Bumper crop?

June 28, 2007

By Gary Rogers

I’m a pastor, not an evangelist. But I accept speaking invitations on occasion. I recently preached at revival meetings Sunday through Wednesday for friends in Muskogee, Okla. We had a great time. The church is growing, souls are being saved, and God is moving. It was a blessing to be a part of a celebration one rarely sees anymore — a four-night revival.

I know there are people who can remember revivals lasting a week, two weeks, and even longer. Think of the meetings at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Fla., several years ago. Is it a cause for concern we rarely see multiple-night meetings in church today? Should we be worried believers don’t seem to have time or make time to have long-running consecutive nights of church meetings?

Maybe it isn’t the number of nights a revival runs that should monopolize our attention. Maybe it’s the long-term impact on believers’ lives, regardless of how many nights a revival lasts.

Christians who get excited about special meetings, services, speakers or singing groups tend to lose their enthusiasm. They get fired up about that specific meeting or speaker or singer, but when it comes to being faithful to God’s house on a weekly basis it’s a different matter. They’ll run to and fro and fail to be consistent at a local gathering of believers where God can plant them and grow them over time.

Just completing my role as a visiting evangelist reinforces this perspective. People shouted “amen” during my sermons. I sensed there were those who were challenged to get rid of their empty religion and tradition. Every night the altars were full with people responding to the Word and seeking God.

After one service a man told me, “I’ve been an alcoholic and sold drugs in this town for years, and what you said made me think a lot about my need to change my life.”

But will he change?

Everything that happened those four nights was wonderful, but I told all those people goodbye when the meetings were over. Most of them I’ll never see again. I’ll never know if the “amen” people truly took the Word to heart and will make any changes.

I know I can count on my friends, the dedicated pastors of that church, to energetically pursue follow-up. But a lot depends on those people making permanent changes in their lives, with the help of God.

Jesus took note of the different responses people have toward the Word. Take a look at Matthew 13:1-23. Too often, those who hear the Word and enthusiastically embrace God’s truth fall back into destructive lifestyles and relinquish what they once held dear.

I pray the people at that revival and in my church take God’s Word to heart, let it take root, and enjoy a bountiful harvest of blessing in their lives.

“The one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (Matthew 13:23, NIV).

Gary Rogers is senior pastor of First Assembly of God in Coweta, Okla.