I might be revealing something about my age by even bringing up the question that I am posing here, but whatever happened to revivals? It used to be – and I’m not talking about too many years ago either – that Baptists and other churches actually believed their members needed to attend revival services occasionally, because pastors would sense a decline in the spiritual temperatures of their congregations and they would admit that they needed help and would call in another pastor or an evangelist to come in and hold a series of meetings called revivals. It was generally understood that revivals were not a form of outreach to win the lost, but rather an effort to rekindle church members’ desires to be better Christians, to repent of their sins, and to evangelize.
I know that there are a few churches today that might not currently need this kind of Holy Spirit recharging, because they are seeing people get saved in their churches on a regular basis and they know that their prayers are being answered and they are in an ongoing spirit of revival. But for most churches, I do not believe that this is the case and I believe that pastors should reconsider the importance of revivals.
The benefits are eternal: Christians come to realize that they need to improve their walk with the Lord. And, yes, the unchurched do get saved in revivals, too. I’m just 52, but I have been in revivals where I have seen grown men grab hold of the backs of their pews and their arms would quiver as they would try to resist the calling of the Holy Spirit for them to repent and believe. I have seen this in Southern Baptist churches, and we can see it again.
Naturally, I am fond of revivals, because I was saved at one when I was seven years old at Oakwood Baptist Church in Anderson. So, please, we mustn’t let this opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work in our people die out just because we are in “a more modern age.”
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