By Brian Blackwell, Message Staff Writer
JENA – The Harvest is coming to LaSalle Parish and churches from the LaSalle Baptist Association with some congregations from other denominations are praying for a bumper crop of souls.
“Tomorrow’s Hope GO TELL Crusade” will be held Sept. 23-26 at Jena High School gymnasium with Rick Gage, founder of GO TELL Crusades in Duluth, Georgia, and Scott Camp, founder of Scott Camp Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas, bringing Gospel messages and vocalists, as well as an area choir, sharing about Christ through music.
Evangelist Scott Camp
“We as the Christian community have the only hope for man,” said crusade chairman Wayne Davis. “There is a large segment of our population that doesn’t even know there is hope. You can see the hopelessness on their face. But those in our parish who know Christ definitely have the hope of Jesus that we will share with them throughout the crusade, and well after.”
The crusade is part of the statewide Harvest campaign to “pray for every home and share with every person” in Louisiana through the end of 2018.
Nearly 900 of 1,650 Louisiana Baptist churches have signed up to participate in concentrated prayer and soul-winning activities such as multi-church crusades, door-to-door outreach, one-on-one evangelism, single-church revivals and other activities which leverage compassion ministries to share about the love of Christ.
Davis emphasized that for such a harvest to take place during the area-wide outreach effort, prayer must be a central activity. He told the Baptist Message that churches are using a prayer calendar to concentrate every day on a different emphasis during the month leading up to the crusade.
“Prayer is the absolute key component to God moving at the crusade,” Davis said. “Our emphasis is not on having a revival for churches, though we certainly believe those Christians who come will see revival happen in their own lives. But our goal is to carry the Gospel to the lost.”
Gage said he is anticipating a mighty move of God, especially among youth within the community.
Pre-crusade rallies are scheduled Sept. 19, 6 p.m., at the First Baptist Church in Jena and Sept. 20, 6:30 p.m., at the First Baptist Church in Tullos.
“We’re praying this evangelistic outreach will have a huge impact on young people in LaSalle Parish,” Gage said. “Having these two rallies will help motivate and encourage the students to use this outreach to bring their lost classmates and family members to the nightly services we will have the following week. If we can spark a revival in the hearts of the young people, there’s no telling what God will do to in the rest of the parish.”
For more information on Tomorrow’s Hope GO TELL Crusade, visit lasalleshope.org.
