Skip to main content

Revival, Cross Country Emmaus, 1990-1997 (Part 1)

I've been trying to write this article for about two weeks. It's taken so long because I wanted to explain the Walk To Emmaus, what it was all about, and how it was uniquely conservative, evangelical, and spirit-filled in the days God used it in my life. One reason is that some will dismiss it since its roots are in the United Methodist Church. They will have a "can anything good come out of Nazareth" opinion. Another is that I have sponsored people on a couple of other Walks in the last few years in this area and found them to be more liberal and less impactful.

Well, I'm not going to worry about any of that. I'm still going to do this thing in two parts. The first is the facts about this thing in those days. The second is what I experienced, the lives I saw that were changed. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do with these articles. I'm going to tell about a several-year move of God that was an ongoing revival experience for me. God didn't save me on a Walk To Emmaus. God delivered, revived, and overwhelmed me with the reality of His sovereign love for me on a walk and through the Cross Country and, to a lesser degree, the Big Country Emmaus communities in those years.

A Walk is a long weekend retreat for either men or women. There are fifteen talks, given mainly by the laity but five by the clergy. About six men or women are grouped into tables in which they interact over the talks and other assignments. They form a small group. There are about 40 team members and about 40 pilgrims (participants). All team members have already been on a walk.

Following are the elements of those walks that I believe were instrumental in the move of God. 1) Prayer Cover - Everything was bathed in prayer from the first preparatory meeting through an around-the-clock prayer vigil during the retreat, 2) Agape Love - People in the community do hundreds of hours of sacrificial service before, during, and after a walk to demonstrate the love of God to the pilgrims, 3) God's Word - It saturates the talks, the worship services, and the table talk, 4) Sacrificial Preparation - Every talk is prepared, presented, and critiqued before the weekend and the team spends hours and hours preparing themselves to serve on the weekend, 5) Worship - The weekend is filled with worship, 6) God Glorifying - This is not a self-help weekend, but an all-out effort to move every pilgrim to surrender their life to the service of Christ, 7) Community - Those who have already been, from many different denominational backgrounds, continue to worship and work together in order to bless the pilgrims and to encourage each of them to be faithful to God and their church in the days after the event. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huge Opportunity To Reach Sabine Parish Families With Children

There are many families with children in Sabine Parish. There are 4,141 students in Sabine Parish schools, 6,353 under the age of 18, 29% of the parish population, and approximately 3,000 households with children. So, there are plenty of unreached families with children to reach. There are many churches in Sabine Parish. 70 churches. 1 church for every 313 people. Abilene, Texas brags about the highest per capita churches at 1 for every 563. The national average is 1 for every 1015. We beat the averages. So, we don't need more churches in Sabine Parish, but we do need more biblically sound churches, filled and controlled by God's Spirit, who are committed to God's mission, and who train their members to reach the unreached in our parish. There are far fewer people attending church in Sabine Parish. 7,000 people attend church, between 3,500 and 5,000 on any given Sunday. That attendance is half what it was 25 years ago. So, we need to make disciples, not just converts. Disc
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the Southern Baptist Convention right to oppose IVF?

Given the approval of a Southern Baptist resolution ( read the resolution here ) regarding IVF and the mass of media and social commentary regarding that resolution,  I wanted to clarify my stance as the pastor of a local church in partnership with the SBC.  At the very least, this is important for the people I serve with as pastor at  Calvary .  IVF is a reproductive process whereby the ova (egg) of a woman is combined with the sperm of a man outside the womb to form a viable human embryo that is then implanted in the womb. The method is used for people who have difficulty achieving pregnancy. According to  HHS , in 2021, 2.3% of children born were conceived utilizing some form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) like IVF: 86,146 children in this country.  Why would the SBC resolve to oppose the birth of children?   Did the SBC resolve to ban IVF?  The answer to the second question is no. The SBC did not outright oppose it but urged Southern Baptists to utilize ART procedures th
Post a Comment
Read more

Why are some churches full and some empty?

This is not a full analysis of growing and shrinking churches. It's just something I've thought about as I've listened to people talk and listened to myself think about the size of churches. I heard a Revivalist say the Spirit of God was clearly moving because the church was packed and the altar full. I listened to another when there were only a few that week at the church’s revival meetings say, “Well, we don’t have many, so God must be getting’ rid of the weeds so the wheat can grow. The real revival is just around the corner.” A Reformed preacher said his church was growing because the elect were hungry for the true gospel, and the preaching of correct doctrine was bringing them. Another Reformer told me he didn’t care that his congregation had shrunk. He would rather pastor a small group of the regenerated rather than a church full of the unregenerate. It seems that regardless of theological bent, we need to explain the numbers. A good shepherd will spend his days t
Post a Comment
Read more