Greg Laurie | |
---|---|
Born | Long Beach, California, U.S. | December 10, 1952
Occupation(s) | Christian pastor, evangelist, author, law enforcement chaplain |
Employer | Harvest Christian Fellowship |
Known for | Harvest Crusades |
Title | Senior Pastor |
Spouse | Cathe Martin (m. 1974) |
Children | 2 |
Website | www.harvest.org |
Greg Laurie (born December 10, 1952) is an American evangelical pastor, evangelist, Christian Nationalist, and author who serves as the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, based in Riverside, California. He also is the founder of Harvest Crusades. Laurie is also the subject of the 2023 film Jesus Revolution , which tells the story of how he converted to Christianity and got his start in ministry in the midst of the Jesus movement.
Greg Laurie was born in Long Beach, California. He was raised by a single mother married seven times total; they moved often, sometimes to vastly different locations such as New Jersey and Hawaii. [1] He worked as a newspaper boy for the Daily Pilot in Orange County, California. [2] Laurie was not raised in the Christian faith or a church environment. In 1970, when Laurie was 17 years old, he became a devout Christian while attending Newport Harbor High School under the ministry of evangelist Lonnie Frisbee, as the Jesus Movement was exploding in Southern California. [3] [2]
In 1973, at the age of 20, under the mentorship of Calvary Chapel pastor Chuck Smith, Laurie was given the opportunity to lead a Bible study of 30 people in Riverside, California. [4] The group quickly grew in size, and that same year, Laurie founded the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, where he still serves as senior pastor. [4]
In 1990, Laurie founded the Harvest Crusades, an organization that hosts large-scale evangelistic events around the U.S. [5]
Laurie serves on the board of directors for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. [6] He is also a chaplain for the Newport Beach Police Department. [2] In 2013, Laurie served as the Honorary Chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force. President Donald Trump selected Pastor Laurie as one of several evangelical church leaders to participate in the National Prayer Service hosted at the Washington National Cathedral following the presidential inauguration of 2017. [7]
In 2017, Greg Laurie organized a movement titled "The Year of Good News". Multiple church leaders signed the letter he penned to initiate the movement. [8] One paragraph of the letter reads, "In a time of fake news, distracting news, divisive news, disorderly news, and, sometimes, depressing news, we—as Christians and as leaders—want to recommit ourselves to making sure that the Good News of Jesus cuts through it all. We call upon Christians in America to make 2017 'The Year of Good News.'" [9]
In 2017, Harvest Christian Fellowship became a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, at the request of Laurie, who considered that the latter has important national and international evangelistic programs. The church maintains its ties with Calvary Chapel. [10]
When all California churches were forced temporarily to shut their doors because of COVID-19, [11] Harvest Christian Fellowship and Greg Laurie started the online church program "Harvest at Home", which swiftly became one of the most-watched internet worship services in America, averaging over 200,000 viewers weekly during the pandemic.
On Palm Sunday 2020, then-president Trump tweeted that he would be watching Harvest at Home, and the webcast saw record viewership that week, with over 1,300,000 people tuning in to watch. [12]
On October 5, 2020, Laurie revealed that he had contracted COVID-19, and released a statement saying, "Unfortunately, the coronavirus has become very politicized. I wish we could all set aside our partisan ideas and pull together to do everything we can to defeat this virus and bring our nation back." [13]
Harvest at Home continues to be one of the most widely watched online church services in America since the pandemic, with average viewership of over 100,000 in 2023.[ citation needed ]
Laurie has written more than 70 books, including The Upside-Down Church (1999, co-authored with David Kopp); this book won a Gold Medallion Book Award in the "Christian ministry" category in 2000. [14]
Laurie's sermons are featured on the syndicated half-hour daily program A New Beginning, [15] broadcast on over 1,100 radio stations worldwide. [16] A New Beginning is also featured as a Christian podcast, available on iTunes. [17] Laurie is also a guest commentator at WorldNetDaily and appears regularly in a weekly television program called GregLaurie.tv on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).
In 2018, he published the autobiographical book Jesus Revolution, which was adapted for the cinema in 2023. [18] [19] The film, also titled Jesus Revolution , is produced by Kingdom Story Company and Lionsgate. It depicts the story of how Laurie and his wife Cathe came to faith during the Jesus Movement in Southern California. [20] [21]
Laurie resides in Newport Beach with his wife, Catherine. The couple had two sons, Christopher and Jonathan, as well as five grandchildren. [22] On July 24, 2008, Christopher was killed at the scene of a 9 a.m. car accident on the eastbound Riverside Freeway west of Serfas Club Drive in Corona, California. He was 33 years old.
Laurie holds two honorary doctorates, from Biola University and from Azusa Pacific University. [23]
Greg Laurie has produced or written six films:
He is working on a seventh documentary, about fame and faith.
The Jesus movement was an evangelical Christian movement that began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s and primarily spread throughout North America, Europe, Central America, Australia and New Zealand, before it subsided in the late 1980s. Members of the movement were called Jesus people or Jesus freaks.
