50 Years of Harvest! | Pastor Greg Laurie Reflects

Well, Pastor Greg, you began preaching at a young age. Many of our listeners know that.

They've seen that fact demonstrated on the silver screen with Jesus Revolution. Yes. But you and I were not quite so young anymore, and that means we've been at this— Speak for yourself, Dave. I'm only 70. Well, the point is, you've been at it a long time.

Yeah, I have. And, you know, I've enjoyed it so much because it's not a job to me, it's a calling. I never sent out to make this my profession or my career. I set out to serve God, starting with a little cartoon booklet I drew called Living Water, leading to speaking of little Bible studies here and there, of course, just sharing my faith on the streets, and then eventually taking over a small Bible study in Riverside, California, that ultimately turned into our church. So our church is getting ready to celebrate 50 years, and really everything that we've done has sort of blossomed out of this church.

In other words, when you listen to A New Beginning, most of the time you're listening to a message I gave to our church, and of course our Crusade ministry came out of this, and our publishing ministry, and our online ministry, and now our film ministry. We have so many things going on. We had to let a few things go in the process. We had to say goodbye to the cassette ministry. Some people had a hard time letting go. What's that?

Ka-what? Yeah, you can buy them, I think, on eBay. I don't even know if eBay has them there on historical artifact sites or something like that. But, you know, a funny thing, speaking of cassettes, there was a moment in time when that was cutting edge technology, and we adopted it immediately because now you could take your teaching with you, your music with you, and then on it went to the present day. But it's funny, radio was there back then, and radio is here today, and radio is such a powerful medium. I have to say, personally, of all the things I do, I enjoy radio the most because I'm an avid listener to Christian radio, as well as being someone that has a program on Christian radio. I think it's a very personal medium.

I almost feel like when I listen to other people that I enjoy, I feel like I have a relationship with them, almost like we're having a conversation, except they never asked me what I think. But I enjoy that, and so we're really thrilled to be in this space. And here's an amazing thing to consider. Over the years, we've been able to bring the gospel in person to 10 million people. Into the crusades alone, we've seen 700,000 people walk forward when the invitation was given in stadiums, arenas, outdoor fields, you name it, we've been there.

But when we put all the numbers together of a New Beginning radio and of our television ministry and online ministry, that number is well over a million people. Now, I'd say they've made a profession of faith. Are they all Christians?

I would not think necessarily so, but I'll tell you, not only are many of them Christians, but many of them have gone on to start their own church. And to go in the mission field, and not just that, but just to be godly people, raising godly families, passing it on from generation to generation. You know, a way of really seeing this illustrated is in the Jesus Revolution film. I'll read stories from someone who would say, I came to Christ listening to you preach back in the 70s, and we just watched the film with our whole family, and my children loved it, my grandchildren loved it.

And so I hear that 10-year-olds are deeply moved by this story, and 80-year-olds are moved by it as well. We just had a crazy, gigantic baptism on the heels of the crusade. 20,000 people showed up. They stood in a line that was estimated to be a half mile long to be baptized.

And when it was all said and done, we baptized 4,500 people, making it the largest baptism in American history. So here's what we're really thankful for, Dave. We thank God for our past.

So much to celebrate. But we thank God for our present, because God is at work, and we're having really the most productive days of ministry right now. New doors opening up, and we thank God for the future, because there are many other opportunities, and we want to, as the Bible says, work while it is the day, because the night is coming when no man can work. Well, you mentioned the future.

Yeah. What are the plans for the future? Well, we've got all kinds of irons in the fire. We're always looking at live events. There'll certainly be another Harvest Crusade in Southern California.

We have invitations from multiple cities that we're considering right now. Our online ministry is continuing to touch many people. We're doing even more to improve that. Our television ministry is expanding. We've been doing something that we call One-Minute Messages that have aired on CNN and Fox News, where I basically share the gospel in one minute.

We've had an amazing response to that. And listen to this, Dave. We're getting into animation. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I started out as a cartoonist. My sole aspiration in life was to have a cartoon strip, and I loved animation.

And so that's how I got to that point. I got into ministry, but I've taken these two characters named Ben Born Again and Yellow Dog. Now, he's had this dog forever.

I've been drawing this dog since elementary school. He's had multiple names. He was Herman.

I think he was T-Bone for a while. And I just recently decided to call him Yellow Dog. I know you can't see animation, but you can hear it. So what you're about to see is Ben Born Again introducing himself, and then Yellow Dog enters the scene, and they have this conversation together. By the way, they're at the beach. Oh, I see. So what do you mean you've been born again? Well, wait till our next adventure for the answer.

