Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel, the former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times best-selling author of more than twenty books and served as host of a national network TV program that featured debates on topics of faith.
Described in the Washington Post as “one of the evangelical community’s most popular apologists,” Lee won Gold Medallions for his books The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith and The Case for a Creator. He shared the Christian Book of the Year award in 2005 for a curriculum he co-authored with Garry Poole.
Lee was educated at the University of Missouri (Bachelor of Journalism degree, 1974) and Yale Law School (Master of Studies in Law degree, 1979). He was a professional journalist for 14 years at The Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ top honors for investigative reporting (which he shared with a team he led) and public service journalism from United Press International.
After a nearly two-year investigation of the evidence for Jesus, Lee received Christ as his Lord and Savior in 1981. He joined the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, in 1987, and later became a teaching pastor there. He joined Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, CA, as a teaching pastor in 2000. He left Saddleback’s staff in mid-2002 to focus on writing.
Lee has been interviewed on numerous national TV networks, including ABC, Fox, PBS and CNN. For two seasons, he was executive producer and host of the weekly television program Faith Under Fire.
Lee also is co-author of the ‘Becoming a Contagious Christian’ course, which has trained more than a million Christians in evangelism, and his articles have been published in a variety of magazines, including Discipleship Journal, Marriage Partnership, The Christian Research Journal, and Decision. He has appeared on such national radio programs as The Bible Answer Man and Focus on the Family. In addition, he taught First Amendment law at Roosevelt University.
In recognition of his extensive research for his books, Southern Evangelical Seminary honored Lee with the conferring of a Doctor of Divinity degree in 2007.