c. 1996 Religion News Service
CHICAGO (RNS)-It is a wintry Palm Sunday in the Windy City, where Portland’s Luis Palau-the greatest evangelist America has never heard of-stands at the site where Mrs. O’Leary’s cow sparked the Chicago Fire 125 years ago.
Palau came here to ignite another type of fire, a citywide spiritual awakening, followed by a national religious revival. With the eyes of faith, he sees it spread by the power of the resurrected Jesus and the leather-bound Bible he clutches in his left hand.
The 61-year-old son of Argentina, looking distinguished in a gray topcoat highlighting his gray hair, surveys a crowd of fellow believers and smiles.
He is ready, and so are they.
“The city will say you are crazy, and they are probably right,” Palau says with a slight accent. “Anyone who will sit here in this bitter cold in the name of Jesus is crazy in the right sense.
“But out of Chicago, of all places, America is going to be surprised.”
This is the launch of “Say Yes, Chicago,” a $4 million, two-month,bilingual campaign supported by 1,750 Illinois churches, about one-third of them minority congregations. With it, “the Billy Graham of Latin America” hopes to position himself to become the premier crusade evangelist in the United States.
Graham, 77, is fading, and now it is Palau’s turn. The Chicago campaign is pivotal.
“It’s as if all my life I’ve waited for this moment in the states,” Palau said recently in his Portland office. “That’s a frightening statement, but it’s true. We want an entire city, Chicago, to pay attention to the resurrected Christ, who is alive.”
With $4 million, Palau could have expanded his computer Web site or put himself on a major cable network. But Palau isn’t a televangelist. He is a crusade evangelist.
He preaches the Gospel the old-fashioned way, earning salvations with a take-it-to-the-city, come-to-the-altar approach. This, he hopes, will make Jesus as talked about as Michael Jordan.
It will be the longest and most ambitious campaign Palau has ever launched,and his defining moment, thrusting him, finally, into the American spotlight,says evangelism expert Keith J. Hardman, a professor at Ursimus College in Pennsylvania.
Hardman is the biographer of Charles Finney, an early 19th-century evangelist called the father of modern revivalism. Hardman also has written a book,“Seasons of Refreshing,” on the history of revivals in America.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” says Hardman. “Maybe it’s a sociological thing. But we seem to have room in the nation’s consciousness for only one evangelist at a time … I think when Graham fades completely,Palau will come to the fore.”
Throughout American history, the top evangelists have been animated by the belief that the message of salvation through faith in Jesus not only can thaw the spiritually frozen but also can reshape society. They claim such revivals contributed to the abolition of slavery, the prohibition of alcohol and the Protestant work ethic.
Unlike Roman Catholics, who believe that salvation is a process beginning with infant baptism, these preachers say it is a moment of grace, when a new believer makes a “decision for Christ.”
Those decisions are what evangelistic crusades are all about. In 28 years of preaching, Palau’s team has counted 635,694 people who filled out a card as a public sign of their decision.
Most were south of the border, where Palau’s daily radio programs in Spanish have helped make him a household name.
When Palau arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, last month, a mob of television and newspaper reporters greeted him at the airport, asking when God would rescue their economically struggling nation. Palau attracted more than 90,000 to three rallies at National Stadium.
When an offering was taken, Hondurans contributed an average of 15 cents a person. The minimum wage there is $1.60 a day.
“It would be so easy to say, `Let some native-born American take America. I’ll stick with Latin America, where I’m loved to death. I’ll just concentrate there,” says Palau. “But I have this burden for the U.S.A.
“I hope that Americans will see that, despite my name, I speak English. Yes, I’m Latin-born. But I am an American. And I hope they say, `Maybe this guy could lead us to revival. And maybe we could support him financially.’ ”
Of the $4 million being spent on the Chicago crusade, $2 million comes from Palau’s Portland-based Luis Palau Evangelistic Association. The rest comes from “Say Yes, Chicago,” a separate organization that grew out of the group of 500 Chicago churches that first invited Palau in December 1994.
About 60 percent of that budget has been raised, says Kevin Palau, Luis Palau’s son and the vice president of crusade ministries. Donations taken at the crusade will help make up the difference.
Palau’s salary is set at $75,000, with the organization’s finances audited by the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, according to Palau spokesmen.
“If no one showed up, or 10 million people came, it wouldn’t make a penny’s worth of difference to Luis Palau or Luis Palau’s Portland organization,” says Kevin Palau, sitting in the crusade’s bustling Chicago office.
His father, Kevin Palau says, is motivated by changing lives, one person at a time. His sermons are filled with anecdotes of people who defeat alcoholism, who overcome years of emotional trauma from sexual abuse, who rise from poverty through hard work and God’s blessing, all after making decisions for Christ.
Over the next six weeks, Palau is expected to preach to 300,000 to 500,000 people.
The goal is to link new believers with local churches. No scholarly research has been done to see if whether that has been achieved, but Palau’s organization says of those making a crusade commitment, 54 percent in Argentina, 73 percent in Hong Kong and 78 percent in London became part of a local congregation.
Palau presents Jesus as the only way to heaven. Salvation is a one-time decision based on faith instead of a lifetime process determined by good deeds or intentions. If that sounds dogmatic or judgmental, Palau doesn’t apologize.
“It’s like we have a cure for cancer,” he says. “Are we going to keep it to ourselves? We found a cure for AIDS. Are we just going to keep it to ourselves?
“We found a cure for evil and sin. Are we going to keep it to ourselves? No. It is selfishness in the nth degree to keep it to yourself because of the risk of being considered an extremist.”
Last year in Miami, Palau drew 75,000 to his crusade, his largest American effort yet. But Chicago is his U.S.A. coming-out party.
Some day, Palau hopes to evangelize New York, as Graham has done five times, but first Palau must receive an invitation, as he did in Chicago.
“I go to the big cities because they’re big,” says Palau. “They have lots of people. The whole point of bringing the message of Christ is to touch a lot of people.”
This brings Palau to the site where Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern. It is the crusade’s ceremonial kickoff outside the Chicago Fire Academy and has attracted only 150 in the blustery 32-degree weather.
The wind blows out candles held by the faithful. The donkey that is supposed to carry a robed Jesus through a canopy of hand-held palm branches won’t budge, despite repeated urgings.
Palau’s wife of 35 years, Patricia, scurries to the comfort of a nearby heated car. Others stay to hear Palau.
In the next two months, he will preach more than 50 times, to considerably larger crowds.
“It’s going to happen,” Nancy Yukich tells Palau after his sermon.
For 15 years, Yukich and a small group of Chicago prayer warriors have been gathering twice a week, asking for “a move of the Holy Spirit” that will transform their city. They think this is it.
Palau, clasping his hands around hers, nods in agreement.
“We’ll light the fire,” he says.
MJP END O’KEEFE