But I'll give you a hint. It's in John chapter three. Oh, yeah, yeah.

What is John chapter three? Watch for the adventures of Ben Born Again and Yellow Dog from Greg Laurie. Coming soon. We're also working on films. Of course, we have Jesus Revolution that's been doing incredibly well on every platform it's been on, most recently on Netflix, where it's performed really well.

And Netflix has an audience of 75 million people in the United States, and Jesus Revolution immediately started trending on their website. So we're thankful for that. We're working on other film projects, and we have some other exciting things in the future that people are going to really love. You'll have to trust me on this. Well, as you mentioned, Harvest Ministries is turning 50 years old this year.

Yes. Looking back, what are the things that make this Thanksgiving season particularly profound for you? Well, I would say the faithfulness of God. You know, we've had our twists and turns, we've had our storms, we've had our challenges, along with our blessings. And one thing I can say is God has always been faithful, and I have found His Word is true.

And I have found that He honors it when we have taken bold steps of faith. There have been a few moments in our history where we went way beyond our comfort zone and did something where I would describe it as bedding the farm. Example, Harvest America 2016 at the AT&T Stadium in Texas. Now, I have to tell you that that's a big place. It seats upwards of 100,000.

I was filled with fear and trepidation as the event was finally ready to happen. But much to our delight and surprise, not only did we fill it, there was overflow crowds. We had 100,000 people there, and we had people listening in and watching it from all around the United States in churches and movie theaters and in various venues and backyards. We did a little research on it, and we discovered that it was the largest single live one-day evangelistic event in human history.

So those are two milestones. That, in 2016, the baptism we just did in 2023. So, you know, God has been faithful, Dave, and I think that we should never rest on our laurels and we should never settle for mediocrity. If you see anything that's working anywhere, if there's a restaurant you'd love to go to or you have some other place you'd like to visit and you're always so impressed by it, that's because they're working at it.

When you take your hand off the wheel, it defaults to mediocrity. So we're always trying to innovate, we're trying to be creative, but doing so while remaining true to our core mission. Our mission statement is knowing God and making Him known. My job is simple.

I'm not a politician, I'm not a political pundit, I'm not a social activist, I'm not a comedian, though I attempt to be at times. I'm not a life coach, I'm a pastor, and I'm a preacher, and I'm an evangelist, and I accept that call in my life and thank God for it. And my job is to bring hope, my job is to bring Christ to people, my job is to reach people no matter what their political persuasion is, or no matter what their age is, or no matter what race they are, the gospel is for everyone. And so I go to great lengths to try to continue to reach as many people as they possibly can. One phrase I was using recently was, our objective is to reach unexpected people in unexpected places with an unexpected message. So that's why we engaged with the Jesus Revolution film that has gone far beyond any church walls, and it's in theaters and streaming platforms, etc., going all around the world.

And the other projects we do, this is why we do things like that. Because, you know, not everybody wants to hear a sermon. Many do, and I'm thankful for that, but there's other ways to preach, there's other ways to communicate. Look at Paul in Mars Hill. He went into this secular environment and stood up there at the Areopagus, which was the place where all the philosophers would meet there in Athens, Greece, and he built a bridge to that audience. You know, they worshipped all these false gods. He kind of got up there and said, you're a bunch of pagans and you're all going to hell.

Without it being technically true, probably so. But instead, Paul took time to assess the culture. He saw they believed in many deities. They had altars directed to many gods.

So he stands up and says this as an opening statement. Men of Athens, I perceive that you're really religious. Well, that was a kind way of saying you worship many gods. If we were to say something today, we might say, hey, I see you're really into spirituality. So you have all of these altars erected to various gods, but I noticed you had one erected to a deity that was unknown, and you called it to the unknown god.

That's the one I want to talk to you about today. See, that's called building a bridge. That's called penetrating culture. Our job is not to isolate. It's to infiltrate. It's to permeate. It's to go to where people are. Jesus did not say that the whole world should go to church, but he did say the church should go to the whole world. So just know this, when you support our ministry, and I thank God for all of you that are Harvest partners and those that give to us faithfully on a regular basis, I want to say thank you and assure you that we will always do our best to not default to mediocrity, but to continue to find new ways to reach new people in new places, unexpected people in unexpected places, with the unexpected message of the gospel.