This past week a handful of Evangelical leaders including Sterling Huston from the BGEA, Jay Strack of studentleadership.net, Paul Cedar of Mission America, and yours truly met with leaders of the Pentecostal/Charismatic tradition at Regents University.  Leaders from the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee, the Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the Assemblies of God, Wellington Boone, Dave Butts of the National Prayer Committee, the editor of Charisma magazine, and several others gathered to discuss the subject of Spiritual Awakenings.  As a part of my small contribution I reminded those gathered of an earlier call to prayer some two centuries before at the outset of the Second Great Awakening:

In 1794 Baptist pastors Isaac Backus and Stephen Gano, along with twenty-three other New England ministers, distributed a circular letter calling believers to pray for a general awakening.  In the letter the complete title of an earlier work by Jonathan Edwards was included:
“To the ministers and churches of every Christian denomination in the United States, to humble in their endeavors to carry into execution the humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of God’s people in extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on earth.
In execution of this plan, it is proposed that the ministers and churches of every Christian denomination should be invited to maintain public prayer and praise, accompanied with such instruction from God’s Word, as might be judged proper, on every first Tuesday, of the four quarters of the year, beginning with the first Tuesday of January, 1795, at two o’clock in the afternoon, if the plan of concert should then be ripe for a beginning, and so continuing from quarter to quarter, and from year to year, until the good Providence of God prospering our endeavors, we shall obtain the blessing for which we pray.”
By 1800 Backus rejoiced: “The revivals of religion in different parts of our land have been wonderful.”  

 All the major denominations supported this call to prayer.  Methodists observed the concert from 1796 to the close of the century.  At about the same time Presbyterian pastor James McGready, who would be so important in the frontier camp meetings, wrote a prayer covenant enlisting believers to pray every Saturday evening, Sunday morning, and the entire third Saturday of each month for revival in Logan Country, Kentucky, and throughout the world.  Orr argued that the awakening became “great” following the movement of prayer. 

Notice how simple the call to pray was.  In a day of three ring binders, DVD sets, guaranteed-to-set –our-ministry-free-for-only-$399.00 packaged “resources,” I find it quite encouraging to see how God used such a simple call to prayer that respected the differences of various traditions while uniting them in fervent prayer. Thom Rainer’s excellent book Simple Church could apply to larger entities.  In a complex world a cry to simplify screams loudest.  What if believers adopted a simple, focused approach at prayer for the nation, one not led by political ideology but by the Word?  What if we agreed to seek the Lord for a lost America more than praying utilitarian prayers of bigger and better?  Just wondering…

About Alvin Reid

Hi and welcome! I am Alvin Reid, a follower of Jesus Christ, husband to Michelle, father of Josh and Hannah, and minister of the gospel. I teach at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Southeastern College at Wake Forest in NC. I love people and have been blessed to meet a lot. I live to equip a generation of young men and women to change the world, to advance the great movement of God in our time.For the Christ follower, life is a mission trip-take it!