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Pray for Our Friend

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Alvin Reid in Blog | 1 Comment

We are all needy people. So much to pray about, so many needs. But I want to ask you to take some time and pray especially for a friend and colleague of mine, or especially for his son.

Dr. Steve McKinion is easily one of the most popular teachers at Southeastern. His theology classes are packed, and his lectures have grown many a student in their walk with Christ. Steve also serves as a pastor, and most importantly as a husband and a dad. He has been a friend and encourager to me in the gospel for many years.

The McKinion’s son Harrison has just been diagnosed with leukemia. He had surgery today for a port to begin treatment. Thankfully, Harrison’s spinal fluid was clear. But he has a long road ahead.

My wife Michelle lost her brother to leukemia decades ago, long before we met. Much progress has been made in treating this awful disease, but it is still ominous.

Please ask your church to pray for Harrison. Please pray for Steve and Ginger and the siblings. Pray for wisdom for the doctors, for the presence of God to be near, and for divine grace in every aspect of their journey.

Thank you for praying for Harrison as he faces this battle. May he be reminded he does not fight alone.

Blessed Distractions

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Alvin Reid in Blog, Leadership, Vision | Leave a comment

Last night was one of those nights. You know, a night when it seems nothing goes right. I was scheduled to speak to a group of students about an hour and 45 minutes away from Wake Forest. Okay, on a good night, with no traffic. It actually took me almost three hours. Yep, one of those nights. A night filled with distractions and delays.

First, the students who planned to go with me all bailed on me. All for good reasons, so I cannot blame them. But all bailed, and I never drive that far (especially in one night!) alone, because A) I am lazy and make them drive, B) trips like this provide amazing mentoring sessions, far better than sitting in an office or coffee shop, C) in this case, I have been ill the past few days and did not feel physically like making the trip. But off I went, GPS at the ready.

Next, the mother of all rainstorms decided to descend on my vehicle about 15 minutes into the trip, and that cloud followed me mercilessly all the way to my destination. Add to that the place I was going is somewhere near the end of the earth, requiring a drive through numerous small towns, multitudes of turns (most of which it seems I missed on first try), and in traffic of Black Friday proportions. I knew pretty early in the trip I would be late. I did make it by the last song before I spoke. Barely.

All these distractions can make me lose focus of why I go somewhere like last night in the first place. Does that ever happen to you? I realized pretty early on the drive the reason my blood pressure elevated the farther behind I became on the journey was because of my tendency to be a prima donna and to focus on myself. “I cannot believe this is happening to a man of my caliber,” my stupid flesh says. But I have lived long enough to learn, albeit sometimes it takes a bit of reflection, that such distractions can be a real blessing.

Sometimes the most distraction-filled days become some of the most blessed. I remember leading an evangelism conference in Indiana years ago. The day it started two men were tragically killed in a plane crash, members of one of our churches. That tragedy seemed to cause a more serious focus in our meeting. I was blessed to be able to secure Adrian Rogers to speak, and when he did heaven came down. It became one of the great meetings for leaders I have ever been a part of.

I think of a time I flew back from Atlanta to speak at a small church south of Raleigh. I did not know if my plane would make it as we were delayed (I won’t name the airline but its initals are Doesn’t Ever Leave The Airport). I was tired from a lot of travel, and I quite honestly just wanted to get to the airport, go home and get to bed. But I had committed to speak, and as I drove to the church I asked God to forgive my attitude and confessed again my great joy at the honor of preaching. That night, heaven came down and the service lasted for hours. And I realized how I almost let distractions cause me to miss what God was doing.

Last night I got to the service, put on my mic, breathed a brief prayer, then walked up and preached. And God moved. There was that real sense of the presence of God that is hard to explain but almost palpable when present. Many came to Christ. Several adults have already shared with me about youth who met Christ for whom they had been praying a while. How silly of me to think my circumstances might rise above the wonder of the glory and the story of the gospel of God.

Sometimes our gracious God really has to hit me in the head to get my attention. Even as I rejoiced at the response to the gospel as I drove home, I grew pretty tired. I got to Durham and headed down a drizzly, dark road to my bed. Suddenly a man stepped in front of me, in the dark, in the rain, wearing all black. By God’s grace he stepped back and turned toward me. I remember in a split second seeing his eyes and slamming on my brakes. I came extremely close to killing this man or at least severely harming him.

I had no problem staying awake the last 30 minutes of the drive. Once again God reminded me that distractions serve to give us focus.

