Personal Note: I’ve neglected writing recently because we’ve been busy moving. We moved from a house to an apartment. Everything went smoothly, but my wife and I both have aching backs. Moving’s not a good thing for old people.
Recently, Rod Martin, former member of the SBC Executive Committee, published an article about revivals in the Baptist Report. In the article, he fondly remembers the revival meetings of his youth and laments the near disappearance of revivals today. He attributes the decline in revivals to the rise of Calvinistic pastors in the SBC.
I was born in 1949, so I can remember the heyday of revivals in SBC churches in the 1950s and 1960s. In those days, lots of SBC churches had a fall revival, a spring revival, and a summer youth revival. Most revivals lasted for one week, but I’ve heard old-timers talk about two-week meetings. Beyond that, sometimes, when the Lord blessed greatly, the revival would continue as a “protracted meeting.” Many Southern Baptist preachers served as “full-time” evangelists, going from church to church to lead revivals. I also knew full-time music evangelists who led the music in one meeting after another. Most pastors would preach one or two revivals for pastor friends each year, and the freedom to do that was negotiated when they accepted a call to a new church. Another popular thing was simultaneous revivals. The churches in an association or state convention would hold revivals at the same time. Folks of my generation (Baby Boomers) grew up watching Billy Graham evangelistic crusades on television. So, revivals were part of our spiritual DNA. Today, it’s rare to hear of a church holding a revival, though sometimes you hear of a group of churches joining together to sponsor an evangelistic meeting in a town or county. Often those meetings are held in a football stadium.
Why did revival meetings decline in Southern Baptist life? Rod Martin, as I mentioned above, attributes the decline to the increase in the number of Calvinistic pastors in the SBC. Well, it’s certainly true that those pastors do not like revivals, nor do they offer a traditional invitation (altar call) at the end of their worship services. Why not? They cite psychological manipulation by evangelists when they gave the invitation. Personally, I believe the problem of psychological manipulation is overblown. In all the revivals I attended, I only recall two evangelists who did manipulate the congregation. I believe the decline in revivals began before the number of Calvinistic pastors became significant.
Revival meetings declined because people quit coming. In other words, they voted with their feet. I became the interim pastor of a county seat First Baptist Church in 1992. The long-time pastor who had just retired scheduled a revival meeting every fall and spring. I led the music in the last one before he retired. The attendance averaged about 30 people each night, and this in an auditorium that seated 400. Only one lost person attended during the week-long meeting. Thankfully, he did profess faith in Christ. After the meeting, the pastor asked me why people stopped attending revivals. I answered, “Revivals used to be the best show in town, but now they have to compete with ESPN and HBO.” When I became the interim pastor, the deacons asked me if I planned to hold a revival meeting. When I said, no, they exclaimed, “Thank God.” They were just burned out on them.
Could a church sponsor a revival meeting now and have a positive experience? I believe it’s possible. I knew a pastor in Kentucky who would schedule a revival meeting each spring. He would invite a full-time evangelist to preach. Six weeks before the revival meeting, he would offer a personal evangelism training event for his members. After the training, they would do evangelistic visitation for five weeks, leading up to the meeting. Simultaneously, he had prayer teams praying for lost people by name. When the revival meeting began, it was like a harvest time. That pastor always had good attendance and good results. Most years, his church led the state convention in baptisms. So, yes, a revival meeting can still succeed, but it requires careful scheduling and intense preparation.
What are your memories of revival meetings? Are they good or bad or mixed? Should churches resume sponsoring revival meetings? Thom Rainer once said that SBC churches abandoned the revival meeting as an evangelistic method, but they did not replace it with anything. He’s right about that.
