A "Lost Boy" Finally Makes It Home
After A Traumatic Start To His Life, Greg Laurie Now
Pastors One Of The Largest Churches In America And
Is About To Conduct His 21st Annual Harvest Crusade
In Anaheim, California
RIVERSIDE, California, July 28, 2010 - (ANS) --
Gregory (Greg) Mitchell Laurie, born in 1952 in Long
Beach, California, couldn't have got off to a worse
start in life.
He was born out of wedlock to an alcoholic mother
who was married and divorced numerous times.
Speaking of his childhood, Laurie says, "I
quickly tired of the alcoholic haze that seemed to
hover over my home life. I saw alcohol as symptomatic
of the times and at an early age I determined that
there must be more to life than what I had seen so
far. I had a hard time growing up; in fact, I grew
up too soon even in the age of innocence known as the
fifties."
But his life today is miles away from those disturbing
early days as a "Lost Boy" - which is the
title of his autobiography and a movie about his life-
and it is amazing to witness the change in his life.
Last Sunday (July 25, 2010) I went to his church,
Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California.
It was packed to overflowing when I arrived with many
seated outside watching the service on a big screen.
In between the second and third services, I was
able to sit down with Greg Laurie to talk with him
for my Front Page Radio program to learn more about
his extraordinary life and what led up to the present
day where he is also one of America's best-known evangelists.
He began by talking about his book and DVD, "Lost
Boy," and he said that that both tell "the
story of a mixed-up kid coming from a very broken family."
Laurie went on to say, "My mom divorced and
married seven times and all the crazy things I went
through are in both the book and film, in which I also
offers hope. I tried to present my story in a way that
it was not preacher-like. In other words it's a human
story."
He then said, "My wife Cathe said to me some
years ago, 'You know, your mom sort of engaged in pre-evangelism.'
What Cathe meant was that my mother showed me all the
things the world didn't have to offer because I was
so entrenched in her world, and in my own, for the
first seventeen years of my life, that by the time
I came to faith, I had seen so much of this world and
was so disillusioned by it I thought that there has
got to be more to life than this. So the book and the
film are about the search that this 'Lost Boy' was
on."
Laurie then explained that, as his life was plunging
deeper into a mess with drugs and alcohol, at the age
of seventeen, he was introduced to the "Jesus
People Revival" that was taking place at Calvary
Chapel Costa Mesa, California, and he began attending
the services led by Pastor Chuck Smith.
I asked Greg to describe what it was like attending
those gatherings.
"Well for lack of a better word, Dan, it was
magical," he said. "I know we attach a lot
of baggage to that word, but I mean it in the sense
that it was wonderful, electric, and spontaneous. It
was something like I'd never seen before. I didn't
realize it at the time, but I walked right into the
middle of a spiritual revival, though then I just thought
this is just 'normal Christianity' because I wasn't
raised in the church or in reading the Bible.
"So I would go there and join in. The place
was filled with people of all ages. I would listen
to the band, Love Song, who had a song that really
reflected what was going on. They sang, 'Long hair,
short hair, coats and ties, people finally comin' around.'
That's really what it was. There would a business man,
sitting next to a middle aged lady, as well as young
hippie type kids.
"We were all there watching the Lord work
and kids were getting saved every week and the church
was growing. The music was spontaneous and it was,
in that moment in time, that it reached us culturally.
Now, as the generation of today listens to the music
of those days, there isn't always a cultural connection
because, frankly, a lot of it was folk type music and
early rock. So when we reproduce it today, kids will
listen and say, 'Yeah, ok. I don't get it.'
"In the Harvest Crusades, what we're doing
is really, in many ways, trying to do an updated version
of that early Jesus music. No one can recreate the
Jesus Movement, but what I'm saying is that I'm using
the music that is popular with people today, but keeping
that same message I heard in those early Calvary Chapel
days intact. God can still reach the next generation
and a lot of what I do today is rooted in what I saw
all those years ago in the Jesus Movement."
So, as thousands were leaving the second service
and thousands more were parking their cars to come
into the third of that morning, I wondered how he came
to start Harvest Christian Fellowship?