Today and every day you will have distractions. Things will come up for which you did not plan. Some of these will involve issues you will not want to face. Some will cause you to readjust your calendar and recalibrate your mindset. See these times not as a hindrance, but as an opportunity for God to teach you and use you.

Remember this about our Lord as he walked this earth: he allowed interruptions. He was okay with distractions. In fact, some of his greatest ministry happened in times of distraction.

May it be for us as well.

Students and Awakening

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Alvin Reid in Blog, Missional, Movements, Student Ministry | Leave a comment

Yesterday a former student came to see me. She currently serves in a ministry to college students on a state university campus, and sees the spiritual need there. She asked me a question, knowing my interest in young people and in awakenings.

“Do you think we could see a spiritual awakening in our time?” She asked. I told her I actually am hopeful. A growing focus on the gospel (which, by the way, was what great awakening preachers hammered in their sermons), a rising recognition that morality and institutional religion is as dead as secularism, and a massive number of young people actually encourages me.

Make no mistake, it will take the work of a sovereign God to awaken our land. But it always has.

Let me remind you of the work of God through young people in earlier spiritual movements as I summarize in my Evangelism Handbook:

Pietism, the experiential awakening of the eighteenth century, grew through the impact of students who graduated from the University of Halle, then spread the spiritual-missionary emphasis to points across the globe. Zinzendorf graduated from Halle, the man who said, “Preach the gospel, die forgotten.” The one-hundred-year Moravian prayer movement begun through his influence at Halle was essentially a movement among young people.

The role of youth is abundantly clear in the First Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards, commenting on the revival in 1734–35 under his leadership, referred to the role of youth in its origin: “At the latter end of the year 1733, there appeared a very unusual flexibleness, and yielding to advice, in our young people.” This happened after Edwards began speaking against their irreverence toward the Sabbath. The youth were also greatly affected by the sudden death of a young man and a young married woman in their town. Edwards proposed that the young people should begin meeting in small groups around Northampton. They did so with such success that many adults followed their example. Concerning the revival’s effect on the youth, Edwards commented,

God made it, I suppose, the greatest occasion of awakening to others, of anything that ever came to pass in the town . . . news of it seemed to be almost like a flash of lightning, upon the hearts of young people, all over town, and upon many others.

In England, the Evangelical Awakening featured such notable leaders as the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield. Their ministries grew out of a foundation built in college through the Holy Club. Whitefield was only twenty-six when he witnessed remarkable revival in the American colonies. These young men never let their youthfulness hinder their impact.

The Second Great Awakening featured powerful revival movements on college campuses. Hampden-Sydney, Yale, Williams, and others serve as bold reminders of what God can do in our day as well. Churches could not have experienced the depth of revival they felt apart from youth. Bennett Tyler collected twenty-five eyewitness accounts of pastors during the Second Great Awakening. Twenty of these revival reports described the important role played by young people. Ten accounts noted that the revivals began with the youth, and five documented the fact that revival in their area affected young people more than any other group. Only one account out of twenty-five asserted that no youth were involved.

Colleges experienced revival in the 1857–59 Layman’s Prayer Revival as well. One pivotal feature of this revival in relation to young people was the impact it had on Dwight Lyman Moody, who was twenty years old at the time. In 1857 Moody wrote of his impression of what was occurring in Chicago: “There is a great revival of religion in this city . . . [It] seems as if God were here himself.” Biographer John Pollock reports that “the revival of early 1857 tossed Moody out of his complacent view of religion.” Moody went on to make a dramatic impact for Christ during the rest of the nineteenth century. At the same time a young man named Charles Spurgeon began to preach in London, inaugurating a ministry of biblical teaching, prayer, and evangelism (and church planting, though this is often overlooked).

An aspect of Moody’s influence regarding students that cannot be overlooked was his leadership in the Student Volunteer Movement. Although this movement’s roots have been traced to the Second Great Awakening and the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806, it was Moody who invited 251 students to Mt. Hermon, Massachusetts, for a conference in 1886. As a result of these meetings, highlighted by A. T. Pierson’s challenging address, one hundred students volunteered for overseas missions. In 1888 the Student Volunteer Movement was formally organized with John R. Mott as chairman. Over the next several decades, literally thousands of students went to serve as foreign missionaries.

According to J. Edwin Orr, the Welsh Revival of 1904-05 was greatly influenced in its beginning by a church in New Quay, Cardiganshire, and the testimony of a teenage girl. Pastor Joseph Jenkins led a testimony time in a service in which he asked for responses to the question, What does Jesus mean to you? A young person, fifteen-year-old Florrie Evans, only recently converted, rose and said, “If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart.”

