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Retracing his journey to faith, Lee's book, The Case for Christ, became an instant classic of Christian apologetics. In his follow-up, The Case for Faith, Lee tackles more of the tricky questions that give seekers pause. Lee sat down with FamilyChristian.com to discuss his passion and purpose for evangelism.

FamilyChristian.com: Your testimony is a very important starting point for your writing. Tell me about how you came to Christ.

Lee Strobel: I was an atheist for most of my life. I rejected the idea of God at a young age because I thought that evolution explained where life came from and you didn't need God anymore. He was out of a job. And I had a lot of moral issues in my life that made me not want there to be a God. In other words, I didn't want to be held accountable by anybody or anything. I became firmly entrenched in atheism as a teenager and married a woman who had virtually no church experience or church background. She was agnostic. A Christian woman became friends with her and helped lead her to Christ. It was really the positive changes in her character and values that encouraged me to begin investigating myself, which I did for almost two years.

FamilyChristian.com: And what did you think? Were you happy with the changes or were you trying to prove her wrong?

Lee: I was very skeptical when she told me she had become a Christian. I thought this was the worst possible thing that could ever happen. I thought she was going to turn into a sexually repressed prude who was going to spend all of her time in Skid Row at some soup kitchen serving the poor. I thought it was going to be the end of our marriage. And it almost was in the sense that we had a very rocky time. But the positive changes in her were intriguing and winsome. So when she did invite me to go to church on January 20, 1980, part of my motivation was to see if I could get her out of this cult. But my main motivation was to see what it was that was influencing her life the way it was. The positive changes in her were really what attracted me to begin the investigation.

FamilyChristian.com: And that was a two year process?

Lee: Right. I was going to Willow Creek Church off and on during that process and talking to experts and reading books and studying archeology and ancient history and checking out other world religions as well. It was a fascinating process because I had no idea when I went into it that there was any evidence whatsoever. I thought that evidence and faith were mutually exclusive, or opposites. What I found out was that real faith is a step we take in the same direction that the evidence points.

FamilyChristian.com: What was the clincher for you?

Lee: I don't know if there's any one single fact that did it. It was accumulation of almost two years of studying the evidence. I think if there is any one bit of evidence that stands out among the others, it's the changed lives of the disciples. For instance, James was not a disciple during the life of his half-brother, Jesus. There is no motivation for putting that in the Bible if it wasn't true since it would be humiliating for a rabbi not to have his own family supporting him. And we know from Josephus that James was later put to death as a leader of the church. So what happened? How do you explain this guy who changed from a skeptic to a follower of Christ and church leader? The only thing I can imagine is 1 Corinthians 15, where it says that the resurrected Jesus appeared to James. And then you have the change in the disciples from cowardly individuals who were fearful for their own lives after the crucifixion to individuals who boldly proclaimed to the point of death their conviction that Jesus is the Son of God, who proved it by rising from the dead. That to me is a very powerful bit of evidence. They didn't just believe Christianity was true. They knew for a fact that it was true because they personally encountered the resurrected Christ. Knowing the truth, knowing those facts, they were willing to die for it.

FamilyChristian.com: You were already writing for the Chicago Tribune when you became a Christian. When did you start to write books?

Lee: Before I was a Christian, I wrote a book called Reckless Homicide. I was legal editor of the Tribune. It was about the Ford Pinto trial of Ford Motor Company. I did that book and then I didn't write for a long time. I left the Tribune right after I became a Christian, the end of '81, and I didn't write anything for many years. I became a newspaper editor. I enjoyed editing other people's work and I learned a lot about writing from editing other people's work. My first Christian book was Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary. I think that was '93 or something. I loved doing that book. Zondervan was so great because I had a very narrow vision for that book and they really opened my eyes in broadening it and I'm very grateful for that. I found that I really had missed writing and personally, would rather do that than anything else. I'd rather do that than speak. I'm not someone who needs to stand up in front of people and speak. I enjoy the whole process of working with publishers, of working with booksellers, of getting life-changing resources, into the hands of Christians and non-believers.

FamilyChristian.com: Most writers are also readers. What books have influenced your life?

Lee: C. S. Lewis. I think his stuff is accessible and profound at the same time.

FamilyChristian.com: What's your favorite C. S. Lewis book?

