Pastor Greg Laurie is on a mission to bring hope and healing to Utah Valley University, the campus in Orem, Utah, where conservative and Christian commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated Sept. 10.
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Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in California and founder of the Harvest Crusades — popular, large-scale evangelistic events — is planning a Nov. 16 event on the UVU campus.
“We have been talking with pastors in Utah about doing one of our Harvest Crusades,” he said. “We do them in stadiums, arenas, around the country, around the world, and I’ve been doing them for over 30 years — and so the folks, some of the pastors, came to us from Utah and said, ‘Would you come and do one here?'”
Initially, Laurie didn’t plan to do an event in Utah until 2027, but Kirk’s assassination at UVU changed everything. The Harvest team reached out and asked how they could help after the tragedy unfolded.
“They said, ‘Yes, come now. We need you now,'” Laurie said. “And so we did something we’ve never done before: We accelerated the timeline. So normally it would take us six months to a year, sometimes even longer to get a Crusade ready.”
But the UVU event was planned in just six weeks. It’s something Laurie said he felt called to do as he seeks to share with others the Gospel message that motivated Kirk’s work.
“We felt like, ‘Let’s go to this place where an unspeakable act of darkness took place and shine the radiant light of the Gospel,'” Laurie said. “Charlie really cared about the Gospel, and when he would go into these campuses like UVU and others, he would always talk about Christ. People would ask him about his beliefs; that’s what motivated them. That’s what gave him his worldview.”
He continued, “Charlie’s in heaven.”
Laurie, like other faith leaders, believes God has moved mightily even after Kirk’s tragic death, turning evil on its head and using it for good.
“We want to call people to Christ and tell them that there’s a God in heaven who loves them, and that they can have a relationship with Him, and be forgiven of all of their sins,” he said, inviting people to attend in person or to stream online at Harvest.org or on the Harvest+ app.
As for any danger or chaos Laurie could be walking into, he said his motivation for holding the event is to follow what Jesus has called us to do.
“Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the Gospel,’ and so God wants us to leave our comfort zone and go to people and reach out to them,'” Laurie said.
The pastor also spoke about the spiritual revival and cultural decay that seem to be simultaneously unfolding, likening the 1960s to today.
“There was upheaval, there was rioting, there were protests,” Laurie said. “And, yes, there were assassinations. We lost President Kennedy early in the ’60s. Then we lost Martin Luther King. Then we lost Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of President Kennedy, who was running for president. There was a sense of chaos and uncertainty, and there was talk of revolution.”
Ultimately, Laurie said, “God decided to send a Jesus revolution.” He sees the moments happening now as “parallel” to that time, with young people increasingly turning back to the Lord.
“There are promising signs around us, and, yes, there’s persecution,” he said. “But, you know, when God is at work, the devil will always oppose it. But I’ve got good news. I’ve read the last page of the Bible. We win in the end. So we should not back off. We should not slow down. We should accelerate and do as much as we can while we can.”
Watch Laurie discuss Kirk and these issues above.
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