Lunch with Lee

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Journalist, atheist, lawyer, great mind who set out to disprove the faith and he found himself face to face with the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. He is Lee Strobel. And Lee, I can't believe you and I have been passing each other in traffic for years, but now I'm actually standing with you in North Carolina, man. Welcome to God's country.

Oh, thanks. I love North Carolina. It is such a pretty state. Great people. Really enjoy being here. Thank you for all your work to create an opportunity for pastors to talk about important stuff. How we can reach a new generation with God's message of hope and grace. For those of you who feel like you're eavesdropping, you are, because Lee and I are outside in the vestibule area.

The only quiet place we could find. There are pastors and leaders pouring in for this special pastors leaders event. We're calling it Lunch with Lee.

And who better to show up than Lee Strobel. He's got this amazing book, The Unexpected Adventure. I mean, all these things. The theme I hear about you is, you just are an evangelist at heart.

You just want to reach folks for Christ. Talk about that. Talk about what drives your engine. What is it behind everything?

What is it that keeps, gets Lee Strobel going? Well, people think I'm an apologist, which is a person who gives answers and reasons for the truth of the Christian faith. And that's true, but I use that in furtherance of evangelism. Just to do apologetics is kind of a mind game and winning, trying to win arguments.

I don't want to win arguments. I want to win people to Christ. And so I use reason, evidence, facts, data, stories, and so forth, true stories to try to open people's eyes to the truth of the Christian faith so that they'll put their trust in Christ. So yeah, I'm an evangelist.

That's what gets me excited. And I'm thrilled with how God has used my books. I was talking to someone last night and they said, boy, it must be exciting when people come to Faith Through Your Books. And I said, you know, I really honestly don't feel it because I didn't feel I did it. God did it. You know, I'm from Chicago in Wrigley Field where the Chicago Cubs play.

If you hit a pop-up, but if it's a windy day, the pop-up should have been caught, but the wind of the windy city takes it out for a home run. And that's how I feel with my books. I feel like I hit the ball. God called me to write a book. I wrote the book, but the Holy Spirit has taken it so much further than anything I ever could have done. So I just give God the glory.

I thank him for the ministry of leading people of faith. Well, that gives us a lot of background and context for this title, The Unexpected Adventure, taking everyday risks to talk with people about Jesus. And really we say risks. I mean, our Muslim friends overseas, our believers that are reaching them with the gospel in some cases are literally dying. There will be someone martyred today for their faith in Christ to reach someone in the 1040 window overseas.

So risk could be maybe a relative term, but what is going on there? Because, and I don't want to decry and bemoan and like we do with giving, so few believers give and hence we have all these missionaries begging for funds, which should be a no-brainer. We should be funding that, over-funding that, but so many people evangelize. I've heard scary numbers as low as, you know, five percent of Christians have led someone to Christ this year, yet we have this answer. We have the cure to this cancer of sin, but we're not sharing it.

Lee, talk about your burden there and how we can change that, how we can get the gospel out. Yeah, I think one of the keys is people think they have to be something they're not in order to share their faith. They think they need to be an evangelist like Billy Graham standing in front of a big crowd.

They think they got to stand on a street corner and pass out tracks or whatever. When the Bible has at least six different styles of evangelism and we're all different and they're different styles. There's a testimonial style, the blind man who said, I was blind and now I see, he just told his story. There's the intellectual style with Paul on Mars Hill dealing with the intellectuals of his day. There's a relational style. There's the style where people invite people to events and so forth, like the woman at the well in John chapter four. So there's at least half a dozen different styles. When people realize, oh wait a minute, I can be me and I can share my faith effectively?

Yes, you can. And that's one of the things we deal with in the Unexpected Adventure to help people see that you can be you and God can use you to reach people. Love that. So many people listening, so many pastors. What's your message to pastors? We're going to be hearing the whole meal deal here in a second, but give us maybe a snapshot of your message in mobilizing and encouraging pastors. Of course, pastors are burning out. You know, COVID brought all kinds of issues and here the pastor can't be the good, you know, he can't win. No mask.

What do you think? And you're putting me at risk. Put on a mask.

How dare you be so politically correct? I mean, what do you do? But you're going in there in front of a bunch of pastors here in a second. What's your message to them? Well, I want to help them. I want to give them a strategy to increase the evangelistic effectiveness of their church. And so we started a center at Colorado Christian University. We got 40 PhDs together, created 91 courses, all accredited, all online. And one of the things we stress is a six-stage process that if any church goes through the six-stage process, it will increase their evangelistic effectiveness.

And so I'm going to talk about that today. What are some things that we can do as leaders of the church to be more effective in reaching people? Because there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is currently in America, it takes 86 church members working one year to lead one person to faith.

