Harvest Crusade Will Be Retro and High-Tech

The Harvest Crusade, the annual evangelical celebration that has drawn more than a million baby boomers and Generation X-ers, opens Thursday at Anaheim Stadium with hopes of reaching tens of thousands of people here plus a worldwide congregation on the Internet.

The eighth Anaheim crusade will run through Sunday and will feature Pastor Greg Laurie, 44, the Harley-riding, Madonna-quoting Southern California native won over to Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa as a teenager during the 1960s Jesus Movement.

Since then, Laurie has built one of the nation’s largest churches at his Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. Last month, he expanded his crusade to Philadelphia, marking the first of several East Coast forays, said Beth Bragg, Harvest Crusade spokeswoman.

“It was a real milestone to take their very California casual style and have it be received so well in the East,” Bragg said. “That was sort of testing the waters to see: Does this thing communicate beyond the West Coast? And it does.”

Stadium gates will open at 6 nightly, and the event will begin at 7:30 p.m. Translations will be provided in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese--indicative of Laurie’s efforts to reach the region’s population with his ministry. (The Philadelphia crusade was translated into Russian and Yiddish.)

Laurie will speak each evening. Saturday will feature a “Harvest Jam” with music from contemporary Christian artists, including Audio Adrenaline, Big Tent Revival and The Kry.

Bragg said this year’s crusade will have a 1960s theme and retro styles for T-shirts, hats and buttons. The fashion statement designed to appeal to youth is also a nod to the crusade’s genesis--the Jesus Movement that drew Laurie in and opened church doors three decades ago to longhaired, disillusioned young people.

This Anaheim crusade will also be the first carried live on the Internet with audio and video. The four-night Philadelphia crusade was on the Internet in audio format only and attracted 14,000 listeners from places as far away as Japan, Greece, Venezuela and Australia, Bragg said.

The live Internet broadcast can be accessed through the Harvest Crusade World Wide Web site at www.harvest.org

Venturing into cyberspace, the latest frontier for many evangelists, is consistent with Laurie’s modern approach to ministry, Bragg said.

“One of the trademarks of Harvest is communicating through the tools of the day,” she said. “That’s why the music is very contemporary. That’s why in Greg’s talks he quotes current celebrities and pop culture figures. That’s why the TV production on the Jumbotron at the crusades is top-notch.

“They communicate through the tools and culture of the day in order to make the message that God cares understandable, especially to young people.”

And understandable it seems to be.

Last year, the Anaheim gathering drew more than 63,000 supporters on the first day, a Fourth of July celebration that included music, sermons and fireworks. Renovations to Anaheim Stadium have reduced seating, and Bragg said that Saturday’s gathering will include a Jumbotron outside the gates to accommodate any overflow crowds.

Since Laurie launched his first crusade in 1990, the events have drawn more than 1.6 million people in 12 cities, including his first venture into Los Angeles last fall with a mini-crusade at the Universal Amphitheatre.

Thousands of followers have plastered their cars and trucks with Harvest Crusade bumper stickers in a show of faith and solidarity.

The keen interest is indicative of a larger thirst for spirituality in American society, said Doug Dickey, professor of philosophy at Fullerton’s Pacific Christian College.

“It’s part of renewed interest in religion across the board, particularly among the so-called X-ers, the young set,” he said. “We’ve sort of run out of depending on science and materialism, and people are searching for some kind of meaning and purpose.”

The Harvest Crusade is a result of that, Dickey said, as is renewed interest in the New Age Movement. “I think the hunger is there,” he said, “and it’s beginning to be realized a lot more than it has for years and years.”

Kathi Graham, development associate of the World Evangelical Fellowship, whose U.S. headquarters is based in Illinois, said Laurie’s crusades follow a popular format pioneered by the Rev. Billy Graham and carried on by his son Franklin and the popular Luis Palau.

“The youth particularly are searching,” said Graham, who is not related to Billy and Franklin Graham. “They are saying, ‘There must be something else in this world because, just to live for the cars, the boats, the things my parents had, to see the divorce scene, to see the materialism scene, there has to be something bigger.”