William R. Bright was an American evangelist. In 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles, he founded Campus Crusade for Christ as a ministry for university students. In 1952 he wrote The Four Spiritual Laws. In 1979 he produced the film Jesus.
Cru is an interdenominational Christian parachurch organization. It was founded in 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles by Bill Bright and Vonette Zachary Bright. Since then, Cru has expanded its focus to include a broad range of audiences. In 2020, the organization had 19,000 staff members in 190 countries.
Calvary Chapel is an international association of charismatic evangelical churches, with origins in Pentecostalism. It maintains a number of radio stations around the world and operates many local Calvary Chapel Bible College programs.
John Stephen Piper is an American theologian and pastor in the Reformed Baptist tradition. He is also chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years (1974–1980), before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church (Converge) in Minneapolis for 33 years (1980–2013).
Lonnie Ray Frisbee was an American Charismatic evangelist in the late 1960s and in the 1970s; he was a self-described "seeing prophet". He was known for his hippie appearance. He was notable as a minister and evangelist in the Jesus movement.
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, ordained Southern Baptist minister, and civil rights advocate, whose broadcasts and world tours featuring live sermons became well known in the mid- to late 20th century. Throughout his career, spanning over six decades, Graham rose to prominence as an evangelical Christian figure in the United States and abroad.
David Brandt Berg, also known as King David, Mo, Moses David, Father David, Dad, or Grandpa to followers, was the founder and leader of the cult generally known as the Children of God and subsequently as The Family International. Berg's group, founded in 1968 among the counterculture youth in Southern California, gained notoriety for incorporating sexuality into its spiritual message and recruitment methods. Berg and his organization were accused of a broad range of sexual misconduct, including child sexual abuse.
Anthony Campolo is an American sociologist, Baptist pastor, author, public speaker and former spiritual advisor to U.S. President Bill Clinton. Campolo is known as one of the most influential leaders in the evangelical left and has been a major proponent of progressive thought and reform within the evangelical community. He has also become a leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement, which aims to put emphasis on the teachings of Jesus. Campolo is a popular commentator on religious, political, and social issues, and has been a guest on programs such as The Colbert Report, The Charlie Rose Show, Larry King Live, Nightline, Crossfire, Politically Incorrect and The Hour.
Morris Cerullo was an American Pentecostal evangelist. He traveled extensively around the world for his ministry. He hosted Victory Today, a daily television program, and published more than 80 books.
Timothy James Keller was an American Calvinist pastor, preacher, theologian, and Christian apologist. He was the chairman and co-founder of Redeemer City to City, which trains pastors for service around the world. He was also the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and the author of The New York Times bestselling books The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (2008), Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014), and The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (2008). The prequel for the latter is Making Sense of GOD: An Invitation to the Skeptical (2016).
Harvest Christian Fellowship is a Non-denominational Evangelical multi-site church based in Riverside, California, affiliated with the Calvary Chapel Association.
Charles Ward "Chuck" Smith was an American pastor who founded the Calvary Chapel movement. Beginning with the 25-person Costa Mesa congregation in 1965, Smith's influence now extends to "more than 1,000 churches nationwide and hundreds more overseas", some of which are among the largest churches in the United States. He has been called "one of the most influential figures in modern American Christianity." The founding of Calvary Chapel is depicted in the 2023 film Jesus Revolution, with Smith being portrayed by Kelsey Grammer.
The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church is a 2007 book by theologian Greg Boyd on the relationship between politics and Christianity. Following the book's release, Boyd, who was already a noteworthy theologian before the book's publication, gained national attention after the New York Times published a front page cover article on the book and Boyd's rejection of the religious right. He also discussed the book on The Charlie Rose Show and in the CNN documentary God's Warriors. The book was also discussed widely in publications such as Christianity Today and The Christian Century.
Ed Silvoso is an Argentine New Apostolic Reformation evangelist, author, and documentarian. He founded Harvest Evangelism and the Transform Our World Network, the objective of which is to end worldwide systemic poverty in its four expressions. He was a leader in the Argentine Revival during the 1990s, a pioneer in the spiritual mapping movement, and is a formative figure in the modern transformation movement. Silvoso has hosted conferences, participated in symposiums, provided leadership training, and appeared in the media. He has published six books and produced a documentary library of over forty titles.
Harvest Crusades is an Evangelical Christian organization based in Los Angeles, United States, that organizes evangelistic conferences.
Michael Youssef is an Egyptian-American pastor. He is the senior pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, and the executive president of Leading the Way.
Jesus Revolution is a 2023 American Christian drama film directed by Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle. Based on the autobiographical book of the same name co-written by Greg Laurie, the film follows the teenage Laurie, Christian hippie Lonnie Frisbee, and pastor Chuck Smith as they take part in the Jesus movement in California during the late 1960s. Anna Grace Barlow and Kimberly Williams-Paisley also star.