Awakening In America

January 2010

Last summer I heard Tom Elliff make a plea for Southern Baptists to reach out for a spiritual awakening in our nation. I have studied Great Awakenings for years, and I confess that I have had the same desire as Elliff to see an awakening come to America. As I look at the situation, however, there are some reasons that I believe that Southern Baptists are not spiritually positioned to be used by God to lead this awakening.

1. We have been too busy building personal kingdoms to really focus on building The Kingdom. I remember a few years ago that a prominent church in another convention opened a new building on a spacious campus. I was talking with a friend in the area and asked about the facility that I had heard so much about. He shared with me that the local pastors and staff members referred to it as the pastor’s palace. They were joking, but I sensed that there was an uncomfortable truth behind the joke.

2. We don’t have a real hunger for God. There is no sense of desperation for the presence of God in many of our churches. We want God but only if we can keep Him at a comfortable distance from our lives. There is little evidence in the American church and in Southern Baptist churches of a real spirit of sacrifice and a willingness to pay any price to see the Kingdom of God demonstrated with power in our midst and our culture.

3. As many others have noted, we talk a lot about prayer, but we don’t really pray. I know very few people and very few leaders who I would consider prayer-warriors. I have to confess that I don’t look at myself as much of a prayer-warrior. If we are to become leaders of an awakening, we must truly become a people of prayer.

4. We have been influenced by our culture, and we don’t even know it. Cultural ideas of success and significance have crept into our churches and are equated with biblical truth. Business models supplant biblical models of church life and governance. Secular leadership models have supplanted servant leadership models. We are not a people transforming our culture. We are slowly surrendering to our culture.

5. Many churches are filled with lostness. If Billy Graham and others are correct, up to fifty percent of our members have never had a true conversion experience.

6. According to one leader, Southern Baptists are suffering from decades of neglecting the intentional developing of disciples in many of our churches. As a result we have numbers of believers who have not fully matured as Christ-followers.

How can we lead an awakening with such a situation? I hope that Dr. Elliff’s words prove to be prophetic and that we will see another Great Awakening in America, but I fear that we have far to go spiritually before that happens.

Join with me to pray (yes, really pray) that God would invade our churches and draw us back to Him. Pray that God would give Southern Baptists the passion to pursue God at all costs to truly find Him and His path for us.

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