Attendees arrive at the Lead Defend apologetics conference on Saturday, March 7.
Nearly 1,800 students, young adults and church leaders gathered Saturday, March 7, at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock to be encouraged and learn more about defending their faith at Lead Defend and Lead Defend: Foundations.
Lead Defend is geared toward college and high school students and young adults of Arkansas, while Foundations is aimed at students in grades 6-9. Both equip students in two primary areas: leadership and apologetics. Next Gen + Discipleship Strategist Bill Newton said those themes shape both the conference’s name and its focus.
“Lead is the leadership part, and defend is the apologetics part,” he said.
A Cooperative Program ministry of the Arkansas Baptists, the apologetics conference featured nationally known speakers including Greg Koukl, Dr. Walter R. Strickland II, Mark Mittelberg and Tom Richter.
Through main sessions and breakout discussions, the conference encouraged students to grow as Christian leaders while also preparing them to respond thoughtfully to questions about their faith.
“We want to invest in students and encourage them,” Newton said. “We talked about things like impacting your campus and how students can influence the places where they live and study.”
Newton said the apologetics emphasis is especially important in a culture where Christian beliefs are increasingly questioned.
“Culture is not as friendly to Christians as it used to be,” he said. “But it is willing to engage in ways it wasn’t years ago. So we want to equip students to engage culture and have a strong basis for their faith.”
Evalyn Dang and Jude Hawkins of the University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM) Baptist Collegiate Ministry (BCM) attended Lead Defend for the first time this year. Hawkins said he was looking forward to learning “a lot about apologetics” and hearing from Mittelberg, whose book “The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (with Answers)” had caught his interest.
Dang said she hoped the conference would help her share the gospel more confidently.
“As I grow in my faith and my relationship with Jesus, it’s about how I can share the gospel with lost people and with people who claim to know the Lord,” Dang said. “What is the best way I can convey that message and answer those hard questions? Sometimes it can feel nerve-racking, but hearing from speakers who have studied the Bible and have experience helps build that confidence.”
Immanuel Baptist Church student pastor Andy Doonan said equipping events like Lead Defend and Foundations “are pivotal for our students to be grounded in the gospel—how to respond to the world but also remember we are not against the world.”
The breakout sessions throughout the day allowed students to explore issues more directly connected to their experiences.
“One of the things I love about the breakouts is that we try to customize them for where students are,” Newton said.
Addy Ellenburg of Arkansas State University BCM, who served as a student mobilizer, attended Lead Defend for the fourth year and said those sessions are her favorite part of the conference.
“They don’t shy away from hard topics or things going on in the world that maybe Christians don’t want to talk about,” Ellenburg said. “They give real advice on how to handle things. … I’m able to take those things back to my campus and implement them.”
To identify breakout topics, organizers work with student pastors and campus ministry leaders across the state.
“We have a group of student pastors and BCM leaders who help us brainstorm topics and speakers,” Newton said. “Some of the breakouts we did this year probably wouldn’t have been on our radar, but they told us, ‘Hey, this is something our students are dealing with.’”
2027: Two Conferences
Because of the conference’s continued growth, Lead Defend and Foundations will both expand next year to two locations to accommodate more participants.
Organizers have discussed the possibility for several years as attendance steadily approached capacity.
“We’ve been talking about it for about three years,” Newton said. “Back in the fall, I got contacted and God just kind of opened the door for that to happen.”
Next year’s conferences will take place on consecutive weekends. Lead Defend Central is scheduled for March 6 in central Arkansas, while Lead Defend Northwest Arkansas will take place March 13 in Rogers.
Churches will be able to attend whichever event best fits their schedule or travel needs.
“A church in the Conway area might be closer to the Central Arkansas one,” Newton said. “But if that weekend doesn’t work for them, they’re welcome to go to Northwest Arkansas. And if students want to go to both, they can do that.”
Newton said the conference is part of a broader effort to equip the next generation of church leaders, pointing to a growing interest among younger people in spiritual conversations.
“A lot of the research is showing that among the younger generation there’s an uptick in spiritual involvement,” he said.
Lead Defend and Foundations both aim to help students step into those conversations with confidence.
“I think people want to engage those discussions but don’t always know how,” Newton said. “That’s a lot of what we try to do with Lead Defend.”