He explained that as nineteen-year-old with long
hair and a beard, he would "hang around" the
Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa office waiting to be given
assignments.
"This is going back thirty-five years, and
I was raised in Orange County and it all began when
I heard about a Bible study that was taking place in
a Riverside Episcopalian church," said Greg. "It
was originally started by Lonnie Frisbee when he was
a youth pastor at Calvary Chapel. Then Lonnie moved
away and this little Bible study he'd started was sort
of floundering and drifting.
"Various Calvary Chapel pastors were teaching
at it week after week and no one really wanted to do
it anymore. So I was sort of hanging around the office
and at that time I was around eight or nine years younger
than most of the guys and I was looking for anything
I could do for the Lord. I mean, if there was a convalescent
home that wanted someone to speak, I go. I event went
to a local mental institution to preach. I'd go anywhere.
"So someone at the church said to me, 'Greg,
I did it last week in Riverside. Do you want to do
it?' So I came up to Riverside. I didn't know this
area at all and began doing this little Bible study
and the Lord blessed it. I went back the next week
and then the next, and it started growing and none
of the other guys really wanted to do it so I continued."
The study was being held at All Saints Episcopalian
Church in Riverside and he says that as it grew larger
and larger, he said he had "mixed feelings" about
becoming the pastor of this fledgling church at the
tender age of twenty.
"At the time I thought I was being called
to be an evangelist, so I felt I couldn't be the pastor
of this church," he explained. "I had long
hair, a shoulder length beard, and had the whole hippie
persona going. So I was looking for someone to take
it over, but no one wanted to, so I just realized at
that point that the Lord was calling me to become the
pastor.
"So that became one of the first Calvary Chapels
outside of Costa Mesa. I believe there was already
one in existence pastored by Pastor Chuck Smith Junior
which, I believe, was in Twentynine Palms. So this
was the first one apart from that and that was many
years ago.
"We originally called it Calvary Chapel for
the first years and then we changed it to Harvest because
I think we need to be careful about not getting hung
up about the name of our church. What is important
is what happens in our church and that is that the
Word of God being taught and the Lord being glorified."
Being the pastor of what is now a mega-church,
kept him extremely busy, so I wondered, as we are approaching
the 21st annual Harvest Crusade in Southern California
(at Angel Stadium, Anaheim, from August 6-8, 2010)
how and why it began.
"Well it started back in 1999 and I was doing
the Monday night Bible study at Calvary Chapel Costa
Mesa and the Lord was blessing and hundreds of kids
were coming out," he told me. "We were seeing
two to three-thousand people accept Christ every year.
One day, Pastor Chuck one came to me and said. 'You
know Greg, we need to take this to a larger venue.'
He then suggested the Pacific Amphitheater and I remember
saying to him, 'Wow, that's a pretty big place.' I
had the concern that we could fill a venue that large.
We were having around 2,000 people on Monday nights,
but the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa held between
12,000 or 13,000 people. But Chuck said, in response
to my concerns, 'Well Greg, we serve a pretty big God.'
I couldn't argue with that, so that was the first time
we did one."
Much to Greg's surprise, the services broke all
attendance records.
"The next year, we did a few nights at the
Amphitheater and then we went to Anaheim Stadium and
then the third year we did the whole event in the stadium
which has changed names multiple times -- Anaheim Stadium,
Edison Field, Angel Stadium. Now it's Angel stadium
again, and I prefer that name for obvious reasons.
"So, and we've been at the Angel Stadium every
year since then and we've shortened it to a three night
event because you know in Angel Stadium you can reach
a lot more people then you would in the Amphitheater."
Today, Greg Laurie utilizes an array of modern
media technology to expand the reach of the Harvest
Crusade.
"It goes out in many ways," he explained. "It's
live on the radio; it's videotaped and shown on television
at a later date and it is also streamed live on the
Internet. In fact, this year we expect to exceed on
the Internet our audience that we have in person. We
might have well over a 100,000 people on a given weekend
in the stadium, but when we go to the web, we'll reach
200,000 who will watch it either live or in archive
form. And this is literally all over the world. It
really is truly an international event and people more
people tune into the one that we do in Southern California
than any other crusade we conduct throughout the year."
