Evangelist Lee Behnken Hosts
  ‘Family Reunion’ on March 29
“Bringing the family together, I believe there’s going to be a blessing, just like if you bring your family together at Thanksgiving and they all come together. And if you’ve got some brothers that don’t come, there’s some folks missing and then we are not complete.
It’s the same thing with the Body of Christ.”
Lee Behnken grew up Lutheran, ended up being ordained in an evangelical church. But he’s not your average preacher. He has that precious ability to span cultures and Christian faith traditions.

Proof positive is that he preaches every Sunday morning at Phillips CME (African- American) church at 8 AM in the Dayton inner city at the invitation of Rev. Jimmy Washington, pastor. Eight hundred people show up.

Then there’s a Catholic connection. He’s visited and ministered to El Shaddai, a million-strong gathering of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the Philippines. Like Robert E.Webber’s Younger Evangelicals, he has an incarnational approach to Christian mission. On March 29th, he’ll lead an ecumenical prayer and praise gathering, “On Earth as it is in heaven…there is hope in Jesus. A unified Evening of Praise and Worship” at the Nutter Center, which will last for 2 hours, start to finish. Although the service is more evangelization that evangelism, there will be an altar call at the end. Catholics who wish to minister to those who come forward should write the Ecumenical and Evangelization offices:
Lvera@catholiccincinnati.org
Ckneblik@catholiccincinnati.org
We met at Franco’s Italian Ristorante on January 26 in Dayton in the company of Curtis Kneblik, of Catholic Evangelization for the following interview which begins, next, on page 6

Lee Behnken, above, has a warm, homespun ecumenical approach. He his a “family reunion” of 11,000 Christians in a prayer and praise service at Nutter Center, near Wright State University on March 29.