If you're pondering preparations for objections to animal ministries, that I can help you with. I don't claim to have heard them all, since variants arise daily, but certain themes recur.
 
So, in the spirit of knowing "the enemy" - with the Christian purpose of making the enemy into a friend - here are some objections you can expect to hear.
 
Ahem........ to begin...........
 
"People are more important than animals."
 
"Why waste money on animals when people need it more?"
 
"Most people who care about animals are just neurotics or nut-cases who hate people." [Hey, I get this one from clergy - it's more common than you'd think.]
 
"Animal-rights people are just self-righteous elitists who hate people and are killjoys."  More bluntly put, animal advocates are crazy old ladies in tennis shoes who hate people. [Why are they never crazy old men? .... More on that gender thing in a minute.]
 
"You animal rights people are hypocrites because you benefit from animal suffering by [fill in the blank...clothing, employment, medical advances, etc.].
 
Animal industries provide employment and benefits for people who would otherwise be unemployed, impoverished, and lacking. You must hate [fill in the blank - industry, employment, people who work hard, people who need to feed their families, free enterprise, capitalism...etc.]
 
Better people eat animals than go hungry. Look at those cute Heifer Posters. 
 
"God gave us dominion over them so we can do what we want to them."
 
Noah butchered all those animals and God "smelled a sweet savor", so God likes meat."
 
In the Bible, they're always slaughtering lambs, killing fatted calves, and eating animals and God doesn't care.
 
"When God lowered that blanket full of animals down before people in the Book of Acts, He said to him "Here, Peter, kill and eat."  So God wants us to enjoy meat. He says so.
 
"Jesus ate fish, at least, and Sedar is a lamb dinner - so Jesus ate meat and He never said we can't."
 
Sure I love animals...they're delicious! [Last heard that one from a deacon candidate.]
 
So do you like rats and sharks and vermin?
 
Animals do not have souls so we are superior to them. They have no personality or mentality; they are just machines. The Bible says so. 
 
There are no animals in heaven.
 
Animal ministry is just a mask for New Age Paganism or Nature Worship. Animal advocacy is anti-Christian.
 
Vegetarianism is a cult - Hindu people are vegetarian so, thus, it must be wrong for Christians.
 
Animal advocacy is a heresy. Vegetarianism is a heresy.
 
We have a pet blessing. That's enough as it is.
 
Animals don't pledge.
 
I have a God-given right to eat meat; you have no right to impose your dietary fascism on me!
 
If you animal advocates had your way, the life of an animal would be the same as a human. Pretty soon we'd have, you know, people marrying their dogs or something gross like that.
 
It's a slippery slope - first, we'll just be animal friendly and then before you know it, we'll be baptizing pets, having funerals for shelter euthanasia's and boxes of McNuggets, and giving last rites to sick kittens...and then banning meat from church dinners.
 
Animal advocacy is just a lot of stupid "Bambi Syndrome" sentimentality. It's childish, effeminate, and silly, people who never got over Bambi's mother getting shot.
 
[PS. If you never read Felix Salten's BAMBI, read it. It's very powerful and saturated with Jewish mysticism. Walt Disney changed the book dramatically and, regrettably, his movie is the only real exposure most Americans have to the novel.  Another great book on deer in our culture is Matt Cantwell's VIEW TO A KILL IN THE MORNING.]
 
Anti-hunting is just another plot to feminize/castrate men
 
Real men hunt.
 
Real men eat meat.
 
If we did not hunt and kill animals, they'd die slow deaths from starvation which is much more painful - and you guys are supposed to be opposed to animal suffering, right?
 
We have to kill animals to preserve the balance of nature.
 
We're top of the food chain - God says so.
 
Hunting and killing is part of our primal animal instinct [you know, that animal instinct that animals have that makes them inferior to us rational human types.]
 
Hunting is what men do ... hunting is manly, macho, liberating. Women [except for Sarah Palin] do not understand such things [warned you I would get to gender issues].
 
People who oppose hunting oppose second amendment rights.
 
Hunting makes a man out of a boy - it's a rite of passage, of manhood [I kill, therefore, I am].
 
All these animals were raised for food so we might as well kill them anyhow.
 
We are making great strides in humane slaughter [like surgical airstrikes]; the methods of dispatching an animal are so fast that "they don't feel a thing."
 
Hey, I might as well eat that hamburger - the cow's already dead.
 
A healthy diet requires meat.
 
I have to eat meat for the protein.
 
Okay, I think it's important to protect dogs and cats from abuse. They're pets. But not "consumables" like cows and pigs and chickens. That's what they're for. Besides, they're dirty. And I sure don't want to protect "icky" animals like snakes and rats and other "Vermin".
 
Meat is part of my heritage - look at that Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting - why should I give that up? Dang it, meat tastes good!!
 
Maybe a middle-class white elitist like you can afford a meatless diet, but I can't!
 
Vegetarianism is a new "Legalism", enslavement under a made-up law. Saint Paul said "No food fights in Church."  [He also said that rule about not seething a calf in his mother's milk is not about cows, but people - see, damn it, the Gospel doesn't give a poo about animals!]
 
"We gotta eat something!" [A direct quote from Bishop Shelby Spong when I asked him about vegetarianism as Christian response to suffering - and, no, that comment does not convey half the derisiveness or dismissiveness of his tone. I hope he's changed his mind since.] 
 
You animal rights people are such a bunch of self-righteous holier-than-thou judgmental killjoy fanatics!  You're an embarrassment!
 
Who'd want to join a church that's animal friendly?
 
C'mon. There are more important things to care about. With all the human suffering....
 
Jesus never did anything for animals except send all those demons into the pigs and then drive the pigs into the sea where they died. So...see...Jesus kills animals, too. He doesn't care about animals.
 
Animals? Who cares about them?
 
Okay, this is getting a little toxic so I'm going to quit here. But, anyways, such comments as above are typical of the kind of comments you get from people who oppose animal advocacy - or thoughts they won't share with you but discuss with like minded friends. It is a hard soil to till.
 
But this list might help folks not only "anticipate where the objections arise" - because they come from sophisticated bishops no less than garage mechanics - but what they might say. Carol J Adams also has a great book, "Living with Carnivores" something like that, because you will be asked and you will be challenged...and you ARE pissing people off [pardon the urological language].

...just like the prophets who came before you.