Her simple testimony caused many people to begin surrendering to Christ, and the fires of revival fell. The revival spread as young people went from church to church testifying. An itinerant preacher named Seth Joshua came to New Quay to speak and was impressed by the power of God. He then journeyed to speak at Newcastle Embyn College. The next week he spoke at nearby Blaenannerch, where a young coal miner named Evan Roberts, a ministerial student at the college, experienced a powerful personal revival.

Roberts felt impressed to return to his home church to address the youth. Seventeen heard him following a Monday service. He continued preaching and revival began there. The revival spread across the country, and news of the awakening spread worldwide. Many colleges reported revival. A good example was the revival reported at Denison University in Ohio.

Many colleges witnessed revival in the 1950s as well. In Minnesota, Northwestern School, St. Paul Bible Institute, and the University of Minnesota were touched. The year 1951 saw a notable spiritual stir on the campus of Baylor University. President W. R. White commented favorably about revival at this school.

A powerful campus awakening was experienced at Wheaton College in February 1950. After numerous prayer meetings were inaugurated by student leaders the previous fall, the revival began when a student shared a testimony of his changed life in an evening meeting. Others began testifying, and this continued for more than two days. Asbury College in Kentucky experienced revival as well. One of the stronger movements in the period in the opinion of historian Clifton Olmstead was Youth for Christ, a parachurch movement that began in 1944.

Finally, the Jesus Movement described was actually a youth awakening. Many of the leaders of churches, denominations, and parachurch organizations were touched by this revival. A significant number of evangelistic pastors and other leaders trace their zeal for the Lord to the impact of the Jesus Movement on their life.

Students are perhaps the most fertile field for the working of the Spirit of God. If only churches would tap into the zeal of youth! I would encourage you to challenge students in the gospel, to call them not to simply live a little better for Jesus daily, but to see his absolute Lordship over all of life. I could be wrong, but I believe if we in fact see a movement of God in our time, young people will be at the heart of it.

For more information on the role of youth in historical movements see Alvin Reid, Join the Movement: God Is Calling You to Change the World (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007).

Gospel Unashamedness

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Alvin Reid in Blog, Missional | Leave a comment

This past Saturday something remarkable happened. No, not the SEC championship, or the Big 10, not even the ACC. Conference USA, hardly a BCS powerhouse, served as a reminder as to what really matters. In its championship game with Southern Mississippi at the undefeated University of Houston Cougars, ranked #6 in the nation, Conference USA had the opportunity at a massive payout. If the favored UH won, the team would earn a BCS bowl invitation, meaning the conference would get something in the neighborhood of 10 million dollars, a massive payoff for a non-BCS conference. Earning a BCS bid meant so much that I watched commentators say, hopefully tongue in cheek, that Southern Miss should take one for the conference and intentionally lose the game.

College football. I am a fan. It is a fantastic sport. It has also become idolatry for more than a few, including some who follow Christ. And it has definitely become far too obsessed with money. But the players from Southern Miss did not care. Many of them did not have the opportunity to play for LSU or Alabama, and in more than a few cases, even for Ole Miss or Mississippi State. These players did not care about UH being highly ranked, nor did they care about the potential payoff. They won the game in a route. It is, after all, still a game.

Sometimes we lose sight of what matters. We live in a culture of entitlement. We love our rights and it shows. Think of expressions/sayings,that have “rights” in them:
Civil rights. Gay rights. The Bill of Rights. We are endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Not all these are bad of course. We live in the greatest nation on earth with many rights and privileges because many have paid a high price for them. But obsession with rights can lead to neglect of responsibility.

How do some Christians die for their faith in other parts of the world while we are more passionate in the U.S. for a ball team or possessions? One reason: too much emphasis on rights, not enough on responsibility.

The book of Romans takes us back to reality, and yet it tells us of a wonderful, grace-filled reality we might never see on our own. Read its pages and see our rights: how we have a right to the judgment of God. We have a right to pay for the guilt of our sin. Read that God’s rights, i.e. his righteousness, matters far more than our rights. And yet, see how his righteousness was satisfied in Christ.

In Romans 1:13-17 Paul introduces the theme of Romans, the gospel. Here are a few features of this passage, all centered on the gospel.

First, Gospel Eagerness v. 8-13. Paul has an eagerness to come to Rome, because he seeks encouragement from them, because of the mutual encouragement they can share, and because of the harvest Paul sought there—he never lost focus on the harvest. I was reminded of this last Wednesday as I met in New Orleans with evangelism leaders from state conventions and the North American Mission Board. We not only met and talked about reaching America, we went into a difficult, broken community that afternoon to share the good news. And we saw a harvest for our efforts.

