Next year may be history in the making for Georgia Baptists if the state convention’s goal of 50,000 baptisms becomes a reality. State leaders believe the goal is not only possible but could be easily surpassed if churches catch the vision and equip their members for the task.

That’s why the Executive Office for Evangelization has rolled out a statewide training program that is designed to equip laity with the skills they need to take their faith into the marketplace. The one-day Super Evangelism Seminars, part of the “What Now, Georgia?” emphasis planned for next year, are currently planned through Aug. 30. Nineteen conferences have been scheduled and more are being added, said Vice President for Evangelization Mike Minnix.

A total of 50,000 baptisms would be an increase of 15,518 from the 34,482 reported in 2002, the most recent year for which records are available. But God is big enough to make it happen, and Georgia Baptist churches are strong enough to rise to the challenge, leaders say.

 

Praying for an awakening

Georgia Baptist evangelists are among those at the forefront of praying for a statewide – and a national – revival in 2005. In an interview with The Index, officers of the Conference of Georgia Baptist Evangelists explained why the state is in need of revival.

“We have a mandate from God to walk in a perpetual state of revival,” Steve Hale, president of COGBE, said in a recent interview.

“There is a consensus among pastors that complacency dominates the atmosphere in most churches. The need for revival has never been greater, and God may be ready to work a miracle among His people in Georgia.

“Just as we have a biblical mandate, we also have a cultural mandate for revival. The United States has more churches and Bibles than any country in the world, and yet we lead the world with the highest rate of crime, abortions, divorce, pornography, juvenile homicide, and use of illegal drugs.

“The church has a mandate to mobilize its people in a concentrated effort of prayerful preparation, realizing that when God’s people humble themselves spiritual forces are set in motion that otherwise would remain stagnant.”

Revivalist Larry Ferguson of Woodstock, secretary-treasurer of the group, stressed that revival is for the church, not unbelievers. Once believers are revived they naturally begin sharing their faith and the harvest begins.

“Unless the people of God have a vital fellowship with Him in their daily lives – in their walk as well as their talk – there will be little effective evangelism. But where there is genuine revival, there is a natural outgrowth of evangelism.”

 

“Evangelism is the result of revival”

“When the Lord is reigning in someone’s life they cannot help but tell others about Him. Revival is all about bringing people back to their first love, and evangelism is the result of the revival. Once believers return to that first love, they are empowered to tell others about Him,” Ferguson added.

While state evangelists agree there has been a national cooling of the fervor for revival in the past decades, they cite a noticeable hunger among laypersons in the revivals that they lead.

Feeding that hunger and harnessing that spiritual energy is the key to bringing revival to Georgia, they say.

 

“Preoccupied with good things”

“Many churches are so preoccupied with good things these days that evangelism falls between the cracks,” Feguson said. “But I firmly believe that our state could experience the greatest awakening in its history if Georgia Baptists were to get serious with God in the coming months.

“Georgia Baptists could easily grow if they just looked at their Sunday School rolls. From my experience, one out of three people who are on the Sunday School rolls but are not members of the church will make a public profession of faith if they are visited before a revival service. I have seen that occur, time and again.”

A look at GBC records shows the potential for such an effort on the local church level. The convention currently reports 728,534 enrolled in Sunday School statewide. A third of those, if they have never made a profession of faith, would theoretically supercharge Georgia baptisms by 242,844 – an increase of 704 percent.

Darrell Henry, pastor of Oakwood Baptist Church in Chickamauga, believes Georgians are ready for revival. The results from last August’s Harvest Day are fresh in his mind.

On the first Sunday after the Aug. 10 revival, in which Alabama evangelist Junior Hill spoke, he baptized 35 new believers. But that was just the beginning, he says. Between then and the end of the year he baptized slightly more than twice that number for a total of 77 – which resulted in the church surpassing its record of 100 baptisms in a calendar year with a total of 113.

Henry is one who doesn’t believe a revival ends with the closing prayer. He’s a firm believer that many time the revival serves as a catalyst to launch a spiritual momentum that continues indefinitely.

“We have never had a response from a revival like we had on that one day. It seemed that after the revival spirit caught hold, people just kept coming to Christ even though the revival had technically ended weeks earlier.”

He believes if Georgia Baptists are going to attract people to the meetings, the meetings should try to be creative in some manner. The one-day approach may be just what God wants in Chickamauga, he says, but would not work in another setting.

“We should explore any option that will help us fulfill the Great Commission in our community. We need to be more creative in providing a variety of ways for the lost to come to faith in Christ.”

Gene Sellers, pastor of County Line Baptist Church in Jenkinsburg, shares that view, but takes a slightly different approach.

“I feel that we don’t need to start a revival if we’re going to put an arbitrary closing date on it. That’s putting God in a box and saying He has to work between Monday and Wednesday because we’re not going to be here on Thursday,” he explained.

“I know this might be a little old fashioned, but we need to go back to the old protracted revival meetings where you’re not worried about the time. That’s what we did this year; at the end of the first week we asked the crowd if we should continue and we did – for two more weeks.

“Before it was over we had met for three weeks and saw nine baptized – four of them all adults from one family.”

Sellers is quick to admit that seven new believers may not sound like a lot to those looking for bigger numbers, but he says the new spiritual births meant everything in the world to those who were saved.

“Not every church should do what we did, but I feel like it is what the Lord wanted us to do. It brought some of our folks a long, long way in their spiritual development, and we’re still seeing the results today.

“We only average about 60 in Sunday attendance, but those seven conversions were a pretty good number when you look at the percentage they represent.

“Everyone is looking for a big revival with big results. They are looking for a Billy Sunday or Billy Graham style of revival, but we’re not looking for big numbers; we just want to see people saved.”

Sellers, who is still in the fulltime pastorate at age 67, has seen the church grow from an average Sunday attendance of 35 to the 60 who now worship every Sunday morning. Slow, steady growth is the key to building a solid witness in the community, he says.

“We’re not a big church, but we’re looking to be bigger than we are.”