A Ministers’ Spiritual Awakening event is scheduled fort May 18-19 at Faith Baptist Church in Ridgeland.
Steve Scudder, director of missions for Savannah River Baptist Association, said, “Approximately 87 percent of Beaufort and Jasper counties are unchurched and have no relationship with God through Christ. God has moved in incredible ways already in our area, and our churches want to join God in this work. However, we must be prepared to do so. Our two-day ministers’ spiritual awakening is a way the association can help our ministers focus on their own spiritual vitality, to be prepared to be used by God, and to grow the kind of relationship with God they want their congregations to have. We plan to follow up the spiritual awakening with a three-day retreat for ministers in the fall at White Oak Conference Center.
“This is part of a new emphasis within Savannah River Association,” Scudder continued. “We intend to empower God’s people through prayer and spiritual awakening, to engage God’s people in his mission, and to expand God’s people through multiplying disciples and congregations.”
Speaker for the two-day renewal meeting will be Marshall Fagg, a former pastor and now leader of the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s evangelization and missions team.
Dennis Wilkins, retired pastor of First Baptist Church in Bluffton, has been a leader in efforts to organize the event. In his letter to fellow ministers, Wilkins, who also chairs the budget, finance and audit committee of the state convention, said, “This is not an event for your congregation. It is for you and your spouse to join other Savannah River Baptist Association ministers for spiritual awakening and renewal.”
He spoke of the burden he had felt for several years “about the need for a spiritual awakening in the Lowcountry” and that “after a lot of thought” he had come to the conclusion that church revivals and crusades, for all of their potential, seldom result in “genuine, long-lasting spiritual awakening”; that the daily routine of pastors and demands upon their time “leave little time for personal spiritual awakening or to lead the congregation to experience spiritual awakening”; and finally, that “the pastor cannot lead a congregation somewhere he himself has not been.”
Each evening, the event will begin with a light dinner from 5-5:30 p.m., followed immediately by services to conclude by 7 p.m. or, according to Wilkins, “whenever the Holy Spirit is through with us.”