Faith Story - Lee Strobel

When Lee Strobel was in the process of writing "The Case for Christ" he was interviewing a famous scholar. About halfway through the interview the scholar said, "By the way, nobody's going to read your book. Lee, we live in a postmodern world. People don't care about the historical evidence for Jesus anymore. They don't care. Nobody's going to read your book." Lee says that after this interview he was "bummed out." But he did not let this discouraging word stop him from completing the book that was on his heart and mind.

But the ironic thing is, when the book came out, and the biggest group of people who contacted him saying, "God used that book to bring me to faith in Christ," were 16- to 24-year-olds—the very people who supposedly don't care about this stuff.

When he shared this wonderful surprise, a another friend responded, "Of course, you wrote it as a story." Lee now proclaims that we Christians ought not to lose "the story" as a resource of witnessing for Christ. He is urging us to adapt story telling in sharing Christ. In his book, "Taking Everyday Risks to Talk with People about Jesus" Storbel says that through story and through relationships, we can deliver the Gospel not as a soliloquy but in dialogue and a conversation with groups." He says that people have become more relational, more story-driven. He reports that a famous youth leader used to go on college campuses and describe why to trust the Bible. And people would come to faith in droves. Then they stopped coming to faith in so many numbers, and he didn't know why. Now he uses the story approach. "You know," he says, "I was the son of the town drunk. This is how it affected my life and my relationship with [my dad]. This is what prompted me to seek spiritually. This is the evidence I found. This is how my life was changed. This is how I reconciled with my father." So now his witness for Christ is more effective.

Strobel says, "that's what my ministry is about. I tell my story: I was an atheist. I scoffed. My wife became a Christian." It prompted him to use his skills as an investigative reporter to research Jesus of Nazareth. Then he began to share the evidence he had found. He then concludes by sharing how he received Christ, the difference it's made in his life. It's his story. He found that people often are willing to engage on the level of story. See "The Unexpected Adventure: Taking Everyday Risks to Talk with People about Jesus" by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg, Zondervan, May 2009.

Strobel's book, "The Case for Christ" was shared with me by my young adult son, Philip, who is by vocation a project engineer. He and I have both found that Strobel's book has helped in sharing Christ with others.