Then, in the interview, Greg went on to talk about
the terrible day, two years ago, when his beloved son
Christopher was killed in an auto accident on the 91
freeway. So I asked him how he was dealing with it.
"I have had problems each year during the
crusade -- which are really spiritual attacks -- but
when my son went to be with the Lord that was an event
all unto itself," he said. "To be honest,
Dan, this completely altered my life. I mark my life
now by two events -- my conversion and my son going
to heaven. I now just can't help but see life in a
'before and after' way. Sometimes people will ask me
if I am over it yet, and the answer to all people who
ask this is 'no.' Really, don't ever ask that question
of anyone who has lost a child. You don't get over
it -- you get through it!
"It's not as painful today as it was right
after it happened, of course, but it's still very difficult
and both Cathe and I miss him deeply. We just had the
second year anniversary of when Christopher died and
it was a hard day for us. But I found the Lord to be
faithful. Our pain is deep, but God is deeper and He
sustains us, but it's not easy. But still we seek to
glorify Him through this.
"It's given me a greater urgency to preach
the Gospel; a greater heart to teach the Word of God;
a greater sense of the reality of the things that I'm
proclaiming. I've always believed what I proclaim and
this has never been a profession or a job to me per
se -- it's been a calling -- but now, today, I have
an even greater intensity to do what I do especially
in the area of evangelism."
I then asked Laurie if he had ever questioned his
faith after suffering such a painful loss.
"I did question God," he stated. "I
said, 'God, why?' Did I ever stop believing in God?
No. Did I ever have a lapse in faith? No. Was my faith
tested and challenged? Oh yes. But I think when a person
says they have lost their faith through a tragedy,
I guess I would wonder what kind of faith they had
because I think if your faith is real, it will stand
the test and actually I think it will get stronger
because of it.
"The reality, Dan, is my faith is stronger
in God than it was before because it has to be. You
know as C.S Lewis said, and I'm loosely paraphrasing
what he said in his book about grieving. Lewis said
that 'you know you believe certain things but you don't
really know until they're tested.' And this has been
tested and I've found all the things that I've heard
preached and believed are true and so I hang onto those
things.
"Sometimes my emotions don't always cooperate
with my mind. I believe my heart and I embrace it,
but my emotions are reeling at times. But we just submit
ourselves to the truth of God's Word and live that
way you know and we press forward. There's no easy
answer; there's no out of this, but there is the Lord's
strength and he has promised that his grace will be
sufficient and I have found God's grace to be sufficient."
Greg Laurie then revealed that because of the loss
of Christopher, he will be holding a special event
on the final night of the Anaheim Harvest Crusade (Sunday,
August 8) when he will have as his special guests,
Stephen Curtis Chapman, who lost his adopted daughter
in a tragic accident, and Dr. James Dobson. The event,
he said, is aimed at helping people who are facing
tragedy in their own lives and after he and Chapman
have shared their moving stories, Laurie will interview
Dr. Dobson about how people can deal with heartbreak.
"It will be designed for a person who has
lost a loved one or has faced, or is facing a tragedy,
or who knows someone who has suffered," he said. "It's
a night to look at the real world and say we have hope
in Christ and we want to share that hope with you.
"Dr. Dobson has been a voice of reassurance,
comfort and encouragement to people over the years
on his radio broadcasts and he's going to be with us
and I'm going to interview him and we're going to talk
about why there is pain and suffering and so forth.
And then of course I'll also give a message."
Gregg concluded by asking Christians to bring their
non-Christian friends to the Harvest Crusade.
"This is about bringing non-believers to hear
the Gospel and we all know non-Christians," he
said. "So please prayerfully consider who you
could bring that does not know the Lord to the event
and let's pray for a great harvest this year that will
bring Glory to God."
# # #
For more information on this year's Harvest Crusade
in Anaheim, go to: http://www.harvest.org/crusades/2010/southern-california/
Note: Dan Wooding's interview with Greg Laurie
will be broadcast this Sunday (August 1, 2010) at 5:00
PM (Pacific Time) on KWVE 107.9 FM in Southern California.
If you don't live in the area, you can hear the webcast
at www.kwve.com
Dan Wooding would like to thank Robin Frost for
transcribing this interview.