Second, Gospel Indebtedness v. 14. Paul was a debtor to Greeks–Gentiles in the Greek culture, and Barbarians–those outside Greek culture. Three centuries before, Alexander the Great led a movement of Hellenization in which Greek culture and language spread across the Roman Empire. God used cultural and political influence to prepare the world for the “fullness of time” we read about in Galatians. God’s work in His people cannot be separated from His work in culture.

Paul did not have a superiority complex as a Jew or as a Christian. He had humility, a debtor’s mentality. Is it possible that you could come to the place where the difficult people and difficult circumstances in your life would not be seen as a burden but actually you would see yourself as a debtor to them? Perhaps the best way to combat an attitude of entitlement is by cultivating a spirit of indebtedness to others, even those who do not know Christ.

Third, Gospel Comprehensiveness. V. 15. Paul sought to preach the gospel to believers and unbelievers, all in Rome, period. Romans, which gives the most comprehensive description of salvation, was written to believers by the way. It teaches that we need the good news for salvation and for sanctification, for justification and for our daily devotion. This is why Luther said the reason he preached the gospel weekly to his people was that every week they forget it.

Fourth, Gospel Unashamedness v. 16. The Roman believers were a minority. They were not influential. They did not have political candidates who made their issues the issue. They had no power in the government. Paul told them not to be ashamed.
We too can be unashamed: unashamed because the gospel is the power of God to salvation to all who believe. We have no message more powerful. Read Hebrews 1:1-4, and be reminded that Christ holds all things together simply by the word of his power.

Finally, Gospel Righteousness v 17 The righteousness of God refers to the legal standing we have because of the work of Christ. We deserve judgment. We are guilty. But through Christ we have been declared not guilty. Forensically forgiven.

But God’s righteousness is more—it refers to God’s full moral right to be the authority of righteousness. God has rights we do not intrinsically own. To be sure, everyone has some standard of righteousness. The most postmodern relativist alive has some sense of right and wrong. God’s righteousness in Romans declares God not only is the righteous judge, the only standard of true righteousness. This is a very heavy truth. But the grace of God is seen in the companion reality that He can also determine the work of Christ to be sufficient payment for our sin.

Yesterday we took a class of mine out to share Christ in Raleigh. We helped my colleague Tony Merida in the area of his new church plant, Imago Dei. Our group met people from Russia, India, and Korea, while talking to several African Americans and Hispanics. We talked to one Anglo the whole afternoon, and we met one obvious believer. One can easily be overwhelmed with the weight of lostness all around us when we open our eyes to see the world at our doorstep. But our God, the righteous judge, has made a way in Christ to rescue us from the brokenness of sin. Good news! Be unashamed as you live and tell this good news.

Gospel Wakefulness

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Alvin Reid in Blog | 2 Comments

On June 12, 1987, I was a young PhD student in Texas. On that date I watched as President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenberg Gate near Berlin on the 750th anniversary of the city. In that speech Reagan challenged Communist leader of the Soviet Union Gorbachev to tear down the wall dividing the city. Powerful rhetoric, I thought, but I doubted whether it would ever happen.

From then until now our world has changed dramatically. There is no Soviet Union. We have a united Germany. Communism and the Cold War are a shadow of their former influence. But as surely as there is a dramatic difference between Europe then and now, there is a similarly radical difference between understanding what happened in Berlin as an academic reality, and what it means to those who lived there and experienced the earth-shattering change.

Jared Wilson captures this in these words, which I recount in part:

“In the well-appointed study of a professor of history in a prestigious university in the American South sits a brick-sized piece of the Berlin Wall. It sits on the floor, because he uses it as a doorstop. He is not ignorant of the piece’s historical significance; as a historian he is deeply informed of the struggle and the repression attached to the wall, to the shame it symbolized and the division both literal and cultural it created….

“In a small, dingy apartment in Midwest America lives and elderly immigrant woman who sells newspapers and fresh cut flowers during the day and cleans an office building in the evenings. On an iron shelf in her bedroom sits a small lidless glass jar, and in that wall is a piece of the Berlin Wall the size of a marble. She has often held that piece of rock in her withered hand and wept. Her husband did not live to see the wall come down. Her cousin was one of the estimated five thousand people who tried to escape from the communist Eastern Bloc into West Berlin….one of the estimated one hundred to two hundred people killed by border guards in the attempt….”

