Pastor Greg Laurie is on a mission to bring hope and healing to Utah Valley University, the campus in Orem, Utah, where conservative Christian commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10th.
Listen to the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
Lowry, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in California and founder of Harvest Crusades, a popular mass evangelism event, is planning an event on the UVU campus on Nov. 16.
“We’ve been talking to pastors in Utah about doing a harvest crusade,” he said. “We do it in stadiums and arenas, all over the country, all over the world. And I’ve been doing it for over 30 years. So some of the people and pastors came up to us from Utah and said, ‘Can you come over here and do it?’
Originally, Lowry wasn’t planning on holding an event in Utah until 2027, but Kirk’s assassination at UVU changed everything. The Harvest team asked how they could help after a tragedy occurred.
“They said, ‘Yes, please come right now. We need you right now,'” Laurie said. “So we did something we’ve never done before. We accelerated the schedule, so it typically takes six months to a year, sometimes even longer, to be ready for a crusade.”
But the UVU event was planned in just six weeks. Laurie said she wanted to share with others the gospel message that motivated Kirk’s work and felt called to do so.
“We felt like, ‘Let’s go to this place where unspeakable acts of darkness have taken place and let the bright light of the gospel shine,'” Laurie said. “Charlie really cared about the gospel and always talked about Christ when he went to campuses like UVU. People asked him about his beliefs, and that motivated them. It gave him a worldview.”
“Charlie is in heaven,” he continued.
Laurie, like other faith leaders, believes that even after Kirk’s tragic death, God moved powerfully to overturn evil and use it for good.
“We want to call people to Christ and tell them that there is a God in heaven who loves them and that they can have a relationship with Him and be forgiven of all their sins,” he said, inviting people to attend in person or stream online on Harvest.org or the Harvest+ app.
Regarding the dangers and turmoil that may be encountered, Laurie said her motivation for hosting the event is to follow what Jesus called us to do.
“Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel,’ so God wants us to get out of our comfort zone and go to people and reach out,” Laurie said.
The pastor also compared the 1960s to today, speaking of the spiritual renaissance and cultural decline that seem to be occurring simultaneously.
“There was chaos, there was rioting, there were protests,” Rowley said. “And, yes, there was an assassination. We lost President Kennedy in the early ’60s. Then we lost the Rev. Martin Luther King. And then we lost President Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for president. There was a sense of turmoil and uncertainty, and there was also talk of revolution.”
Ultimately, Lowry said, “God decided to send a revolution to Jesus.” He sees the current moment as a “parallel” to that time, when young people are increasingly turning to the Lord.
“There are silver linings all around us, and certainly there is persecution,” he said. “But you know, when God is working, the devil always opposes it. But I have good news. I read the last page of the Bible. In the end, we will win. So we shouldn’t back down. We shouldn’t slow down. We should accelerate and do what we can while we still can.”
Watch Rory discuss the above issues with Kirk.
As the number of voices facing censorship from big tech companies continues to grow, sign up for FaithWire’s daily newsletter and download the CBN News app developed by our parent company to get the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.