By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST Ministries - Dan
Wooding is an award winning British journalist now
living in Southern California with his wife Norma.
He is the founder and international director of ASSIST
(Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the
ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a
commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington,
DC.
ASSIST News Service (ANS)
PO Box 609
Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609, USA
Web site: www.assistnews.net
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com
After A Traumatic Start To His Life, Greg Laurie Now Pastors One Of The Largest Churches In America And Is About To Conduct His 21st Annual Harvest Crusade In Anaheim, California
RIVERSIDE, California, July 28, 2010 - (ANS) -- Gregory (Greg) Mitchell Laurie, born in 1952 in Long Beach, California, couldn't have got off to a worse start in life.
He was born out of wedlock to an alcoholic mother who was married and divorced numerous times.
Speaking of his childhood, Laurie says, "I quickly tired of the alcoholic haze that seemed to hover over my home life. I saw alcohol as symptomatic of the times and at an early age I determined that there must be more to life than what I had seen so far. I had a hard time growing up; in fact, I grew up too soon even in the age of innocence known as the fifties."
But his life today is miles away from those disturbing early days as a "Lost Boy" - which is the title of his autobiography and a movie about his life- and it is amazing to witness the change in his life.
Last Sunday (July 25, 2010) I went to his church, Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California. It was packed to overflowing when I arrived with many seated outside watching the service on a big screen.
In between the second and third services, I was able to sit down with Greg Laurie to talk with him for my Front Page Radio program to learn more about his extraordinary life and what led up to the present day where he is also one of America's best-known evangelists.
He began by talking about his book and DVD, "Lost Boy," and he said that that both tell "the story of a mixed-up kid coming from a very broken family."
Laurie went on to say, "My mom divorced and married seven times and all the crazy things I went through are in both the book and film, in which I also offers hope. I tried to present my story in a way that it was not preacher-like. In other words it's a human story."
He then said, "My wife Cathe said to me some years ago, 'You know, your mom sort of engaged in pre-evangelism.' What Cathe meant was that my mother showed me all the things the world didn't have to offer because I was so entrenched in her world, and in my own, for the first seventeen years of my life, that by the time I came to faith, I had seen so much of this world and was so disillusioned by it I thought that there has got to be more to life than this. So the book and the film are about the search that this 'Lost Boy' was on."
Laurie then explained that, as his life was plunging deeper into a mess with drugs and alcohol, at the age of seventeen, he was introduced to the "Jesus People Revival" that was taking place at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California, and he began attending the services led by Pastor Chuck Smith.
I asked Greg to describe what it was like attending those gatherings.
"Well for lack of a better word, Dan, it was magical," he said. "I know we attach a lot of baggage to that word, but I mean it in the sense that it was wonderful, electric, and spontaneous. It was something like I'd never seen before. I didn't realize it at the time, but I walked right into the middle of a spiritual revival, though then I just thought this is just 'normal Christianity' because I wasn't raised in the church or in reading the Bible.
"So I would go there and join in. The place was filled with people of all ages. I would listen to the band, Love Song, who had a song that really reflected what was going on. They sang, 'Long hair, short hair, coats and ties, people finally comin' around.' That's really what it was. There would a business man, sitting next to a middle aged lady, as well as young hippie type kids.
"We were all there watching the Lord work and kids were getting saved every week and the church was growing. The music was spontaneous and it was, in that moment in time, that it reached us culturally. Now, as the generation of today listens to the music of those days, there isn't always a cultural connection because, frankly, a lot of it was folk type music and early rock. So when we reproduce it today, kids will listen and say, 'Yeah, ok. I don't get it.'
"In the Harvest Crusades, what we're doing is really, in many ways, trying to do an updated version of that early Jesus music. No one can recreate the Jesus Movement, but what I'm saying is that I'm using the music that is popular with people today, but keeping that same message I heard in those early Calvary Chapel days intact. God can still reach the next generation and a lot of what I do today is rooted in what I saw all those years ago in the Jesus Movement."
So, as thousands were leaving the second service and thousands more were parking their cars to come into the third of that morning, I wondered how he came to start Harvest Christian Fellowship?
