Greg Laurie's Harvest Crusades Scheduled for Orange County, Calif.; Philadelphia

By Alex Murashko, CP Contributor Thursday, May 16, 2013

Plans for Southern California pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie to bring his large-scale Harvest Crusade events back to Orange County, Calif., for three nights of biblically-based preaching and performances by popular Christian recording artists were announced Wednesday. The outreach is scheduled to take place in Angel Stadium in Anaheim on Aug. 23-25.

Laurie recently spoke during the National Day of Prayer event in Washington, D.C., in which he focused his prayer on asking for God's forgiveness and seeking a revival for America, noting that although "we have forgotten God, He has not forgotten us."

In addition to the Southern California Harvest, Laurie and Harvest Ministries will host the Philadelphia Harvest at the Wells Fargo Center on Sept. 28, 29. The event will be simulcast to thousands of locations nationwide for a coast-to-coast evangelistic outreach called Harvest America.

The inaugural Harvest America program was simulcast from Angel Stadium last year and drew more than 450,000 participants, making it one of the largest evangelistic outreaches in U.S. history.

Organizers say, "The Harvest with Greg Laurie events are known for relating to audiences through contemporary means like top notch music, live Internet webcasts and hosted video podcasts, but the crux of each event is the nightly message presented by Greg Laurie. Called the 'evangelist of the future' by Billy Graham, Laurie draws on Scripture, flavored with personal and cultural examples, to describe the relevance of faith in today's world. Laurie's talks encompass topics that appeal to people of any age and answer questions like: Why am I here? Is God real? What happens when I die?"

The 2013 Southern California Harvest will be broadcast live via the Internet at www.harvest.org. Video podcasts and blog accounts of each message will also be made available at http://blog.greglaurie.com/, as well as "behind the scenes" updates from Greg Laurie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/greglaurie.

Part of his prayer during the National Day of Prayer on May 2 read:

"Lord, we need Your help in America. In recent days, we have done our best to remove Your Word and Your counsel from our courtrooms, classrooms and culture. It seems, as President Lincoln once said, that we have 'forgotten God.' But Lord, You have not forgotten us! You can bless and help and revive our country again.

"Lord, in Your mercy, we ask that You would exalt our country again. We have had a number of great awakenings in America. We have experienced times of refreshing, and revivals that changed not only the spiritual but also the moral landscape."

Laurie, who founded the evangelistic Harvest Crusade events in 1990, also serves as senior pastor of one of the largest churches in the U.S., Harvest Christian Fellowship, which has campuses in Riverside and Irvine, Calif. During the past 24 years, the Harvest Crusades have drawn some 4.7 million people to events in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Laurie also serves on the board of directors for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.