You can follow in Luis's footsteps.

—Pastor Ray Johnston, Bayside Church

I know personally that there is no Christian leader I would like to be like more than Luis Palau.

—Pastor Ray Johnston, Bayside Church

I want to share a couple of thoughts about how much I have loved and appreciated Luis Palau. For me, Luis Palau was the guy I want to be. The fruits of the Spirit were so evident in his life—I don't know anybody more loving or more joyful. The world is full of people and leaders who love crowds—they just don't like people. Luis was not one of those people.

I've been thinking a little deeper about how we can follow in his footsteps.

Luis had two things that don't go together very often: joy and faithfulness. He was just a fundamentally joyful, Christian. You felt that when he spoke you, felt it at dinners with him, you felt it with him and Pat. These days, Christians are not known for their joy. They're often known for their anger. If we're going to follow Luis and live as he lived— number one is, let's see if we can let God raise our joy levels. The joy of the Lord is still our strength. He was strong because of his joy.

The second thing was faithfulness. He was faithful to His calling to lead people to Christ, which is not even politically correct these days. Luis and I had substantial conversations about that because we have been concerned that the American church hasn't lost its passion for evangelism, it never had it. The American church was started by people in Europe, fleeing religious persecution and they started churches for themselves. And four hundred years later, the average church is still a gathering of people for themselves. Luis was the instrument God used to try to change all that.

I know personally that there is no Christian leader I would like to be like more than Luis Palau. I'm praying that our churches will all wake up and basically get back to our call to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the entire world.