Recasting Revival

I love getting the word out about the effort to start new Methodist churches in Kentucky.  Part of doing that involves going to a venerable Methodist institution, The Charge Conference.  Charge Conference is where a church ("charge") presents their leadership for the coming year and addresses basic concerns of the church.  Most importantly, it is a time to get pumped up about the future.  In recent history, we have started having multiple churches come together in "clusters" to save the time of going to each church.  But I have found that when done well, it is a time for a whole bunch of Methodists to get together and be encouraged by the work and the potential.

Thursday night, I had the chance to speak to the Nicholas County Methodist churches, in Carlisle.  I have a personal connection there, because I preached revival in the Rose Hill church and am friends with Rick Sowder at the Headquarters church.  It was great to see some old friends and make some new ones.

Our DS Terry Reffett had regaled me with stories of some of the old pastors... who are still preaching!  One of them I sat with, preaching 60 years! Terry said there would be weeks of revival, with the preachers "preaching their hearts out."  I wonder what that would look like?

What if we had a revival and it kept going?  Terry had a revival in the early 70s that ran for 17 days.  Alfie Grubb, whom I buried this past summer, was converted at a revival that lasted 50+ days.

We often look back at revival and wonder why it doesn't happen so much now.  There is a very simple reason, and it's not just that we are "less spiritual" than before.  Much of it, I think, has to do with entertainment.  What I mean is this: 50 years ago there was no cable or satellite tv.  No internet.  A revival had a social function in addition to its spiritual component. People were more willing to come because everybody had the same blocks of time available.  That is simply not true today.

So on the one hand, we have to find ways to be "revived" in different ways than we did before.

More importantly, we may have to call it something else so we don't get sucked into doing it the same way we did before.  Terry Reffett suggested to me that maybe it's called a "spiritual renewal weekend."

But I have to say, I would love to have some real fireball come in and preach and maybe think it was just a few days but it kept going weeks.

I told everyone at the meeting that Robert Coleman, author of Master Plan of Evangelism is going to come to Morehead and teach a seminar on "The Lifestyle of the Great Commission" on November 9.  One of the old pastors remembered that Dr Coleman had preached a revival in Nicholas County, outside.  There was a bar nearby and Coleman was tearing it up in the sermon and he was so loud and his voice was echoing off the rocks and folks in the bar came out to see what the commotion was.

Lord help us, we are so bland nowadays.