Faithful Gather in Anaheim for Harvest Festival : Crusade: About 30,000 worshipers enjoy inspirational sermons and gospel hymns in first night of evangelical event.

Thousands of the faithful crowded Anaheim Stadium Friday for the fifth annual Orange County Harvest Festival, one of the largest evangelical crusade efforts in the country.

Sponsors of the event, involving 450 area churches, predicted 150,000 people would hear Riverside minister Greg Laurie and entertainers including country music star Ricky Skaggs during the three-night crusade.

The festival was held at the Pacific Amphitheatre its first year, in 1990, and has been at the Anaheim Stadium every year since. Each year, the festival’s distinctive multicolored bumper stickers have become ubiquitous.

The crowd Friday night, estimated by the sponsors at 30,000, filled the seats along three decks of the base lines, leaving the outfield stands empty, as at most Angels games.

Interpreters for the deaf stood atop the third base dugout, leading small groups of signing worshipers during the 90-minute program.

The Harvest Festival’s aim is to offer worship in a “non-traditional, non-church environment.”

Dale Graley, 36, of Alta Loma was attending the crusade for the second year with his wife and three children. Graley said he planned to attend all three nights.

“I like the atmosphere; God is promoted here. I like the family values and the worship. It brings a good moral value not only to people my age but to the kids,” he said with his arm around a son.

But, he added, “I need this as much as they do.”

Jackie Rhodes, 49, of Newport Beach, said she had changed her work shift to attend the crusade for the first time. She also brought eight friends, some from work.

Rhodes said she enjoyed the atmosphere of the crusade, and “I like the songs.”

Rick Quinlan, 36, of Riverside said he had joined Laurie’s regular congregation years ago because “I like his sermons.” Now, at his third Orange County crusade, he was helping with the event.

“We’re bringing them in, so they can know the Lord,” he said.

Laurie, 41, spoke after a dozen pounding, bouncing gospel hymns were performed by various artists--with crowd members singing along as lyrics flashed on the stadium’s scoreboards.

Laurie recalled his dissolute youth as a student at Newport Harbor High School in 1970.

“I always had a problem with authority figures, always lipping off,” he said.

Laurie said his life was changed through the intervention of the Rev. Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel.

He warned that young people today face an epidemic of crime and drugs.

“Marijuana and LSD are making a comeback,” he said.

Young people, he said, “are empty. They’re searching . . . they’re spiritually empty.”

Crusade officials said the money to put on the harvest festival, about $100,000, comes from nightly donations, local churches and T-shirt royalties.