I mean, that's a formula for disaster. But the good news is a recent study that just came out shows that 44% of American adults are more open to God today than they were before the pandemic. So we have an opportunity right now to reach our country and our nation and our world that we don't want to miss. We want to seize that opportunity.

Well, you've got all kinds of books, The Unexpected Avenger, obviously. You've got, you know, Case for Christ, Case for Faith, so many things. Where would people that are just getting to know Lee Strobel, and they haven't had lunch with Lee yet like we're about to hear, where would people go?

Or where would you send folks? Just to hear your story. I mean, you have a remarkable testimony. Like, when I do interviews like this, I don't just want to assume everyone knows you or knows who you are. There's been a movie made about you, brother. I mean, but how would you, how would people get to know you a little bit and hear your story as a way, because your story is a way, I have shared the gospel with all kinds of people, just inviting them to this lunch.

Yeah. Because like, well, who's Lee Strobel? Well, I'm glad you asked, and now I can get into the gospel with them. But how would you direct people? Where would you bring people to find out your story?

What's the best resource? Well, I think the book, The Case for Christ, that tells my story. It tells the evidence that I've found convincing that Christianity is true. And the feature film came out in 2017. They did a great job on that. I mean, I didn't do it. It was done by somebody else. But I was really pleased with how it came out. And that's available as well.

I think it's at PureFlix.com and some other place. You can find it on the internet. But I think that book, The Case for Christ, really tells my story. And every other book is kind of echoing that by looking at different aspects of the evidence. So, Case for Creator looks at the scientific evidence for God. Case for Grace looks at stories of life change, how God transforms lives.

Case for Faith looks at the top eight objections of Christianity and the answers that are clear and compelling. Is it true you connected with the folks at Betty Crocker and made a case for casserole? Is that true, a case for casserole? What do you think?

I like the idea. I'm writing that one down. Now, there's this rumor you're coming out with a case for COVID, but you have to be tested before you can read that book.

Is that true, Lee? Really, I tell you. It's been a joy. I'm working on a new book. I can't really say much about it right now.

It comes out on October 31st of this year. And I'm thrilled because it's a book designed to, I hope, encourage Christians—all my books are like this—encourage Christians to understand that our faith is well placed. And yet, a book you can give away to someone who's spiritually curious.

I want to hit both audiences because I want to reach people. I want to see people come to the Lord. So every person in that room before they leave is going to get a gospel track. And I'm going to say—they don't know this yet—I'm going to say, everyone give this to one person. That means 200 people are going to share the gospel with 200 other people. And maybe they'll read it themselves and get saved. Maybe not everyone here is a believer necessarily. But what's your challenge, since we're not able to hand that to our listeners listening to Truth Talk all over the country, all of our awesome affiliates, AFR, all the folks that are brave enough to carry this crazy program, or his radio friends, and Wilkins Radio, some of the Salem Network, Truth Network. What's your challenge about sharing the faith with one person before they go to bed tonight?

Here's an idea. And I've done this in multiple churches, and God has blessed it incredibly. Easter is coming up. What if your church got together—have a senior pastor tell them this idea—have your church get together about two months before Easter, or six weeks before Easter. And let's all agree to pray for one lost friend for one minute at one o'clock every day between then and Easter.

And one of the things to pray about is an opportunity to invite them to Easter services at the church, because we know that if a non-believer is going to come, it's going to be on Christmas or Easter. So I've seen God bless that. I've seen incredible results. And it's an easy thing to do. It's called the 111 Prayer Movement.

And I'll tell you a real quick story. There's this one woman. We gave people little business cards that said, 111, to remind them to pray in a line to write down the person who they're praying for. We said, don't show this the person you're praying for. But this young woman did. And she said, look at your name.

I'm praying for you. One person, one minute, one o'clock every day. I said, I love you, and I want you to know Jesus the way I do. And her friend said, yeah, okay, thanks. Within two weeks, that unsaved young woman was in the shower getting ready to go to work with the water cascading down. Holy Spirit seized her soul. She got on her knees and received Jesus as her Lord and Savior. And I tell you what, as a Baptist, I love this. It's a conversion of baptism at the same time. Shower's a blessing.

Yeah, there you go. Our God reigns. Lee Strobel, you're a blessing. And we're excited about your coming in to speak to us to bless us. Thanks for coming to North Carolina. And thanks for your blessing through print, through movies, through just being who you are and being someone to bring people to Christ. And we're honored to have you on. We'll have to have you on Truth Talk again, okay? I'd love to do it. God bless you and your listeners. This is the Truth Network.