Wilson then notes the meaning of the Brandenberg speech to each of the subjects noted above: “When the professor hears the epic Brandenburg Gate speech. …he admires it as a watershed moment in history, as iconic a sound bite from the annals of historical rhetoric as any. When the woman hears, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’ she is stirred, always. When the professor speaks of the fall of the Berlin Wall as an earth-shattering event, he really does mean to communicate the radical nature of the event; he really does understand this. But the woman knows that the fall of the Berlin Wall was an earth-shattering event deep down in her bones.”

“This,” Wilson then observes, “Is gospel wakefulness.”

And this, I would argue, is one thing the church today desperately needs.

I have spent too much time in too many discussions with too many people in ministry about the things of God in purely academic terms, or in settings in which the wonder of the gospel has been lost in the interest in getting things done. I too have been guilty far too many times.

In his book Gospel Wakefulness from which the above story is taken (pages 19-20), Wilson argues that what is needed more than anything is a recovery of the wonder of the work of Christ. I read a lot of books every year. Most years I also (or, of first importance in fact) read the whole Bible. But I also read books for spiritual growth, others to help me understand our world to better apply the gospel to it, and still others by those who effectively lead in our time. I never have quite understood pastors who do not read voraciously, first, the Scripture, then significant books. But it has also struck me that men of God mightily used by God in history seemed to be very well read.

But occasionally I read a book that does more than inform or inspire. Sometimes I read a book that stirs me. A book that hits me in the solar plexus of my soul, and Gospel Wakefulness is such a book.

I for one am tired of the Christian subculture. Tired of the silliness so rampant in student ministry. Tired of the institutionalism of the church. And tired of the constant focus on producing like a factory with little focus on sitting at Jesus’ feet. Don’t get me wrong, I believe we should be growing, reaching, taking the gospel to the nations. But it seems to me we have such a focus on the doing that we live and move and act as if what God has done in Christ is not enough.

What Christ has done—it is enough. But it seems, does it not, that many in our churches—I am talking about professing followers of Christ—have become numb to the riches of Christ. Just look at the love for Black Friday and Football Saturday compared to the care for the broken in our rhetoric….or our tweets.

Read Wilson’s words: “How do we present the gospel in a nonroutine way in order to prevent people from becoming numb? My answer is counterintuitive. I think we do this by routinely presenting the unchanging gospel in a way that does justice to its earth-shaking announcement. This doesn’t mean we have to set it up with a power ballad or even dress it up at all. But it does mean we communicate it like its life or death stuff. People who know the gospel’s power will share it powerfully.” He then argues that, ironically, our efforts to make the gospel seem more special is what numbs people: “The weekly efforts of many churches to top themselves in razzle-dazzle for the cause of Christ is what numbs. It is like the cycle of drug addiction, always chasing the first high, never quite reaching it.” (page 16).

Sometimes I need to be reminded that Jesus is enough. I remember how He saved some rough young people when I was younger, how seeing His work in them showed me more than any cool youth event the truth of His gospel in changed lives. I need to read the Gospels and see how it was Jesus Himself that made lasting change, not His miracles. I need to see how in the Acts the gospel message advanced through remarkably ordinary (and mostly unnamed) people who simply met Him and never recovered.

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of Johnny Hunt as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Woodstock. Why do I segue from what I wrote so far to this fact? Because in 1989 I was stirred to my soul another time, not by a book like this one by Jared Wilson, but by a sermon by Johnny Hunt. Woodstock was just beginning its explosion, and Johnny was still relatively unknown. He preached at an evangelism conference I attended in Oklahoma. I had never heard of him. He had a fire, however, more than emotion. I could tell this preacher had been called, but more, he had been awakened.

Johnny said something that stirred and convicted me: “Too many Christians have met Jesus,” he observed, “But they have gotten over Jesus.” In other words, they needed gospel wakefulness.

Jared Wilson is a pastor in Vermont and a remarkable writer. Johnny Hunt is pastor to one of the most recognized churches in American and was recently president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Jared is a Calvinist. Johnny is not. All these things are not unimportant, but that are certainly not most important.

They both understand gospel wakefulness. And I am a debtor to both.

I close with a final, stirring quote by Wilson (from page 17):
“If we are regularly and excitedly engaging people in the good news of the finished saving work of the sacrificing, dying, rising, exalted, sovereign Jesus Christ who is the death-proof, fail-proof King of Kings before all things and in all things and holding all things together as he sustains the world by the mere word of his power, the ones whose hearts are opened by the Spirit to be won to Christ will be irrevocably changed.”