Mark Mittelberg is a best-selling author, international speaker, and leading strategist in evangelism and apologetics. His published materials include the new Contagious Faith book and training course, and The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (With Answers). Mark is the Executive Director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics (LSC), and he is a founding board member of Lee Strobel Ministries (LSM).
"Our faith is not just for ourselves, it’s not to be hoarded. It was meant to be shared with other people. To be infectious. Contagious."
-Mark Mittelberg
Contagious Faith
Contagious Faith Training Course (with streaming video)
Contagious Faith Training Course (with DVD)
Becoming a Contagious Church
Confident Faith
The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask
- One of three founding members of the Leadership Team of the Willow Creek Association (with president Jim Mellado), and served as Executive VP of the WCA for almost a decade (helping build it to over 10,000 member churches from over 100 denominations).
- Served as the head of evangelism for the Willow Creek Association, and founded/led the annual Contagious Evangelism Conference, which was attended by about 3,000 church leaders each year. He invited and hosted a number of world class evangelistic leaders, including: Franklin Graham, Luis Palau, E.V. Hill, Dr. Billy Kim, Tony Evans, Gordon MacDonald, Rick Warren, Joe Stowell, Erwin McManus, and even a Hollywood character-turned-Christian named Stephen Baldwin.
- Mark was the first Evangelism Director of Willow Creek Community Church, and on his first day was told they had hired an associate director to help him - Lee Strobel. They had never met, but became instant best friends. Mark mentored Lee in theology for the first couple of years, and Lee mentored Mark in writing and communications. They've been in ministry together for over 35 years now and, as Lee puts it, they're "joined at the brain."
- Lee Strobel and Mark have co-authored several books and curricula together, including The Unexpected Adventure, Making Your Case for Christ, and The Case for Christ Daily Moment of Truth.
- Lee Strobel and Mark architected and led a number of groundbreaking outreach events, including the famous debate on atheism versus Christianity featuring William Lane Craig, which Craig would later describe as "the watershed event of his ministry." The event attracted 7778 attendees and gridlocked the traffic for miles around Willow Creek Church. They also led a Sunday evening event on the resurrection of Jesus with special guest Dr. Gary Habermas, which drew 5024 attendees, and they innovated an evening event on "Darwin on Trial" with author Phillip Johnson, which drew more than 4300 attendees and landed in the news all over Chicagoland.
- Strobel and Mittelberg have hosted (often together, and sometimes separately) some 25-30 national simulcasts to thousands of churches, teaching on a variety of topics related to evangelism and apologetics, and reaching hundreds of thousands of viewers.
- Mark and Lee led/taught the White House Bible Study in Washington D.C. (invited by the C.S. Lewis Society).
- Mark was executive editor of the WCA News newsletter for many years.
- He was the director of The Institute at Cherry Hills on evangelism and apologetics, in the Denver area.
- He helped shape, plan, and teach for the "Year of Evangelism" at Colorado Christian University in Denver (with Lee Strobel and CCU President, Dr. William Armstrong).
- He has often served as teaching faculty for Biola University apologetics events and classes.
- Serves as the main evangelism trainer for the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association.
- Mark has written, coauthored, or contributed to more than 20 books and curricula (with 3 million pieces sold), including several international bestsellers.
- Mark is the author of the new Contagious Faith book and training course, released by Zondervan in 2021. Prior to this he was the primary author of the Becoming a Contagious Christian training course, which was translated into 20 languages and used to train 2 million people around the world.
- Earned a Master's degree in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
- Formed a partnership with InterVarsity, which adopted the Becoming a Contagious Christian course to be their official training course for several years, and had Mark come to several national events to train all of their top leaders in relational evangelism.
- Taught evangelism and apologetics around the world—including England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
- Served on advisory committee of the Billy Graham Association in Wheaton, IL.
- Helped shape and lead the Billy Graham Advanced School of Evangelism at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton in the early 2000's.
- Mark is happily married to Heidi, and they are the parents of two godly college graduates—Emma Jean and Matthew (both of whom are serving in a variety of ministry roles).