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Tactics
Author: Gregory Koukl
Zondervan, 2009

Tactics by Gregory Koukl is an easy-to-read book for everyone who wants to become better at talking about their faith with non-Christians.

The book has two main parts. In the first section the author introduces a way of speaking to people that forces those who attack the Christian faith to explain what they believe. This is done mainly by asking good questions that leads the conversation in a certain direction. “The key is to go on the offensive in an inoffensive way by using carefully selected questions to productively advance the conversation. Simply put, never make a statement, at least at first, when a question will do the job,” writes Koukl. The Tactics author has long-term experience in Christian apologetics and he is the leader of the organization named Stand to Reason.

In part two of the book Koukl explains how Christians can find weaknesses in the arguments against The Christian faith. His starting point is clear. Everyone is created by God and lives in God’s creation. Those who do not believe in God will have to create explanations of reality that rules God out. This is often their week point.

Every person who rejects the truth of “the God who is there is caught between the way he says the world is and the way the world actually is,” states Koukl. He has found that most non-Christians are not able to explain what they believe when they are asked.

You may be surprised to know that most critics are not prepared to defend their faith. Many people have never thought through their views and don’t know why they hold them, writes Koukl.

We recommend Tactics for all Christians. It will help the readers to fulfill the calling the followers of Jesus have got in 1 Pet 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” It also helps the reader to see that the Christian faith is a logical faith.

Tactics is written in a way that engages the reader and it is full of practical, real-life examples. One of them is from the University of California in San Diego. Koukl had heard that the general attitude on campus was that Christians were stupid. He opened his talk to the students in this way:

– “I understand that many of you think that Christians are stupid. Well, many of them are. But many non Christians are stupid, too, so I don’t know how that helps you. What I want to do this evening is show you that Christianity is not stupid.”

“Culture eats strategy for lunch” is now a well-known expression of the importance of defining your organization’s culture and aligning it with organizational vision and strategy.(1) The need to align your values to get the culture that will give you the outcome you want is the underlying premise behind much of organizational development and change management today.

I stumbled upon the importance of this principle through personal experience as part of the leadership team running a business process outsourcing company in northwestern Pakistan. We wanted to run a successful international business and respect local culture while doing it, and ran smack into several cultural dynamics which made cross-cultural conflict inevitable.

Revenge is a cultural value in Northwest Pakistan. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is the respected rule and expected norm. In fact an old, old proverb immortalized as part of the Pashtun code of honor says that “a man is no Pashtun who doesn’t give a blow for a pinch”.(2) A man who doesn’t respond in kind when his honor is disgraced loses it, and the way to get it back is to take revenge.

So there we were, wanting to respect local culture but not wanting revenge to be part of our corporate culture. It’s not that I can’t see the reasons why revenge would be highly valued in the traditional, tribal society, but we knew it could be counterproductive to having the workplace environment we wanted for doing business internationally. Not only that, a heart of revenge can turn small unintentional mistakes into ongoing feuds that ruin the work environment for everyone. So we had to respond.

We didn’t launch a hot and holy anti-revenge campaign as an effort against something we didn’t want. Change efforts against something negative are never quite as compelling or appealing as efforts FOR something good. So instead we focused on what values we did want in our company to give us the results we wanted – a productive, harmonious workplace.

As we chose our company core values, among the usual values like integrity, quality, and service, we also chose GRACE. We defined grace as “giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt, even if they didn’t deserve it,” because we’ve also been (or will be) in need of some grace.

All company values need to be modeled from the top in order to be authentic, so as leaders we sought to model it. Grace doesn’t mean we forgave everything or didn’t have disciplinary processes; rather it means that we had intentional, moderate, and care-full policies and processes that didn’t burn people, even if we had to let them go. With grace as a value we were careful to design our policies and procedures in a way that would not throw our staff under the bus in our pursuit of profit. Rather, grace as a value helped our staff to be proud of the company and more eager to see it succeed for the benefit of all.

We asked our staff to show each other grace, and forgive each other when necessary. And they did most of the time. But because intended and unintended slights just happen in workplaces, and sometimes they had difficulty resolving disputes on their own, we needed to back up our values with processes for dispute resolution. Otherwise our value of grace would seem like so much worthless sentiment.

Now in all my research about core values, I have never found another for-profit company that used grace as a core value, but we did, and it worked. Our company had hard working people stay and prosper with us. We all prospered for a variety of good business reasons which unquestionably included having a nurturing company culture made possible by our value on grace.

I will forever be a “fan-boy” of strategically choosing company values to craft an effective company culture. I’m sold, convinced, persuaded. At our company in Pakistan, I don’t think that having a great business strategy would have helped us succeed if we had not given due attention to our company culture.