This Isn't Your Grandfather's Crusade: Part 1

I've been thinking about the pro's & con's of crusade evangelism and it's relevance in our culture. Is crusade evangelism dead? Billy Graham preached his last crusade in NYC this past June. Over the years he has been the epitome of crusade evangelism. His organization is still considered the standard bearer and its strategies are still employed by evangelists all over the globe. Rightly or wrongly, many evangelist still think "It works for Billy, so it should work for me." Now that his reign is coming to an end, there are many speculating that crusade evangelism has come to an end also. Sure there are other well known evangelists: Luis Palau doing festivals, Greg Laurie, Reinhard Bonnke the German evangelist and even Billy's successor and son, Franklin Graham. But no one believes any of these preachers are going to fill Billy's shoes, and many believe the whole era of crusade evangelism is over. Even the word 'crusade' has come under attack by many including myself. For some Jewish or Muslim persons, the word evokes memories of the dark times of Christianity when "missionaries" were sent out to lands to wage war and kill in the name of God. The Holy See would grant them an indulgence but I'm betting it didn't get them far with St. Peter. Even amongst current uses of the word, crusade is not used positively. When someone is said to be on a crusade, they are always looked at as an extremist or vigilante. No one likes extremists. They are too, ... well, ... extreme and not tolerant of other viewpoints. People on a crusade are not about diversity unless their crusade is about diversity which just brings up the whole logical flaw / conundrum with the tolerance/diversity camp. So some evangelists have gone to using words like Festival or Encounter to be more friendly. My 5 y/o son Benny came up with his own word: Ingathering. His big sister would go to these big events for Girl Scouts called Ingatherings. When we were having a crusade evangelism event here in our city, he never took the term "Encounter". He always called it the Ingathering. It will never stick, but I like it. Innovative for a 5 year old. So is the crusade really dead? Yes, it is. Yet, no it's not. I think that's the wrong question. Is crusade style evangelism, called by whatever moniker you want to give it, still relevant? I think so and I'll tell you why in the next post.