The Story Behind Belief Types
Your Christian faith story is one of a kind. But the pathway God used to reach you? One or more of seven. I'm Dr. Shawn Nelson, and Belief Types is what I built to help you discover yours.
The Question
As I was nearing the end of my doctoral program, I needed to decide on a project that no one had ever done before. So I pitched three ideas to my academic advisor.
One clearly stood out: developing an assessment to determine which apologetic methodology was most effective.
Why this topic? Because brilliant scholars defending Christianity were disagreeing fiercely with each other over which approach was correct.
I began to wonder...
You know, ordinary Christians who don't know academic jargon. How would they say they came to believe?
As someone in software, I thought I could build an online assessment to find out.
The Problem
This led to my 2020 doctoral project: the first-ever Christian apologetics assessment. 1,000+ believers completed it. I was helping them discover something about their faith while uncovering valuable patterns for apologetics.
The problem was the assessment results relied on academic terms most Christians weren't familiar with, like "evidentialism" and "Reformed epistemology." So what good did it do to tell people their top apologetic was Reformed Epistemology!?
I knew my assessment had potential to help people. But the results were cryptic, forever shrouded behind academic speak.
So I went back to the drawing board for 5 more years, refining everything. The result is Belief Types. It wasn't easy. I'd rather be surfing most of the time. But I'm glad I did.
While the Belief Type labels are new, the traditions themselves were already there, embedded in 28 apologetic methodologies developed by serious Christian thinkers over centuries. After studying all of them, the same seven patterns kept emerging. Six even pair naturally into three groups that map to your head, your heart, and your hands. What's new is that the traditions have finally been brought together into a single model any Christian can find themselves in, even those who've never heard the word "apologetics."
The Mission
Your Tour Guide
Have you ever taken a tour of an area you thought you knew well? My wife and I took one of San Diego after living there our entire lives. There we were on the double-decker bus with all the tourists!
As we drove through familiar streets, the tour guide shared details we had never heard before. By the end, we looked at each other, stunned: "Wow, I can't believe we never knew all that!"
The map we'll use? The Belief Type model, showing all the ways people come to faith. My goal is to help you pinpoint where God has been at work in your life.
Three things will change when you know your type.
Find Your Story
Most believers know when they came to faith. Few understand why it happened the way it did, or what God was working through behind the scenes. Seeing that clearly changes how you read your entire spiritual journey.
Focus Your Witness
Knowing your type shows you how to share faith naturally. Knowing the other six helps you recognize how God might already be working in the person in front of you, and how to meet them right there.
Fuel Your Faith
Your faith doesn’t grow by accident. Pick an area you want to strengthen, and we’ll walk you through it, with Scripture, real practices, and a growth plan built around how God wired you.
Start Your Journey
Among the 8 billion people living on the planet today, nobody has walked the exact same path as you.
But here's the plot twist: while your story is unique to you, the way you came to faith isn't.
It turns out that God uses common pathways to bring people to belief. Seven to be exact. These pathways are called Belief Types.