Luis Palau, Lee Strobel to Host Conference for Next Generation Evangelists

By Jessica Martinez, CP Reporter Sunday, August 18, 2013

Renowned evangelist Luis Palau, known for his massive evangelistic festivals, will host a small-scale event for a change, in Portland, Ore., next week with the purpose of training over 150 up-and-coming evangelists who are eager to create a platform and will benefit from Palau's decades of experience in leading international evangelistic events.

Palau will lead the Connect Conference on August 19-21 alongside atheist-turned-Christian and New York Times bestselling author, Lee Strobel. The conference is part of a larger effort within the Luis Palau Association called Alliance Ministries, which serves evangelist members through mentoring, equipping and mobilizing them throughout the world.

"For 50 years, dad's passion and our ministry's mission has been to win as many people as possible to Jesus Christ," said Kevin Palau, Palau's son and LPA president, in a statement. "We realized we would be more effective in accomplishing that mission if we would affirm and bless other evangelists."

In addition to Palau and Strobel, evangelists Scott Dawson, Nick Hall, York Moore and others will be on hand for workshops on ministry development, collaboration, financial accountability, fundraising, technology, marketing, social media, and message contextualization. Attendees will also have the opportunity to learn about the personal life of an evangelist and how to balance family, marriage and an evangelistic career.

Alliance Ministries' efforts to equip the next generation of preachers also embraces the motto, "one message, many expressions" within its members who use unusual ministry methods such as skateboarding, surfing,snowboarding, music, break dancing and spoken word to spread the gospel.

"We deeply appreciate the phenomenal openness and encouragement that flows from Alliance Ministries. We have tried to emulate that spirit of cooperation and unity when other ministries approach us for advice and assistance," said evangelist Steve Wingfield,a scheduled speaker for the event, in a statement.

Connect Conference is just one of many events aimed to reach across several ministries to collaborate in creating a large-scale evangelistic impact, which has opened doors of opportunity for earnest preachers.

"I thank God for the vision of Luis Palau to mentor younger evangelists like myself, and to give us a platform to share Jesus Christ around the world. I couldn't have done it without him," said evangelist Jose Zayas, in a statement.