page_title: Ravi Zacharias
section_title: Ministry
hierarchical_section_title: Ravi Zacharias / Career / Ministry
caption_attribution_description: English: Ravi Zacharias talks to pastor Joe Coffey at Christ Community Chapel about answering objections to Christianity.
context_page_description: Ravi Zacharias was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian apologist. Zacharias was the author of more than 30 books on Christianity, including the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God? in the category "theology and doctrine" as well as Christian bestsellers Light in the Shadow of Jihad and The Grand Weaver. Zacharias was the founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and host of the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking.
context_section_description: Zacharias spent the summer of 1971 in South Vietnam, where he evangelized US soldiers, as well as imprisoned Viet Cong members. After graduating from Ontario Bible College, he began an itinerant ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in Canada. In 1974 the C&MA sent him to Cambodia, where he preached only a short time before its fall to the Khmer Rouge. He was later ordained by the C&MA in 1980, and between 1980 and 1984, he taught at the C&MA-affiliated Alliance Theological Seminary, where he was a professor of evangelism.
  In 1983, Zacharias spoke in Amsterdam at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's first International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists. After Amsterdam, Zacharias spent the summer evangelizing in India, where he continued to see the need for apologetic ministry, both to lead people to Christ and to train Christian leaders. In August 1984, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was founded in Toronto, Canada, to pursue his calling as a "classical evangelist in the arena of the intellectually resistant." Today its headquarters are located in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia.
  In 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zacharias spoke in Moscow with students at the Lenin Military Academy as well as political leaders at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy. This was the first of many evangelism events in the political sphere. Future events included one in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1993, where he spoke to members of the judiciary on the importance of having a solid moral foundation.
  In 1990 he wrote his first book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism. In 1992, Zacharias spoke at his first Veritas Forum at Harvard University, and later that year was one of the keynote speakers at Urbana. Zacharias continued to be a frequent guest at these forums, both giving lectures and answering students in question and answer sessions at academic institutions including the University of Georgia, the University of Michigan, and Penn State.
  Zacharias attracted media attention when in 2004 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened its signature pulpit at the Salt Lake Tabernacle to him for a series of messages. Zacharias delivered a sermon on "Who Is the Truth? Defending Jesus Christ as The Way, The Truth and The Life" to some 7,000 lay-persons and scholars from both LDS and Protestant camps in an initiatory move towards open dialogue between the camps. Some evangelicals criticized Zacharias' decision not to use this opportunity to directly address the "deep and foundational" differences between the traditional Christian faith and that of the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He responded by asserting that Christians should not immediately condemn so-called "Mormonism's" theological differences but "graciously build one step at a time in communicating our faith with clarity and conviction". He said this is just as effective as showing someone the faults of their faith. The speaking engagement was nearly sabotaged by an allegation by event organizer Greg Johnson, president of Standing Together, that Zacharias had nothing to do with editing the book The Kingdom of the Cults and had only loaned his name to the latest edition. Johnson later apologized for his comment.
  Zacharias was a frequent keynote lecturer within the evangelical community at events including the Future of Truth conference in 2004, the National Religious Broadcasters' Convention and Exposition in 2005, the National Conference on Christian Apologetics in 2006. On successive nights in October 2007, he addressed first the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, then the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the topic of evil and suffering in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. Zacharias has represented the evangelical community at occasions such as the National Day of Prayer in Washington, D.C., the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations, and the African Union Prayer Breakfast in Maputo, Mozambique, and was named honorary chairman of the 2008 National Day of Prayer task for
caption: Ravi Zacharias talks to pastor Joe Coffey at Christ Community Chapel about answering objections to Christianity.
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