Old Time Religion

When I was growing up in South Georgia, any church worth its salt had at least one revival each year.  These revivals were not the two night version, but more likely to run from Sunday night to Friday night.  And, while the tradition was more prevalent in the rural areas, most urban churches got on board as well.  My first appointment was a three church charge and the first summer I was there, each church had a week long revival and expected their greenhorn preacher with an empty sermon barrel to preach them!

Somewhere along the way the revival tradition started shortening the days allotted for this special time of evangelistic services until it finally simply disappeared from the ecclesiastical landscape.  Maybe the church no longer needs reviving.  Maybe everyone has gotten to the perfect place in terms of a relationship with Jesus.  Or, maybe no one is sinning anymore and so any call to repentance is irrelevant.  Some might say the people in the church have become too sophisticated and the church no longer needs this tradition which came out of the rough uneducated culture of the frontier days.   

It may be true that revivals often lent themselves to over the top emotional experiences, but it seems that our worship devoid of any emotion at all is equally as bad.  However, these revivals also provided a set aside time for spiritual examination, bent knees at the altar, enthusiastic singing, praying for others and being prayed for by others, and invitations to forsake whatever was standing in the way of a strong and life giving commitment to Jesus.  Maybe it is true that just the church of my past needed and benefited from such moments, but I have a hunch the church of today still needs it and could benefit once again from some of this old time religion.