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Innovative Evangelist Conference Holds Meetings In Pacific Northwest
By: Aaron Taylor
EP News---
On Nov. 10-13, more than 350 national and international evangelists gathered in Portland, Ore., to attend the Innovative Evangelism Conference. The conference was organized by the Next Generation Alliance, a ministry of the Luis Palau Association. Luis Palau is famous for attracting hundreds of thousands of people in cities across America and around the world to his “festival events,” pioneering what has now become known as “festival evangelism.”
The first night of the event brought about 1,000 people from the community for a free Matt Redman concert. Although Redman is well known around the world for his contemporary worship songs such as “Blessed Be Your Name” and “The Heart of Worship,” few people know that Redman was converted at a Luis Palau event in London when he was 10 years old. As a missionary/evangelist attending the event, Redman’s presence, followed by an exhortation from Luis Palau, served as an inspiring example that mass evangelism does work.
The following day included workshops exploring topics like “Guerilla Evangelism,” “How to Shake a City,” and “How to Effectively use Extreme Sports for Outreach.” Dinesh D’Souza was the headline speaker in the evening. The renowned apologist was named one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers by The New York Times Magazine and is best known for his books What’s So Great About Christianity and Letters to a Young Conservative. D’Souza spoke to a crowd of well over a thousand people about how to defend the Christian faith from the “New Atheists” -- people like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.
On the final day, the headline speaker was Miles McPherson, a former NFL star turned pastor/evangelist. McPherson wowed the audience with humorous examples about how some of his smaller teammates used to “talk trash” to guys twice their size, even after being knocked down. McPherson’s point was that while the Devil tries to intimidate evangelists by knocking them down, evangelists should always be on the offensive. A striking feature of McPherson’s presentation was his emphasis on the elite nature of the evangelist’s calling and how those attending the conference were called to a difficult task that few are willing and able to do.
(11/17/2009)
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