‘Season of Service’
to precede Palau’s
Portland CityFest

By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
   PORTLAND — Reaching souls for Christ will, as always, be the prime goal for Luis Palau when he holds his next major outreach in Portland this August.
But the locally based international evangelist and his team also are very excited about both the social and spiritual signifance of what could happen during the upcoming five months prior to his Portland Cityfest.
   So are officials of the city and several neighboring cities, who last month helped Palau formally announce a “Season of Service” that could see 15,000 or more volunteers blessing the metro area.
  “Brothers and sisters, the Lord wants us to dream great dreams,” Palau told hundreds of pastors who attended an informational meeting Feb. 12 at Cedar Mill Bible Church about this year’s efforts. “We also need to dream great dreams for the city ... Together we say, we want greater Portland and Vancouver to hear the voice of God!”
   And what better way for that voice to be “heard,” according to the Palau team, than through the compassionate, willing efforts of God’s people, working on a wide, wide range of community service projects locally.
   The “Season of Service” is an experiment. Nothing like it has previously been attempted in any of Palau’s events.
   But it is also a carefully thought-out effort that has already garnered the enthusiastic endorsement of local officials, including Portland Mayor Tom Potter, City Commissioners Erik Sten and Sam Adams, Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake, Hillsboro Mayor Tom Hughes, Gresham Mayor Shane Bemis and Vancouver, Wash. Mayor Royce Pollard.
   Many of the leaders or their representatives were present at the official announcement. Because Potter was out of the country, the Portland city goverment was represented by Sten and Adams.
   Sten has worked for months with the Palau team on how more volunteers might help with the city’s efforts to combat homelessness. “I think I’m looking right now at enough just in this room to end this scourge of homelessness in our community,” he told the crowd that filled the church’s sanctuary.
   Adams read a formal proclamation by Potter endorsing the Season of Service, and affirmed his own pleasure at seeing so many people ready to address the area’s serious needs.
  “I want to acknowledge the amazing sense of compassion in this room,” Adams said.
   With the theme “Love-Serve-Celebrate,” the volunteers from the area’s diverse faith community will work on projects addressing not only the critical needs of the homeless, but also the hungry, the medically uninsured, the impoverished, the environment and the public schools. Included will be a pilot project created in cooperation with Potter’s office called The Home Again Mentoring Program, which will focus on bringing together homeless families with counselor/mentors recruited from area churches.
   Kevin Palau, Palau’s son and vice president of Luis Palau Association, said a noteworthy aspect of the Season of Service is that

 it will build on what many churches already are doing.
“We’re not trying to imply that this is some new invention, and that there is nothing already going on,” he said.
John Bishop, pastor of the fast-growing Living Hope Church in Vancouver, termed the effort “historic.”
“We will remember that, with this, we put aside things that tend to divide, and said that we want our city to be better,” he said.
Alan Hotchkiss, national director of church and community partnerships for the Palau team, explained that local residents Jim Pringle and Rik Skopil have been assigned to coordinate the Season of Service.
Capping off the months of community service will be Portland CityFest, staged at Tom McCall Waterfront Park Friday and Saturday, Aug. 22 and 23.
The free, family-friendly event will include top musical artists, a family fun zone, action sports, and free health and family services. The last Luis Palau festival in Portland was held in 2000, when more than 140,000 attended over two days.
A Feb. 16 editorial in The Oregonian lauded Palau’s Season of Service project, and noted that because of it, he’s been able to draw on the support of such secular leaders as Portland’s city officials and people not normally associated with Christian revivals.
Commending the Season of Service project as a sincere effort to serve local needs, The Oregonian concluded that Palau’s moral authority puts him in a unique position to harness the area’s pride of place and spirit of good will
For more information on the project and the festival, go to http://pastors.portlandcityfest.com or phone the Palau offices at 503-614-1500.