New Face of Faith

Saddleback Valley Community Church has brought out the heavy artillery in its battle to reach the unchurched in Orange County: a nationally celebrated preacher who gave up his career as a big-city newspaperman and went from atheist to evangelist.

The Lake Forest church recruited Lee Strobel away from Illinois’ Willow Creek Community Church, the nation’s largest church and a leading institution in America’s blossoming megachurch movement.

Strobel, 48, delivered his first sermon at Saddleback two weekends ago in his native-Chicago dialect--”Why Does God Allow Suffering?”--to an enthusiastic crowd. Strobel’s preaching weaves together Scripture, personal anecdotes and references to popular culture, including takeoffs on David Letterman’s Top 10 list.

Church leaders say this charismatic journalist-turned-preacher has great street credibility with agnostics and skeptics who want to believe in God, but first want some proof.

“Lee brings a fresh understanding of the rationality of the Christian faith,” said Rick Warren, founding pastor of Saddleback, which, with more than 15,000 worshipers every weekend, calls itself California’s biggest church. “He didn’t make a decision to become a follower of Christ on tradition, habit or emotion or pressure.”

That credibility is a valuable commodity for churches that specialize in reaching out to “seekers,” people who have little history of worship but are looking for a faith, said Scott Thumma, a megachurch researcher at the Center for Social and Religious Research in Hartford, Conn.

“It’s pretty clear that when you get to the size of Saddleback, you’re dealing with a corporation,” Thumma said. “I’m sure he was wooed much as they would woo an executive from Microsoft to Apple.”

For the last year, Warren and Strobel have been talking about the switch. Although Saddleback is a Southern Baptist church and Willow Creek is nondenominational, the two megachurches follow very similar strategies.

“Lee is one of the most brilliant guys I’ve ever met,” said Warren, who gave his new colleague a copy of his book “The Purpose-Driven Church” inscribed with the words “Welcome to the team! It’s about time” when Strobel joined the staff in late February.

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Indeed, Strobel has carved out a niche in the evangelical world as a convert to Christianity, a potent example of the kind of transformation that churches like Saddleback strive to make every Sunday.

“The public presence of Willow Creek and his popularity there has given [Strobel] his own capital,” Thumma said. Megachurches in particular depend on the personality and reputation of their pastors to keep their large congregations coming back, he said.

Strobel’s experience as a journalist and his personal story of salvation are weaved together in his 1998 book, “The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus.”

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute in Rancho Santa Margarita, says the book put Strobel on the map as a defender of the faith.

“His faith is founded on fact,” Hanegraaff said. “He has an ability to communicate his findings in a language that doesn’t read like dry-as-dust theology but is engaging and exhilarating.”

The book is a recollection of Strobel’s journey in 1980 and 1981, when he crisscrossed the country looking for biblical scholars to interview about the veracity of the Bible and the life of Jesus Christ. His wife had just become a Christian and Strobel was spiritually adrift while Leslie grew in her faith and began to go to church every week.

At the time, Strobel was a legal affairs reporter at the Chicago Tribune, a position he achieved after working at smaller papers and eventually earning a master’s degree from Yale Law School.

After witnessing how his wife’s life was changed by her faith, he decided to use his investigative skills and legal background to investigate the Christian faith during his free time.

Armed with a reporter’s notebook and his professional skepticism, he started going to Willow Creek and firing questions at biblical scholars: Does archeology confirm or contradict the Gospels? Can the Gospels of Jesus be trusted?

Finally, on Nov. 8, 1981, he locked himself in his home office and spent the afternoon going over his findings. Strobel says he decided that day to dedicate his life to Christ.

After that, he became eager to leave the fast-paced, competitive atmosphere at the Chicago Tribune. In 1981 Strobel, his wife and their two children moved to Columbia, Mo., where he worked at a much smaller paper as managing editor. Missing city life, he and the family returned to Chicago in 1984 and Strobel became an assistant managing editor of the Daily Herald, a suburban paper.

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In 1987, he left journalism to take a full-time job as a pastor at Willow Creek.

Former colleagues say that Strobel wasn’t pushy about his newfound faith.

“He wasn’t the type to try to proselytize in the newsroom,” said Deborah Nelson, an investigative reporter at the Washington Post who worked with Strobel at the Daily Herald.

“It was a big loss to journalism,” said Nelson, who remembers Strobel as a dynamic and energizing editor. “He could have done whatever he wanted to do in newspapers, but he gave it up for his calling.”

Although never before a public speaker, Strobel developed at Willow Creek a gregarious style that combines references to popular culture with Scripture. He became well-known for a series of sermons speculating on what Jesus would say to such entertainment figures as Madonna, Bart Simpson and Murphy Brown.

Over the years at Willow Creek, Strobel’s passion to reach “seekers” drew attention. He wrote a book in 1993 called “Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary: How to Reach Friends and Family Who Avoid God and the Church.”

“I have a passion for helping people find God,” he said. “You can be obnoxious and chase people away. So many pastors come off as holier than thou.”

His former colleagues at Willow Creek say that he’ll be sorely missed.

“He was a little too [much] in demand here,” said Mark Mittelberg, executive vice president of the Willow Creek Assn., who worked with Strobel for 12 years. “This new job gives him a chance to start fresh and carve out more time for his writing.”

Strobel said it wasn’t an easy decision to leave Willow Creek, but he felt an instant connection with the Saddleback congregation when he was a guest lecturer here more than a year ago.

“He fell in love with our church and our church fell in love with him,” Warren said. “It caught us all by surprise.”

Similarities between the Willow Creek and Saddleback “seeker” congregations abound, said Strobel, who said his highest priority here will be reaching out to the unchurched through his sermons and books.

Strobel’s job description is also similar to Willow Creek’s, although here the church will build in more time for him to write. He’s working on a sequel to “The Case for Christ,” called “The Case for Faith” which tackles questions about suffering, doubt, miracles and evolution.

The biggest difference, Strobel said, has been Saddleback’s casual attire.

“I was told that socks are optional here,” said Strobel, who donned a casual shirt and Dockers for his debut sermon. “I’m not used to that. I’m from Chicago.”