Lee: Mere Christianity because I read that when I was a seeker and that had a huge influence on me. But I like everything he's written. These days I try to read a variety of things. I try to read a lot of secular work. I read fiction. I read non-fiction. I read magazines, periodicals, a lot of Christian books. A lot of my friends are Christian writers so I always read their stuff.

FamilyChristian.com: How has your background equipped you for this new ministry that you have, not only writing and evangelism but pastoring at the church as well?

Lee: I'm an evangelist at heart. That grows out of having lived a life of atheism and knowing the despair and ugliness of that existence. I want to see people meet and have their lives changed by Christ. However I can do that, I want to do it. Whatever mechanism I can use to get the message out, I want to try to do. The books have been fun because they use my journalism training—research, interviews, writing—as well as my atheistic background by letting me know what kind of questions to ask. Then I try to get into the mind of the nonbeliever and ask the kind of questions that he or she has and help his or her to come to a conclusion about the reality of Jesus.

FamilyChristian.com: As a pastor, how do you get your church excited about evangelism?

Lee: It's a constant process. Mark Mittleberg has written a wonderful book called Building a Contagious Church. Mark is my best buddy. I think implementing that book is hugely important for any church to maintain an evangelistic edge. Since that book grows out of the experiences that Mark and I had together in evangelism at Willow Creek, it's a common pool of experiences that we had. Those are the principles I've tried to implement wherever I go in terms of helping leaders hone and model the value that lost people matter to God. Then instill that value into the congregation. Then equip and train 100% of the people in the church to share their faith in their own style. [I also want to help] churches create safe places where nonbelievers can come to hear a very dangerous, life-changing message. Whether that's a seeker service, a periodic event, a worship service that's sensitive to nonbelievers—there's a variety of ways that churches do it—but hopefully churches are thinking through, "How can we create an environment where a skeptic can come and investigate Christianity at their own pace and get answers that will satisfy their heart and soul?"

FamilyChristian.com: What advice would you give someone whose spouse or parent doesn't share their faith?

Lee: It's a hard thing, especially with family members. Often, the person to lead a family member to Christ is someone else. We can be an influence along the road and hopefully a link in the chain that will eventually lead them to Christ, but I think we have to think that way. We've not just been called to be a last link in the chain. We've been called to love God and be faithful, to share our faith as we can and whenever we have the opportunity, to pray for people and be available to God for His use. And if we do that, we're going to be influencing people in ways that we don't even know. And we won't know until heaven the number of people who have been influenced by the way we've lived our lives or words that we've said and so forth.

FamilyChristian.com: It's very easy for Christians to seclude themselves in the church. How do you guard against becoming too much like the world while still being culturally relevant to the people that are seeking?

The Case For Faith by Lee Strobel

Lee: I think God's called us to go into the world, to not be corrupted by the world, but to be salt and light in the world. One of the things about salt and light is they and touch whatever it is that they're going to influence. Light has to touch something to illuminate it. Salt has to touch something to make it savory.

There is a line we walk not to be corrupted by the world and yet to be people who reach out to others and share our faith and live in a way that points people toward Christ. I think whenever I'm in a relationship and the balance of the relationship begins to tilt away from God, where I'm starting to get pulled in the other direction, that's when I back off. I want to kind of regroup and make sure that I'm not lured or pulled into ungodly behavior. But I want to maintain my relationships with nonbelievers and build new ones and be a safe person that they can talk to about spiritual issues. I find that very exciting.

You never know who you're going to get into a conversation with. Because I like to put resources into people's hands, one of the things that I try to do is have copies of my book with me when I travel or have in my house, ready to put that in the hand of someone who has a question. I was taking my friend Mark Mittleberg, who I mentioned earlier, to the airport the other day and the last thing he put in his carry-on was a copy of The Case for Christ. I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "My goal is to give it away." And sure enough, he e-mailed me from Europe and he said, "I sat next to a high-ranking Pakistani military official. He was a Muslim and we got into a spiritual conversation and I was able to give him a copy of The Case for Christ." I think when we ask God to bring people into our lives and to give us an opportunity to influence them, He will open up those opportunities. And we have to have the courage to take advantage of them. As Paul said, to make the most of every opportunity when dealing with outsiders

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