While some churches are moving away from traditional revival meetings, Hartford Baptist Church is rejoicing after a three-day revival where the altar was packed each evening.
“The Holy Spirit was moving,” observed pastor Clint White. “There was activity at the altar every night — so much that we had to move a table from in front of the pulpit to have room for people at the altar.”
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White added that revival “is very important if true revival happens. Churches have gotten to the thought that a revival is just a time to come together, get a preacher to come in and nothing comes out of it. But we worked hard and prayed hard for revival for months and months. I feel a lot of churches don’t know what true revival is. Pastors may tell you revival doesn’t work, but when done right, God shows up every time.”
Matthew Sickling, associational mission strategist for the Ohio County Baptist Association, attended two nights of the revival and said, “it was a very good revival — there was a very good spirit, and I was happy to see what God has done and is doing there.”
Sickling recalled that 25–30 years ago the church was running hundreds of people, it declined to a handful of 10–15 about five years ago.
“I had a conversation at that time about their options — their pastor had left, so they could find a pastor, or merge or sell the property,” Sickling said. “They chose to continue and fortunately had some folks in the county, like George and Kathy Chinn, come back, along with some other folks who gave much-needed leadership. Then Clint came in as pastor (two and a half years ago). To see where it has come from — it is totally different. I heard from everybody that came to the revival that the atmosphere was totally different, from the singing to the preaching to the way everyone was responding.”
‘A lot of movement’
Sickling added that Luke Lesmeister, executive pastor of GracePointe Baptist Church in Louisville, “is a strong preacher, theologically sound” and both nights people responded.
Lesmeister noted it was “an unbelievable three days — there was a lot of movement at that revival. God moved every night — there were people saved, assurance of salvation, people broken over their sin and their situations in life.”
The invitation time was an extended period. “Some places you go and the invitation time and people praying goes about 2 1/2 minutes. But on two of the nights the invitation time went 20–25 minutes with wave after wave of people coming forward to be right with God. There was a spirit of revival there — the community came out, other pastors came out. We had over 100 people every night at revival. It was a move of God and it was incredible to see. The church is so community driven and outreach focused.”
The excitement at Hartford Baptist didn’t end when the revival closed on March 10. Four days later, at the county park on Saturday night, White had the opportunity to preach during a worship night where several churches were involved. During that event, three people trusted Christ as Savior.
White said there will be another worship night scheduled at the park in the fall.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Chip Hutcheson and originally published by Kentucky Today.
