Erick Schenkel has served as executive director of Jesus Film Project® since 2012, bringing to this role a varied history of Christian service. After his graduation from Harvard College, Erick led a church-planting team that established a church and an elementary school in Arlington, Massachusetts. While leading this church, Erick earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Harvard in the Study of Religion; his dissertation was published by Harvard University Press as The Rich Man and the Kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Protestant Establishment. While in graduate school, Erick and his wife, Elizabeth, developed a desire to live and work in the Muslim world. The Schenkels moved to Muslim Central Asia in 1996, where Erick worked in the fields of education and economic development for 11 years. While in Central Asia, they also worked as church planters alongside "JESUS" film teams, starting a Bible school and directing a movement of nationally led churches. Erick then served for five years as strategy director for North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia for Campus Crusade for Christ®.

J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective, adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University, Christian case maker and author. J. Warner was a conscientious and vocal atheist through his undergraduate and graduate work in Design and Architecture (CSULB and UCLA); he always considered himself to be an “evidentialist”. His experience in law enforcement only served to strengthen his conviction that truth is tied directly to evidence. But at the age of thirty-five, J. Warner took a serious and expansive look at the evidence for the Christian Worldview and determined that Christianity was demonstrably true. After becoming a Christ follower in 1996, Jim continued to take an evidential approach to truth as he examined the Christian worldview. He eventually earned a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

J. Warner served as a Youth Pastor for several years, then planted a church in 2006. Along the way, he created and built the Cold-Case Christianity website, blog and podcast as a place to post and talk about what he discovered related to the evidence supporting Christianity. Jim has appeared on television and radio, explaining the role that evidence plays in the Christian definition of “faith” and defending the historicity of Jesus, the reliability of the Bible and the truth of the Christian worldview. Jim also speaks at churches, retreats and camps as he seeks to help people become confident Christian case makers.

While there are many threats to religious liberty, few are more consequential over the long term than the state’s ever-expanding role in private life. If the government is able to vacuum up tax dollars, create ...