Luis Palau Speaks to Over 5000 in Springfield

One of 5000 enhusiastic listeners to Luis Palau shows his approval of the famed evangelist.

By Izzy Lyman
May 21, 2001

The Luis Palau Festival, two days of family-oriented celebrations of “Great Music and Good News,” attracted over 5000 people to the Springfield Civic Center on Friday and Saturday nights.

The festival, presented by the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, had the support of 200 local churches and area businesses. The event was heavily advertised throughout western Massachusetts via lawn signs, billboards, and bumper stickers. “The signs were everywhere,” noted Donna Kelley, a college professor who lives in Amherst.

The Friday-night audience listened attentively to a message that was straightforward and simple: God loves you and has a plan for your life.

“He has a plan for the little guy and the big guy in town,” said Palau.

Palau explained that the plan involved repentance - asking God to forgive one’s sins. “We believe that when Christ died on the cross he took the sins of the world away forever,” he said. “God loves you no matter what you’ve done.”

The lively evangelist also encouraged the many young people in the crowd to “remember your creator in the days of your youth” and pursue chastity before marriage. Quoting from the New Testament, he posed a rhetorical question, “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of God?”

Palau concluded his remarks by asking the audience to pray along with him, and confess, in English or Spanish, that “Jesus is Lord.”

“Oh, God, my father,” prayed Palau, “you are a good God. You made me in my mother’s womb, and I will love you.” Following the custom that is a staple of religious revivals, Palau invited members of the audience who were making a first-time commitment to Christianity to “go forward” and talk to a counselor. The scores of counselors – who were as young as Derryl Gibbs, 15, of Springfield and as seasoned as Dr. Gregory Handel, an Amherst psychologist – had reading materials and words of advice for the new converts who came to the front of the auditorium.

Craig Chastain, the director of public relations for the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association, said that 264 people committed their lives to Christ on Friday night and over 300 on Saturday night. He was pleased by the welcome that the Palau team experienced.

“[It is] hard to know what to expect when you come to a new city, but we were ecstatic … the energy was there,” said Chastain. While admission to the event was free, the cost of a festival can range from $300,000 to $800,000, depending on the location, length, currency rates, and so on.

The Palau festivals will resume throughout May and June in Connecticut. Dr. Palau, 66, is a native of Argentina whose ministry is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. He has been dubbed by the Wall Street Journal as “the Billy Graham of everywhere.” He has traveled worldwide speaking to more than 14 million people, including heads of state and British royal family members. He is the author of Where is God When Bad Things Happen?- Finding Solace in Times of Trouble.