He explained that as nineteen-year-old with long hair and a beard, he would "hang around" the Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa office waiting to be given assignments.
"This is going back thirty-five years, and I was raised in Orange County and it all began when I heard about a Bible study that was taking place in a Riverside Episcopalian church," said Greg. "It was originally started by Lonnie Frisbee when he was a youth pastor at Calvary Chapel. Then Lonnie moved away and this little Bible study he'd started was sort of floundering and drifting.
"Various Calvary Chapel pastors were teaching at it week after week and no one really wanted to do it anymore. So I was sort of hanging around the office and at that time I was around eight or nine years younger than most of the guys and I was looking for anything I could do for the Lord. I mean, if there was a convalescent home that wanted someone to speak, I go. I event went to a local mental institution to preach. I'd go anywhere.
"So someone at the church said to me, 'Greg, I did it last week in Riverside. Do you want to do it?' So I came up to Riverside. I didn't know this area at all and began doing this little Bible study and the Lord blessed it. I went back the next week and then the next, and it started growing and none of the other guys really wanted to do it so I continued."
The study was being held at All Saints Episcopalian Church in Riverside and he says that as it grew larger and larger, he said he had "mixed feelings" about becoming the pastor of this fledgling church at the tender age of twenty.
"At the time I thought I was being called to be an evangelist, so I felt I couldn't be the pastor of this church," he explained. "I had long hair, a shoulder length beard, and had the whole hippie persona going. So I was looking for someone to take it over, but no one wanted to, so I just realized at that point that the Lord was calling me to become the pastor.
"So that became one of the first Calvary Chapels outside of Costa Mesa. I believe there was already one in existence pastored by Pastor Chuck Smith Junior which, I believe, was in Twentynine Palms. So this was the first one apart from that and that was many years ago.
"We originally called it Calvary Chapel for the first years and then we changed it to Harvest because I think we need to be careful about not getting hung up about the name of our church. What is important is what happens in our church and that is that the Word of God being taught and the Lord being glorified."
Being the pastor of what is now a mega-church, kept him extremely busy, so I wondered, as we are approaching the 21st annual Harvest Crusade in Southern California (at Angel Stadium, Anaheim, from August 6-8, 2010) how and why it began.
"Well it started back in 1999 and I was doing the Monday night Bible study at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa and the Lord was blessing and hundreds of kids were coming out," he told me. "We were seeing two to three-thousand people accept Christ every year. One day, Pastor Chuck one came to me and said. 'You know Greg, we need to take this to a larger venue.' He then suggested the Pacific Amphitheater and I remember saying to him, 'Wow, that's a pretty big place.' I had the concern that we could fill a venue that large. We were having around 2,000 people on Monday nights, but the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa held between 12,000 or 13,000 people. But Chuck said, in response to my concerns, 'Well Greg, we serve a pretty big God.' I couldn't argue with that, so that was the first time we did one."
Much to Greg's surprise, the services broke all attendance records.
"The next year, we did a few nights at the Amphitheater and then we went to Anaheim Stadium and then the third year we did the whole event in the stadium which has changed names multiple times -- Anaheim Stadium, Edison Field, Angel Stadium. Now it's Angel stadium again, and I prefer that name for obvious reasons.
"So, and we've been at the Angel Stadium every year since then and we've shortened it to a three night event because you know in Angel Stadium you can reach a lot more people then you would in the Amphitheater."
Today, Greg Laurie utilizes an array of modern media technology to expand the reach of the Harvest Crusade.
"It goes out in many ways," he explained. "It's live on the radio; it's videotaped and shown on television at a later date and it is also streamed live on the Internet. In fact, this year we expect to exceed on the Internet our audience that we have in person. We might have well over a 100,000 people on a given weekend in the stadium, but when we go to the web, we'll reach 200,000 who will watch it either live or in archive form. And this is literally all over the world. It really is truly an international event and people more people tune into the one that we do in Southern California than any other crusade we conduct throughout the year."
Then, in the interview, Greg went on to talk about the terrible day, two years ago, when his beloved son Christopher was killed in an auto accident on the 91 freeway. So I asked him how he was dealing with it.
