirm → Critique → Redirect framework to enter any conversation, find common ground, expose where the story fails on its own terms, and redirect to the gospel as fulfillment — not replacement
- Diagnose where someone is in their journey (Dissatisfied / Indifferent / Cautiously Interested / Actively Seeking) and respond accordingly
- Turn everyday conversations into gospel opportunities without being awkward, manipulative, or preachy
Who This Is For
- Christians who want to be more confident and equipped in faith conversations
- Pastors and ministry leaders who preach or teach to post-Christian audiences
- Small group leaders who want to help their communities engage skeptical friends
- Anyone who has felt tongue-tied when someone pushes back on their faith
With your registration you’ll receive:
- Teaching from Michael Keller and opportunities to ask questions
- Small group breakout rooms to practice and discuss the teaching
- Practical guidance and feedback for turning everyday conversations into gospel opportunities
- The Stories We Live By by Michael Keller and Timothy Keller
- Making Sense of Us, a seven-week cultural narratives curriculum and videos from The Keller Center’s fellows
Are you on a church staff or considering this cohort as a group at a church? If so, we want you to check out this brief PDF with three ideas of how to use this cohort as a group and instructions for deep discounts.
We never want finances to hinder someone from participating. If you want to participate in this cohort and need financial assistance, please send us an email and tell us more about your circumstances (cohorts@thegospelcoalition.org).
* We are unable to offer refunds for The Keller Center cohorts
* Registration WITH books closes on October 12 and LATE Registration WITHOUT books closes on October 18.
* All sessions will be recorded and available for streaming or download at your leisure in perpetuity, so if you can’t make it live, the material is still readily available
* NOTE: we are unable to ship to those outside the United States but please use the coupon code “BOOKS15” for 15 percent off as our courtesy to international participants. You may also use coupon code “BOOKS15” if you DO NOT WANT the books for the cohort.
* If you have any questions pertaining to signing up for your cohort, group rates, elder/preaching team rates, or church rates email cohorts@thegospelcoalition.org
Modern apologetics is not primarily about winning arguments. It is about removing barriers — intellectual and emotional — that prevent people from genuinely considering Christianity. This session lays the foundation for the entire cohort by clarifying what apologetics is, what it is not, and why it matters in our particular cultural moment.
In-class Exercise Scenario
A friend says, “I can’t believe in a God who lets children suffer. If he’s real and good, he’s useless. If he’s powerful, he’s not good.”
Assignment
Identify one person in your life who holds one of these three defeater beliefs. Write down their objection in their own words. We will use real examples throughout the cohort. Also this week, ask one person “What do you think is the biggest problem facing us today?” — and just listen.
Before we can engage culture, we have to learn to read it. This session introduces the concept of cultural narratives — the stories a society tells about who we are, what we owe each other, and what a good life looks like. These narratives are not merely ideas; they shape imagination, form desire, and feel so obvious that they become invisible. The overview of all seven. The Identity narrative is introduced last, as the capstone illustration, because it is the most foundational: every other narrative flows from some answer to the question “Who am I?”
In-class Breakout Scenario
A colleague says, “I just need to figure out who I really am. Once I know that, I can stop caring what anyone else thinks.”
Assignment
Practice the Affirm → Critique → Redirect structure on Identity with one person this week — not to convert them, just to listen well and ask one good question.
Power and Morality are the most unstable narrative pair in contemporary culture — and the most revealing. Our culture simultaneously holds that morality is socially constructed (there is no universal right and wrong) and that injustice is a real moral outrage that demands accountability. These two convictions cannot coexist. This tension opens the most important apologetic conversation of our moment.
In-class Breakout Scenario
Scenario A: “Morality is just a social construct. Your Christian ethics are just one culture’s preferences.” / Scenario B: “The Church has caused so much harm. How can you be part of that institution?”
Assignment
Write down a situation where you felt moral outrage this week. Then ask: what does that outrage assume about reality? Write one sentence.
Freedom and Happiness together because they’re the two ambient, consumer narratives — felt more than argued. They are also deeply intertwined: we are told that freedom is the path to happiness, and that happiness is what justifies any exercise of freedom. Jim Carrey’s line cuts to the heart of it — “I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it’s not the answer.” This week examines why the promise is broken, and what the gospel offers instead.
In-class Breakout Scenario
A friend says, “I just need to get out of this job / relationship / city. Once I’m free from these constraints, I can finally figure out who I am and be happy.”
Assignment
Pay attention to the happiness and freedom promises you encounter this week — ads, conversations, social media. Write down three examples. What do they promise? What do they leave out?
Truth and Progress are the two great promises of modernity. Science will tell us what’s true; progress will tell us where history is heading. Trust human knowledge, and everything will work out. This session enters through a vulnerable door — grief — because it is in suffering that the cold comfort of these narratives is most exposed. My personal account of Dad’s death anchors the whole session.
In-class Breakout Scenarios
Scenario A: “I can’t believe in God — I follow the evidence, and the evidence points away from religion.” / Scenario B: “I’ve lost someone I love. Don’t tell me it gets better. I need something real.”
Assignment
Find a moment of transcendence this week — beauty, music, a sunset, a human act of courage. Sit with it. Write down: “What does this moment make me want to be true about reality?”
Pure practice. The diagnostic questions. How to listen before you speak. How to transition without it feeling like a pitch. Full-length breakout scenarios. Christians who are so fluent in cultural narratives that they can recognize them in a conversation and ask the question that opens the door a little wider. This session is entirely practice-focused. No new content. The teaching segment is brief: a review of principles and a reminder of posture.
In-class Breakout Scenario
Participants bring real scenarios from their own lives — actual conversations they are in or want to have. Each group works one real scenario through the full Affirm → Critique → Redirect framework.
6 Weekly Sessions
Mondays, October 19 – November 23, 2026
8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. ET
7 to 8:30 p.m. CT
5 to 6:30 p.m. PT
$299