Harvest Crusade takes shape as cinematic event

LOS ANGELES — Every year in August, tens of thousands of people fill the seats of Angel Stadium in Anaheim, not for baseball, but for the weekend-long Harvest Crusade.

A tradition for more than three decades, the Southern California evangelistic event, founded by Harvest Christian Fellowship Pastor Greg Laurie and the late pastor Chuck Smith, has attracted millions of people since the ‘90s. It has been described as the last of the big Billy Graham-style crusades in the United States.

Christian music artists entertain the crowds before Laurie shares his message of faith, loss and hope from the ball field. Toward the end, thousands of people every year rush down to the field to accept Jesus Christ.

This year, amid a global pandemic, Harvest Crusade will be different.

Instead of the in-person stadium event, Harvest ministries will stream a cinematic crusade titled “A Rush of Hope,” a film that will be released on Labor Day weekend. It will stream on Harvest’s social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Roku and Apple TV channels.

The movie — created with the Erwin Brothers’ Kingdom Story Company — will feature messages from Laurie

along with outtakes from faith-based films “I Can Only Imagine,” “I Still Believe” and “Woodlawn.” It will also include performances from Jeremy Camp, for KING & COUNTRY and MercyMe.

The film’s trailer opens with Laurie’s voice narrating as he drives an aqua-blue jeep along an empty road in the middle of sun-kissed fields.

“Our life is like a movie. It has a beginning, middle and end. Full of surprises, with twists and turns,” Laurie says in the trailer.

The film is “part movie, part evangelist event,” Laurie told Religion News Service.