"I have had problems each year during the crusade -- which are really spiritual attacks -- but when my son went to be with the Lord that was an event all unto itself," he said. "To be honest, Dan, this completely altered my life. I mark my life now by two events -- my conversion and my son going to heaven. I now just can't help but see life in a 'before and after' way. Sometimes people will ask me if I am over it yet, and the answer to all people who ask this is 'no.' Really, don't ever ask that question of anyone who has lost a child. You don't get over it -- you get through it!
"It's not as painful today as it was right after it happened, of course, but it's still very difficult and both Cathe and I miss him deeply. We just had the second year anniversary of when Christopher died and it was a hard day for us. But I found the Lord to be faithful. Our pain is deep, but God is deeper and He sustains us, but it's not easy. But still we seek to glorify Him through this.
"It's given me a greater urgency to preach the Gospel; a greater heart to teach the Word of God; a greater sense of the reality of the things that I'm proclaiming. I've always believed what I proclaim and this has never been a profession or a job to me per se -- it's been a calling -- but now, today, I have an even greater intensity to do what I do especially in the area of evangelism."
I then asked Laurie if he had ever questioned his faith after suffering such a painful loss.
"I did question God," he stated. "I said, 'God, why?' Did I ever stop believing in God? No. Did I ever have a lapse in faith? No. Was my faith tested and challenged? Oh yes. But I think when a person says they have lost their faith through a tragedy, I guess I would wonder what kind of faith they had because I think if your faith is real, it will stand the test and actually I think it will get stronger because of it.
"The reality, Dan, is my faith is stronger in God than it was before because it has to be. You know as C.S Lewis said, and I'm loosely paraphrasing what he said in his book about grieving. Lewis said that 'you know you believe certain things but you don't really know until they're tested.' And this has been tested and I've found all the things that I've heard preached and believed are true and so I hang onto those things.
"Sometimes my emotions don't always cooperate with my mind. I believe my heart and I embrace it, but my emotions are reeling at times. But we just submit ourselves to the truth of God's Word and live that way you know and we press forward. There's no easy answer; there's no out of this, but there is the Lord's strength and he has promised that his grace will be sufficient and I have found God's grace to be sufficient."
Greg Laurie then revealed that because of the loss of Christopher, he will be holding a special event on the final night of the Anaheim Harvest Crusade (Sunday, August 8) when he will have as his special guests, Stephen Curtis Chapman, who lost his adopted daughter in a tragic accident, and Dr. James Dobson. The event, he said, is aimed at helping people who are facing tragedy in their own lives and after he and Chapman have shared their moving stories, Laurie will interview Dr. Dobson about how people can deal with heartbreak.
"It will be designed for a person who has lost a loved one or has faced, or is facing a tragedy, or who knows someone who has suffered," he said. "It's a night to look at the real world and say we have hope in Christ and we want to share that hope with you.
"Dr. Dobson has been a voice of reassurance, comfort and encouragement to people over the years on his radio broadcasts and he's going to be with us and I'm going to interview him and we're going to talk about why there is pain and suffering and so forth. And then of course I'll also give a message."
Gregg concluded by asking Christians to bring their non-Christian friends to the Harvest Crusade.
"This is about bringing non-believers to hear the Gospel and we all know non-Christians," he said. "So please prayerfully consider who you could bring that does not know the Lord to the event and let's pray for a great harvest this year that will bring Glory to God."
# # #
For more information on this year's Harvest Crusade in Anaheim, go to: http://www.harvest.org/crusades/2010/southern-california/
Note: Dan Wooding's interview with Greg Laurie will be broadcast this Sunday (August 1, 2010) at 5:00 PM (Pacific Time) on KWVE 107.9 FM in Southern California. If you don't live in the area, you can hear the webcast at www.kwve.com
Dan Wooding would like to thank Robin Frost for
transcribing this interview.
By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST Ministries - Dan
Wooding is an award winning British journalist now
living in Southern California with his wife Norma.
He is the founder and international director of ASSIST
(Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the
ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a
commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington,
DC.
ASSIST News Service (ANS)
PO Box 609
Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609, USA
Web site: www.assistnews.net
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com