Once or twice a year, a fundamentalist church will hold a series of revival services. An evangelist or special speaker who is specially trained to give spiritual CPR will come into town and spend a few nights trying to get the church’s pulse going again. The fact that they are apparently so feeble that they needs periodic five-day-long jolts from a biblical defibrillator to keep them alive does not appear to bother fundies at all. They rather seem to enjoy it.
Revivals are a great time to combine a lot of fundy favorites: hard preaching, old fashioned altars, evangelist fish stories, and coming up with new things to feel guilty about. Throw in some special music and a few covered dish suppers and it’s a great time for everybody.
Another emphasis of revival services is bringing out lost people to hear the messages. This may strike some as odd since it would seem to be a contradiction in terms to try to ‘revive’ something that’s never been ‘vived’ in the first place. But the philosophy goes that if there’s preaching on sin going on, it’s a good idea to get a bunch of genuine sinners in to hear it. And there’s a reward Bible with your name on it if you can bring in the most.
Oh, Revive us again (and again, and again, and again).
Did you ever have contests between the “men,” “women” and “teens” as to who could bring in the most visitors on any given night? Or the “Kiss the Pig” contest where the losing team leaders had to kiss the slimy snout of a pig, which happened to be dressed up like a baby? Good stuff!
Kiss A Pig? The Diabetes people do it far better, plus participants want to pucker up to the porker.
I’m convinced the main reason BJU held Bible Conference was to obtain funds from the offerings. The school had an offering at every single service!
This is good stuff. It’s true Revivals are the greatest social event of the year at church. If you are courting a guy at church and only get to see him at church. You get to see him every day for a week!! Rare joy!
When I was a kid, the really great thing about Revival week was that as a student of the IFB Christian school we got out of homework for a whole week. The rule was that the teachers were not allowed to give us homework the whole week so that we could attend the Revival meeting. Good times! Kids that attended the IFB school, but went to one of our rival Baptist churches in the city had it even better…they got out of homework without having to attend church every night for a week. I never thought that was fair.
Sounds like a school I taught at back in the 80s. I attended a different church. If I forgot about the revival meetings and started to assign homework the kids rose up in mighty chorus to remind me.