Life Defenders 1/2 Day Boot Camp: Basic Training for Your Mind!
(8th-12th Grade Students)

You’re a Christian student at a secular university campus. The school newspaper reporter puts a mic to your face and says, “Why aren't you pro-choice?” Can you defend your pro-life views in one-minute or less? Can you do it with arguments non-Christians will accept? You bet, provided you're equipped to engage on hostile turf.

Your students will leave the boot camp equipped to:

 Make a persuasive case for life
 Do it in a winsome manner
 Handle common objections with grace and truth
 Apply biblical principles to pro-life issues

Why This Training is Needed:

First, our students need a good dose of confidence! It's not enough for Christian students to hear, "The Church is pro-life, you should be too." That won't cut it when they leave for the secular university. Even among Christian teens that identify as pro-life, few are able to articulate their pro-life positions with confidence or clarity. Students need good reasons for believing the pro-life view before they'll take heat defending it. That's precisely why our pro-life apologetics training focuses on the ideas that make abortion plausible to millions of students in the first place. In short, it’s one thing to be gracious ambassador for Christ. It’s quite another to be a “nice” guy or gal who never stands up for truth because you fear what people think.

Second, our students need equipping to engage the culture. Strange though it may seem, many Christian high school students never hear a pro-life apologetics presentation during their high school years. Informal surveys conducted by Life Training Institute at Summit Ministries – a student worldview conference--indicate almost no students hear pro-life talks at their churches or high schools. Staff conducted these surveys for three consecutive summers and the results are consistent and staggering. Out of 2,000 students present at Summit's summer conferences, roughly 36 students have heard a pro-life apologetics presentation at either church or school before attending Summit.

Let that sink in: 36 out of 2,000!

Third, without training, our students remain vulnerable targets for the abortion industry. Many evangelical students reject or remain indifferent to the pro-life view because they never hear a compelling case for life presented at their church or Christian school. Without effective training, we will continue losing our students to a persuasive, anti-life ethic. If we want pro-life students to defend their beliefs on hostile turf, such as the university campus, we must equip them to think clearly under fire.

Schedule & Topics:

9:00 a.m.--Meet/greet

9:15-9:55 Session #1: Pro-Choice Atheist Encounter (role play) / debrief, Q&A
9: 55-10:00 restroom break
10:00-10:50 Session #2: Making the Case for Life on Hostile Turf
10:50-11:00 snack break
11:05-12:00 Session #3: Five Bad Ways People Argue About Abortion
12:00-12:40 Lunch
12:45-12:55 Review of what we've learned so far / Q&A
1:00-1:45 Session #4: The Case Against Moral Relativism
1:45-1:50 Break
1:50-2:30 Session #5: Tactics: Handling Objections with Grace and Truth / Q&A
2:30 Dismiss