Simon Barnes and Charlie Krueger of the American Bible Society and Pilgrim presented the award to Gage at the GO TELL Camp held last week in Toccoa, Georgia.
"It is an honor to receive this award from the American Bible Society and my dear friend Bo Pilgrim. The Word of God and evangelism are the two driving forces behind the ministries of GO TELL," said Gage.
Now in its 22nd year, Gage’s GO TELL Camps have trained more than 90,000 teens and leaders in evangelism. Last year, 2,467 students and leaders from 110 churches in 16 states participated in the summer camps, resulting in more than 1,000 spiritual decisions for Christ.
In addition to his summer camp and missions ministry, Gage, a former college football coach turned evangelist, has spent the last two decades filling high school stadiums through crusades in small communities throughout America. Using Billy Graham’s strategy, local churches assist in organizing and providing follow-up ministry.
The criteria for the Pilgrim Award include:
- To honor lives dedicated to providing biblically-based teaching and the impact it creates.
- To recognize individuals whose contributions to Bible literacy and scripture proclamation have made a Kingdom difference.
- To honor a lifelong commitment to the communication and application of the Bible and to having a devotion to seeing lives transformed by it.
- To make the Bible personal, understandable and relevant in the lives of people everywhere.
- To motivate fellow Christians to spread the scriptures.
- To inspire generations of Christians with a passion for reading and applying God's Word to their lives.
- To implant the Scriptures into the hearts, minds and lives of both believers and non-believers.
- To share, on a personal level, one’s own faith with others and to instruct them about how to become a Christian and apply Christian faith practices to their daily lives.
- To serve as an example to others how to be a Christian businessman and to actually practice what is being preached.
- To publicly stand up as a crusader for Christ.
- To be willing to continue, year after year, to publicly evangelize and promote God’s Word and to share it with the world.
