Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., right, presents Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a sports jersey after he spoke at the university in January in Lynchburg, Va. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who is trying to reset his struggling campaign, plans to appeal for stronger support Thursday from a group of influential Christian conservative pastors.

Trump backers hope that the candidate’s closed-door address to the Orlando conference of the American Renewal Project will inspire evangelical voters and donors who have been part of winning elections for Republicans for decades.

American Renewal operates nationwide, training pastors to organize and encourage political activity by their parishioners. Also scheduled to address the two-day meeting is Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), a former Trump rival for the GOP nomination who is now running for reelection.

Trump, whose past playboy lifestyle and three marriages made him an unlikely ally for evangelical activists, has courted support from religious conservative leaders.

Speaking in Cleveland on the third day of the Republican National Convention, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. talks about why he's supporting Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who doesn't always line up with Evangelicals on social issues. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

Some polls show that the majority of evangelicals — who make up about a fifth of the country — are favorable toward Trump.

He met with hundreds of Christian leaders and activists at an applause-filled gathering in New York in June. During that session, Trump said he would encourage department store employees to say “Merry Christmas” and would fight restrictions against public employees, such as public school coaches, being allowed to lead sectarian prayers.

And Trump credited evangelicals during his convention speech last month for their role in his campaign, saying, “The support they have given me, and I’m not sure I totally deserve it, has been so amazing.”

Still, evangelical Christian leaders have been somewhat split over Trump, in part because of concern about his coarse comments about women, immigration and other topics.

A well-known Catholic conservative, Robert George, former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said in June that he fears Trump will “in the end, bring disgrace upon those individuals and organizations who publicly embrace him. . . . This election is presenting a horrible choice. May God help us.”

Some of Trump’s allies, including Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., have urged him in recent weeks to connect with the American Renewal group as a way of adding a targeted post-convention appeal to faith-based voters.

Trump’s meeting with pastors in Orlando, first reported Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network, will occur a few hours before a planned Trump campaign speech in the central Florida city of Kissimmee, where Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton spoke Monday.

Trump will be introduced by a longtime favorite of many of those in the room, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a preacher, a former GOP presidential candidate and a current resident of Florida.

Falwell said he expected Trump to speak to the pastors Thursday afternoon about the importance of repealing a law that restricts churches and other tax-exempt groups from actively engaging in electoral politics. The law, introduced in the 1950s by then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, has not been aggressively enforced lately. But Falwell said it continues to intimidate religious leaders. In addition, it has gained importance as a symbol of increasing infringement on “religious liberty.”

Trump vowed during his convention speech to repeal the measure, saying that evangelicals “have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits.”

Trump is also considered likely to reiterate a commitment to appoint anti­abortion Supreme Court justices, a position that won him a standing ovation from the Christian conservatives he spoke to in New York in June.

David Lane, founder of the American Renewal group, said Trump needs to bolster his support among social conservatives. “If Donald Trump cannot move evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians to the polls on November 8th, he cannot win,” Lane said.

Lane said the country’s estimated 65 million evangelicals are just beginning to focus on the candidates and will be looking for Trump’s “sincerity on the issues that they care about.”

In recent weeks, Lane has begun making plans to mobilize conservative Christian pastors and voters in 15 states: Arizona, Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and New York. To accomplish his plan, Lane said he needs to raise $18 million.

Lane said that when Trump speaks in Orlando on Thursday, he hopes the GOP nominee will go beyond discussing the repeal of the Johnson legislation and embrace deeper, more emotional concerns among conservatives, such as the impact of the gay rights movement. Lane said he is warning pastors that a Clinton presidency could be devastating to their values.

“Evangelical pastors must move their parishioners into the public square this fall,” Lane said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Staying home is not an option, or transgender bathrooms is just the beginning.”