Director of Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement uses past tragedy to help students answer difficult faith questions
For Liberty University alumnus Dr. Kevin Richard (’08, ’12, ’19), Lynchburg has always been home. And Liberty has always played an important role in his education; he went from preschool to Ph.D. through Liberty and its related ministries.
Now, as the new executive director of the Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement at the John W. Rawlings School of Divinity and an associate professor of theology and apologetics, Richard is the educator himself, using his own experiences to pour into the lives of Liberty students and help them answer some of life’s toughest questions through a biblical lens.
Richard played defensive end for five years on Liberty’s football team.
Richard attended Liberty Christian Academy from preschool to high school. He earned a B.S. in Biblical Studies, Master of Divinity in Theology, and Ph.D. in Apologetics from Liberty and played defensive end for Flames Football for five years. He even remembers performing on the Convocation stage in 1999 as an eighth grader with his Christian cover band, Ransom.
After finishing his Ph.D. in 2019, Richard moved to Norfolk, Va., with his wife, Nicole, to join a church plant and help the church start a coffee shop called Coalescence Coffee Company. By 2022, they had two children and were expecting their third — make that third and fourth. At a regular checkup, they were shocked to hear they were having twins. Their excitement was tempered slightly when one twin was measuring smaller and doctors were unsure if he would survive. In April 2023, Nicole went into labor and delivered the twins at 35 weeks into the pregnancy, but she immediately went into cardiac arrest as a result of an amniotic fluid embolism and tragically passed away, leaving Richard to care for their four sons, including newborns Merik and Kieran. Merik, the smaller twin, defied the odds and although he has had multiple surgeries, he is living life as a normal toddler. Richard moved back to Lynchburg later that year to be closer to family.
Kevin and Nicole Richard with their two older sons, Soren and Findley
In February, a few months after being hired as director, Richard shared his family’s story in Convocation, encouraging Liberty students to trust God in both the peaks and valleys of life. He spoke openly of the intense doubt he faced in the weeks and months following Nicole’s death.
“It’s not like I hadn’t thought those thoughts (of doubt) before or wrestled through those ideas,” he told the students. “I was an apologist at this point. We spend our lives thinking about this. There was something different in that moment where the doubt was palpable. I could just feel it in a way I had never experienced before. If I’m being honest with you, it was terrifying. What do you do in that moment?”
Richard shared three factors that helped him overcome the doubt and strengthen his faith in God’s goodness, starting with the hope of Christ’s resurrection.
“In that moment I was so thankful for the training I received at Liberty University and for the seminars that I had taken with Dr. Gary Habermas where we spent hours poring over the arguments for the resurrection and realizing we had good reasons to believe it was true,” he said. “In those moments of doubt, that’s what I turned to.”
The Richard boys, Soren, Kieran, Merik, and Findley
Richard said the love he received from family and friends aided in his spiritual recovery. From bringing food to merely taking the time to talk with him, people continued to support him in his grief.
Third, he said he found comfort in God’s steadfast love for His children, demonstrated best in Christ’s resurrection and consequential defeat over death.
“We won’t always think the right things, think the perfect thoughts, or have the right response to emotions,” he said. “We will experience doubt. It’s not something we should hide from or be embarrassed about, but we should confront head on. Speak truth to that doubt. Think about the resurrection. Think about the goodness of God. Wherever you may find yourself today, remember that God has good plans for you.”
Richard said he accepted the position at Liberty so he could help prepare students for their own seasons of doubt. He said especially in light of all the competing worldviews one will encounter in today’s culture, he wants to guide students to the truth.
“Life’s hard, and there are things we have to navigate as human beings that can test our faith,” he said in an interview this past spring. “I see it as a valuable time to provide resources to students while they are here so they can answer those questions they either experience themselves or get asked by others going through something similar.”
The Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement hosted the annual Every Square Inch Conference in January. This year’s event tackled multiple topics like the role of technology and artificial intelligence in evangelism, the American cultural shift from Christianity to secularism, and the significance of Christianity in establishing cultural stability.
Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement
The Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement, located on the second floor of the Freedom Tower, teaches students how to defend the Christian faith in a rapidly changing culture and address controversial issues in society from a Gospel framework with courage and grace. The center hosts conferences and lecture series throughout the year and publishes the annual “Faith and the Academy Journal.” The August 2025 issue focuses on the resurrection.
Professors from different disciplines across the university serve as senior fellows at the center, and students can join the Student Fellowship program, where they meet to learn about cultural engagement from the senior fellows, read prevalent literature on contemporary culture, and have opportunities to do research and assist in running center events.
“The center is open to any student who wants to come and talk with somebody, whether that is a student fellow or myself,” Richard said. “It’s a space where someone can come and feel like they can ask hard questions and not feel judgment for asking them or wrestling with them. I guarantee all of us have wrestled with probably the exact same question. We’re not afraid to work through it and ask those tough questions
of God.”
Learn more about the center and read the Journal at Liberty.edu/ACE
