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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.
Tent meetings. The sinner’s prayer. “Just As I Am.” The altar call. All-night prayer sessions.
So many aspects of what it means to “come to Jesus” in America have become such a part of our vocabulary and our behavior that it’s easy to forget virtually all of them are modern inventions.
We are nothing if not a pragmatic people. “If it works, let’s do it. If not, set it aside.” The Christians who originally settled the American colonies reproduced the traditions and practices long associated with their European roots, whether Puritan, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, or Catholic.
But then settlers began moving west. Life on the frontier – way out in places like Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Alabama – was not like life in Boston or Philadelphia. Those who survived the rigors of the wilderness developed a culture that was rough, raw, and emotionally expressive.
Evangelists who ventured into America’s forested hills discovered communities that knew little (and cared even less) about theological fine points.
But they were hungry for the Spirit, for the supernatural, and for an existence that might transcend the challenges of everyday life.
Passionate preachers drew crowds. Thus was born the revival or camp-meeting – a community-wide gathering that might last for days and typically featured groans, cries, and unbridled expressions of thanks and praise.
Well-mannered church folks “back east” were not impressed.
A handful of pastors, however, felt called to bring such spiritual passion out of the woods and into urban areas. One of the first was Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), who launched a series of revivals in Rochester in 1830, then journeyed to New York City.
Prior to his conversion Finney had been trained as a lawyer. He declared that he had been given “a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause.” Striding before his audiences as if he were speaking to a jury, he channeled frontier emotionalism into well-choreographed calls to faith.
In a word, Finney was pragmatic.
He thought long and hard about what might “work” to create more effective revival meetings, then put such ideas into practice – even as critics assailed him for turning his back on church tradition.
One of his innovations was the “anxious bench” – a seat up front where sinners could come and await prayerful intercession. He also visited urban areas weeks in advance to cultivate the support of pastors and lay people, many of whom would become his helpers during the upcoming meetings. Billy Graham would rely heavily on a similar strategy throughout his ministry in the 20th century.
Finney ultimately passed the torch to a new generation of popular preachers and revivalists, the most famous of which was Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899).
Moody, one of nine children raised by a poor New England widow, struggled at first to find his place in the world. He was working in a shoe store when he came to faith in 1855. At first he was denied church membership because he flunked a simple entrance exam: He didn’t know how to put into words what Christ had done for him.
Moody quickly got past that obstacle.
He established a dynamic preaching ministry in Chicago. At a revival meeting on October 8, 1871, he ended with a flourish, telling his listeners that the One they were seeking was none other than Jesus Christ – and if they would come to the next night’s meeting, he would tell them exactly how they could get to know him.
That meeting never happened.
A fire started somewhere near the O’Leary farm in central Chicago that same evening, and the city was virtually incinerated over the next few days. Moody lost almost everything. What he gained, however, was a conviction that he would never again hit the Pause button on an evangelistic message. As often as he got the chance, he would tell people without delay whatever they needed to know to meet Christ.
The shy shoe salesman became an internationally renowned evangelist. He managed to steer his messages between denominational icebergs, choosing to teach only the so-called basics of the Christian faith. His legacy endures today in the Moody Bible Institute on the west side of Chicago.
The most famous revival preacher of the World War I era was Billy Sunday (1862-1935), a former professional baseball player who hoped to demonstrate the “manliness” of Jesus.
Sunday was a consummate showman, shouting, gesticulating, breaking up a chair in a holy rage, and boxing with the devil, to the delight of massive crowds. His campaigns filled arenas in America’s largest cities. Historians estimate he preached to more than 100 million people, usually without electronic amplification.
Sunday instructed the ushers to spread sawdust on the arena floors to cut down on the noise of shuffling feet. Responding to one of his altar calls thus became “hitting the sawdust trail.”
It’s widely assumed that at least one million people came to faith during Sunday’s revivals. Or as the preacher himself put it (after “stealing home” by sliding into a home plate onstage), “I stole one million souls from the devil!”
What did Finney, Moody, and Sunday have in common?
They all transformed what used to be sedate religious gatherings into carefully orchestrated happenings – dramatic events which were specifically designed to awaken hearts, minds, and emotions.
This was a new thing in the history of Christianity. It was clearly “made in America.” And it is still very much with us today.
Does that mean pragmatic revivalism is a good thing?
Its proponents immediately point to its obvious success. Countless millions of people have come to faith through the dynamic music, passionate preaching, and celebrative atmosphere of Big Events. Its critics, however, point out that the staying power of such “conversions” has always been questionable. In the 1970s, Billy Graham admitted he was stricken when his own research revealed that 90% of those who had walked the aisle at his crusades were unaffiliated with a church 12 months later.
Furthermore, in our eagerness to achieve what seems like success, it’s all too tempting to bypass the mystery of God’s presence.
Finney wrote in his 1835 publication Lectures on Revivals in Religion, “A revival is not a miracle, or dependent on miracle in any sense. It is a result of the right use of the constituted means.” In other words, if we just push the right buttons and say the right words we’ll get the right results.
But if God’s presence and power no longer seem absolutely necessary for evangelism to “work,” perhaps we’re no longer dealing with true revival of the heart.
I remember picking up a Christian journal years ago and seeing an ad for a new kind of discipleship program.
Its authors promised that they had reduced discipleship (the Jesus-following life) to a set of principles that could be learned by an entire congregation in just three weeks. I remember thinking, “If we had already accomplished the most important thing in the world in just three weeks, what would we do on that fourth Sunday?”
The Christian life is, first and foremost, an actual life. It cannot be reduced to a set of principles.
It will definitely take us the rest of our lives to learn how to trust the One who’s at the center of it all.
Let us thank God for all the means he is willing to use to get that life started.
But the real adventure – the reason we were created in the first place – actually begins when we wake up the next morning and say:
“Here I am, Lord.Where do we go from here?”