2007 National Conference on Christian Apologetics

This past weekend, I attended the National Conference on Christian Apologetics. This conference is an annual event that I have attended the past few years and is put on by my seminary. It was held on Friday night and all day Saturday. Here are some of my thoughts on the conference.

Overall, I would say the conference was excellent. I am kind of an intellectual nerd so I loved soaking everything up. As an apologetics junky, I found all the talks to be quite interesting and enlightening. On Friday night, I listened to Dr. Erwin Lutzer and Sean McDowell. Dr. Lutzer always does a great job speaking and I enjoyed his talk very much. I really wanted to hear Sean McDowell since I knew he would be addressing doing apologetics to teens. He did a great job and it was fascinating/scary to hear statistics about what young people believe these days. He did a great job presenting the material and kept the audiences interest at the same time. I left after he spoke because I wasn't feeling well. I have been sick for the past week and my head was killing me.

On Saturday, it was an entire day of hearing these speakers. The highlights for me were listening to Chuck Colson, Dinesh D'Souza, Gary Habermas, Mark Mittleberg, and Lee Strobel. Chuck Colson is a fascinating person who does an extremely good job of speaking. He is a throw-back to a different time period, even the way he dresses. I loved it and he hit the nail on the head on some current issues in the church and future of it. Dinesh D'Souza is another interesting speaker. He reminds me a little of Ravi Zacharias (no, not the Indian connection), but the way in which they both speak. I have heard him speak on cd and read some of his stuff, but his speech on atheism and it's attacks today was marvelous.

If you ever want to know a good case for the resurrection of Jesus, then you need to hear Gary Habermas speak on it (or buy one of his books). He is a very interesting speaker, but provides such a compelling case for the resurrection while using most of evidence provided by liberal scholars themselves! Finally, Mark Mittleberg and Lee Strobel are ministry partners and great speakers. Their talks on evangelism and the future of apologetics were interesting as much as challenging. This year was the second time I have heard these three speakers speak and they did an awesome job. In fact, my fiance and I went to hear Lee Strobel speak and met him the next morning at the same church.

Overall, the conference was a great success. The fact that I got in free made it that much more sweeter, but the information was so needed. About 4,000 people attended the conference, but so many more Christians need to hear these topics to prepare themselves for evangelism and the state of Christianity. We don't need to "preach another gospel" in order to reach a post-modern generation. Our gospel is true and powerful enough to speak for itself as long as we know how to handle it. I would encourage anyone to go out and read some of their books. You won't regret it!