Revivalism, R.I.P.?

"Revival" is of often thrown around term these days that rarely has anything to do with its meaning and certainly bears no resemblance to the First, Second, and Third Great Awakenings in America. We often hear in churches and Christian colleges that "we are praying for a revival." In the holiness and even some Baptist traditions, holding church "revivals" was and sometimes still is a regular event. Even back a few decades ago, churches would hold "revival," call in a big shot evangelist and pack the place out. The preacher would deliver a series of convicting sermons, invite people to "come forward" during the altar call, where people would pray the sinner's prayer, "asking Jesus into your heart" and so on.

Today revivals have mostly gone by the wayside. A lot of churches still try them, but they are a shadow of their former glory. This is what a revival means today for the average church that is still doing them: "We are bringing in a special speaker who is different from the guy you normally hear (sometimes still the formerly big deal, but now much older Evangelist) and we're going to have a week of evening services where a third to one half of the congregation will show up."I've preached revival services. I like the concept. I wish they were still a big deal. But in my experience in speaking at them, and even trying them at my own church, 98% of the people coming are the leaders and the people who already come to everything. Those riding the fence spiritually usually don't show and usually visitors aren't attending in any meaningful number. I say usually because there are exceptions of course. I know of some examples from different churches who made their first commitments during a revival service. But more often than not, it's just a week of extra evenings of church with sermons focusing on salvation and the Holy Spirit and attended by people who are already long-time Christians. The days appear to be gone, at least in the regions I've lived, where the whole neighborhood would come out for revival services. Now you're lucky to get half of your congregation to come out to these services.

Camp meetings have also been going out of style the last couple decades as well. Brown City Camp (my annual denominational family camp in Michigan) is an exception in that the camp is still booming with over 2,000 people at evening services, but even there, I'd say 90% of the people are the same attenders year after year. This figure is even higher in regards to people who actually stay on the camp grounds, since there is a multi-year long waiting list for new people to get camp lots. So your best hope is for people to find someone to stay with on the grounds, or commute to evening services, but generally it's mostly the same people coming to camp. Revivalist camps love the altar call, as do most churches out of the revivalist movement. I'm not opposed to them, I think they can be useful, but I think they are overrated. One thing I've always noticed about altar calls is that normally it's the same people who come forward, and more often than not, it's the people who are already serious about things. The minority of respondents are people who come forward time and time again about the same sin issue, or feel the need to get saved 20 times.

This raises another interesting question about the altar call. Preachers tend to get real excited when a lot of people come forward, but is it perhaps a bit troubling if the same people are coming forward for the same struggles year after year? (and/or always the leaders that most of us would already like to emulate coming forward, whom you could preach a sermon to about the need not to torture kittens, and they would still feel convicted for some reason and come forward).I hope these type of revivalist concepts stick around for awhile.

Honestly, I generally like evangelists, camp meeting, special services (however I'm becoming less and less fond of the "sinner's prayer" though I still employ it), altar calls, ect. But is the revivalist movement on life support, or at least approaching it's Medicaid years?