Updated Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Speakers issue call for revival at Pastors Conference

From wire reports

INDIANAPOLIS - A host of speakers in rain-drenched Indianapolis called for God to "rain down" revival upon America during the 2008 Pastor's Conference, held prior to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

Rallying around the theme, "Prepare for Rain," speakers began by urging pastors to renew their commitment to prayer and get their own spiritual lives in order. Tom Elliff used an analogy from the Oklahoma land rush to describe what can happen even to pastors who fail to address sin in their own lives.

In Oklahoma, Sooners looked across the land and thought "instant farm" as they anticipated the rush to stake their claims to the land, Elliff said. But they discovered ground, matted down with prairie grass, so hard it had to be broken up with an ax.

Like Oklahoma sod, the hearts of pastors can be marked by hardness, become impervious to God's word, show stubborn resistance, be unfruitful and remain asleep through every season, Elliff warned.

"A heart like fallow ground will take a lot of effort," he said. "What's God going to have to do to get our attention?"

Johnny Hunt, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Ga., noted 90 percent of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) churches are in decline.

Hunt, who later was elected SBC president during the annual meeting, cited research that suggested 50 percent of SBC churches existing today will have padlocks on their doors by 2030. His own church had declined two years before Hunt took six weeks off for reading and renewal last year, he said.

During his time off, Hunt said God repeated three things to him over and over again: No. 1, you need to go back and pray more aggressively. "No. 2, He challenged me to witness more intentionally. I wrote down three names in the front of my Bible" who needed to be won to Christ.

"I flat went after them!" he said. "No. 3, God challenged me to lead not only by exhortation ... but we are to lead by emulation," Hunt said. "I've got not only to tell them, I've got to show them.

"You know what happened? We increased by 15 percent in Bible study, increased by 15 percent in worship," he said. "There's only one thing worse than our convention being on a slide, and that is that we don't give a holy rip. ... We don't need a better strategy; we need a touch from God."

Several speakers issued a call to revival. But Jimmy Draper, president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tenn., admitted the topic of revival is very hard for him. "We have not seen revival so I know very little about it."

Draper said there is a lack of passion for Christ in churches today. "Complacency surrounds our services. Deadness prevails. There is no fire in the altar. Our churches flounder in apathy while the world plunges deeper into sin."

The former SBC president noted that despite better training and resources, Southern Baptists baptized fewer people last year (346,000) than they did in 1950 (376,000) when the convention had only 6 million members. Southern Baptists are reaching fewer people for Christ because "we don't see the world through the eyes of Jesus who died for them. We don't win the lost because we don't like them."

Draper said there is no explanation for genuine revival. "Revival comes from God and leads to God," he said. Revival is a great movement of God "that cannot be explained by anything that we do. It is an extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit."

Conditions are right for revival, Draper said, citing the evil, spiritual decline, and apathy in the churches that are found today. "It is in times like these that God sends revival," Draper said.

He warned of denominational decline, according to an EthicsDaily article.

"We have reached a place that our spiritual forefathers feared," said Draper, who served as SBC president in 1983 and 1984, the early years of a leadership dynasty commonly called the "conservative resurgence."

But Draper said those reforms did nothing to make Southern Baptists more effective at reaching people with the gospel message.

"We are a strong, prominent denomination," Draper said. "We have great, creative, effective, excellent institutions. We have the finest resources, the finest materials, the greatest creativity, the finest technology that we've ever had."

Despite all that, Draper said, last year SBC churches reported the fewest baptisms since 1987.

"We need to admit that the problem with America today is not the government or the politicians," Draper said. "It is not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. It's not the senators or representatives. The problem is not the educational system or the economy. It's not the liberals or the abortionists. The problem lies with us."

"We conservatives claim to have the truth and we think we are rich in spiritual position and power, but yet we are cold, complacent, impotent and unattractive, and irrelevant to the world," Draper said. "I hate to say it, but we are not plateaued. We're not even just declining. We're in a free fall."

During the two-day conference, several other pastors and leaders spoke, including: Daniel Simmons, senior pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Ga.; Ed Litton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of North Mobile, in Saraland, Ala.; George Harris, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Kerrville, Texas; Hayes Wicker, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Naples, Fla.; Alan Day, senior pastor of Edmond's First Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla.; Southern Baptist evangelist Bill Stafford of Chattanooga, Tenn; James McDonald, senior pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Rolling Meadows, Ill.; Tony Dungy, Indianapolis Colts coach; Charles Lowery, president and CEO of Lowery Institute for Excellence in Lindale, Texas; Kerry Shook, senior pastor of Fellowship of the Woodlands, Woodland, Texas; and Jay Strack, president of the Jay Strack Association, Orlando, Fla.

During the business session of the Pastor's Conference, Ed Litton, senior pastor of First Baptist North Mobile in Mobile, Ala., was elected president, succeeding Michael Catt, senior pastor of Sherwood Baptist Church, Albany, Ga.

Other officers include Bruce Schmidt, pastor of Lamar Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, vice president, and James Peoples, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Keystone Heights, Fla., secretary-treasurer.

(EDITOR'S NOTE - Contributing to this report were Lonnie Wilkey, Baptist and Reflector Tennessee; Bill Webb, Word and Way Missouri; Jennifer Rash and Grace Thornton, The Alabama Baptist; and Jim White, Religious Herald Virginia.)