Millions of people around the world have risen from a chair, in a park or a packed stadium, to respond to Luis Palau’s direct invitation: to accept Jesus Christ. Few evangelists of the twentieth century preached in person to so many people, in so many countries, as this Argentine who made his home in Portland, Oregon.
Born on November 27, 1934, in Ingeniero Maschwitz, near Buenos Aires, Palau was the oldest of seven siblings, with five sisters and one brother. His father’s death, when he was 10 years old, left the family in financial hardship and forced him to leave the boarding school where he studied so he could support the household, working at a bank in Cordoba.
At age 12, at a summer camp, he gave his life to Christ. While still a teenager, he heard a Billy Graham sermon on the radio; the experience shaped the path he would take as an evangelist. He began preaching on street corners and had a Christian radio program at age 19.
In 1960 he moved to the United States at the invitation of pastor Ray Stedman and studied at Multnomah School of the Bible, in Portland. There he met Patricia Scofield, whom he married in 1961. After years serving as Billy Graham’s interpreter and as a missionary in Latin America, he received initial support from Graham to start his own ministry, in 1970.
In 1978 he founded the evangelistic association that would bear his name. Over the following decades, he led more than 500 campaigns in more than 80 countries, among them one of the first public stadium preaching events in the newly opened Soviet Union, in 1991. Together with his children, he transformed the old-style crusades into urban festivals, combining music, community outreach, and preaching.
Not everything in his journey was free of misjudgment. During Guatemala’s evangelical centennial, in 1982, Palau stood alongside General Efrain Rios Montt at a large public service, and in 1983 he even publicly praised him as a model of a Christian president. Years later, Guatemala’s courts would convict Rios Montt of genocide against the Maya indigenous population, committed during his government. The episode is remembered as a point of political discernment the evangelist lacked.
Palau himself later acknowledged the cost of the road: over 57 years of marriage, he spent roughly 15 years traveling away from Patricia and their four children. Even while already facing advanced-stage lung cancer, he kept the same enthusiasm for the gospel to the very last months.
He died on March 11, 2021, in Portland, at age 86, with his family by his side. His children carried the ministry forward, and the evangelistic festival model he helped create continues to inspire preachers to bring the gospel to the public squares of cities.