Last Updated on April 19, 2012 by Paulette Brown-Hinds
Many people—from media to commentators and theologians—have written off crusade evangelism as a “thing of the past,” believing that it is an outdated, ineffective, expensive, and time-consuming means for reaching nonbelievers with the gospel.
However, Southern California pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie and his Harvest Crusades ministry are introducing a new model for crusade evangelism. Instead of trying to get people across America to attend a stadium crusade—at great cost to the organizer—Greg Laurie is taking a single Harvest Crusade in Southern California to churches across the country. For the last 22 years, Harvest Crusades has held an annual stadium outreach event in Southern California, attracting more than 100,000 people each year. The Orange County Register even referred to the event as “part of Orange County’s summer culture.”
Having a strong passion for sharing Christ with even more people, and the intuition that they shouldn’t try to fix something that isn’t broken, Harvest Crusades has developed a new strategy that leverages their current working model and capitalizes on their large Internet audience, to combat the valid concerns some have about crusade evangelism. The idea is essentially a “crusade in a box”—produced in one location, yet replicated and broadcast live to host sites across the U.S. Its name is Harvest America.
The traditional crusade evangelism model, in which an evangelist goes to a city, rents a stadium, hires event workers, enlists church support, and coordinates local volunteers, is time-consuming and expensive. However, the Harvest America model uses inexpensive technology to allow churches and individuals, already eager to host an evangelistic event, the opportunity to do so. Instead of spending resources on numerous crusades throughout the country, all funds are invested in producing one solid event (50,000 people in Angel Stadium of Anaheim, California) that is shared live with venues across the nation.
Harvest America is inviting churches, organizations, small groups, and individuals to participate as host sites by live-streaming or broadcasting the crusade at Angel Stadium to their own location on Sunday, August 26. Now churches in small cities—where a major crusade may never come—and even churches in large cities—which might never be able to afford to host a crusade—can all participate. Find out more about Harvest America at harvestamerica.com.