Meet Lee Strobel

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 has been interviewed on numerous national TV programs, including ABC, Fox, PBS, and CNN.

Described in the Washington Post as "one of the evangelical community's most popular apologists," Lee shared the Christian Book of the Year award in 2005 for a curriculum he co-authored with Garry Poole about the movie The Passion of the Christ. He also won Gold Medallions for his books The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and the The Case for a Creator, all of which have been made into documentaries distributed by Lionsgate.

His latest books include The Case for the Real Jesus, The Unexpected Adventure (co-authored with Mark Mittelberg) and The Case for Christ Study Bible, which includes hundreds of notes and articles on why Christians believe what they believe. His first novel, a legal thriller called The Ambition, comes out in Spring, 2011.

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 became a Christian 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 to focus on writing.

Lee's other books include God's Outrageous Claims, The Case for Christmas, The Case for Easter, and Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage, which he wrote with his wife, Leslie.

For two seasons, Lee was executive producer and host of the weekly national TV program Faith Under Fire.

Lee also is co-author of the Becoming a Contagious Christian course, which has trained more than a million Christians on how to naturally and effectively talk with others about Jesus. 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 has 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.

Lee and Leslie have been married for 38 years and live in Colorado. Their daughter, Alison, is a novelist and co-author, with her husband Dan, of the children's book, That's Where God Is. Lee's son, Kyle, holds two master's degrees from the Talbot School of Theology and a PhD in theology from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. His first book was Metamorpha: Jesus as a Way of Life.