As Southern Baptists lament their denomination’s declining baptism numbers and lackluster spiritual growth, many leaders want to know what causes revival.

According to two experts, the answer involves both prayer by Christians and a sovereign work by God.

“The obvious cause [of spiritual awakenings] is God’s people beginning to pray,” said Roy Fish, retired professor of evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I don’t believe that there is a major awakening in history, or maybe no awakening at all, that ultimately didn’t begin somewhere in prayer.”

When awakening comes, that prayer blossoms into deep conviction of sin in a church and fresh joy in the members’ relationships with Jesus, he said.

Yet Fish added that awakening?a term he uses synonymously with revival?is not merely the result of believers meeting certain conditions in a formula. In fact, two churches could seek God identically but only one congregation experience revival, he said.

GOD’S SOVEREIGN DECISION

The ultimate key to a major outpouring of God’s blessing is his sovereign decision, Fish said.

“You just cannot take away this aspect of sovereignty,” he said. “It is vital in the study of the history of awakenings.”

Any time a preacher or teacher promises an outpouring of God’s Spirit if only humans will fulfill a formula, Christians should listen with a critical ear, Fish warned. He noted 19th-century revivalist Charles G. Finney as someone whom Baptists should read with “a lot of caution.”

Finney taught that revival is the work of man and compared it to farming. Just as a farmer is destined to grow a crop if he meets certain conditions, a church is destined to have a revival if it completes certain spiritual activities, Finney said.

“Nobody today that I know of really goes along with Finney at that point,” said Fish, adding that some of Finney’s other teachings are very helpful.

But Christians who desire revival are not left without recourse. Those who want a fresh work of God in their congregation should pray as a group, search their hearts and repent of their sins, Fish said.

“The thing we’re desperately lacking today,” he said, “is brokenness and coming to a place where I say, ‘Yes, there are some things wrong in my life, and I want revival. And I’m willing to get rid of the things that dishonor God and put into my life more things that please God.'”

Gregory Frizzell, prayer and spiritual awakening specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said revival is the result of both human and divine causes. It happens when God draws Christians closer to himself, convicts of sin and grants his people a desire for greater spiritual depth. From a human perspective though, prayer accompanied by deep conviction is the catalyst, he said.

“The type of prayer that brings revival is what I call a God-seeking kind of prayer,” Frizzell said. “It’s not just, ‘O God, we want you to bless us. O God, we want you to fix our problems,’ or ‘God, we want you to do something for us.’ It’s really, ‘God, we want you to change us and we want you to glorify yourself.'”

Unlike Fish, Frizzell draws a distinction between revival and awakening. Revival occurs within the church, he said, while awakening is a community phenomenon that results in lost people being saved. Fish argues that revival chroniclers of the past used the terms synonymously and that the Bible calls believers to awake as well as revive. Yet both agree that terminology is not the most important aspect of any discussion on spiritual renewal.

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The “Buckets of Hope” ministry is one means Southern Baptists are using to meet immediate human needs amid the deadly earthquake in Haiti.

WHAT IS IT?

A “Bucket of Hope” consists of a white, plastic, five-gallon bucket packed with selected food. For approximately $30, any person or church group can purchase the materials and assemble a Bucket of Hope. The food contained in a single bucket will feed a Haitian family for a week. Participants are requested to include a $10 cash contribution, placed in an envelope and attached securely to the lid of the bucket, to offset the cost of transporting the relief buckets to Haiti.

To reach their destination, each bucket must be exactly alike with a specific list of items inside. Detailed instructions, available in a downloadable PDF file at sbtexas.com, must be followed.

The buckets will leave for Haiti from a staging warehouse in Hialeah, Fla., where each bucket will be labeled “Bucket of Hope,” indicating it is a gift of Christian love from Southern Baptists. An evangelistic presentation will be affixed to each bucket.

The project deadline is March 15. For bucket collection details, contact Amber Nygaard by e-mail at anygaard@sbtexas.com or by calling her toll-free at 877-953-7282 (SBTC).

Because retailers have a limited stock of the buckets, churches planning to prepare more than a few buckets should order the standard, white 5-gallon buckets through the manufacturer, usplastic.com (item number 3826), said SBTC Disaster Relief Director Jim Richardson. Also, a web link to the item may be accessed at sbtexas.com/Haiti.

AMARILLO–With a church member sitting in a Haitian prison accused of kidnapping and child trafficking, Paramount Baptist Church Pastor Gil Lain turned to prayer as he sought to minister in a desperate situation. Lain said in a Feb. 5 interview with the Southern Baptist TEXAN he has confidence that the resources God offers are the only answer to the difficulties Jim Allen faces after he joined with a team of Idaho Baptists to aid children affected by the Haiti earthquake.

Allen was part of a group of 10 Baptists from the United States who independently traveled to Haiti following the earthquake to assist with what was dubbed “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission.” The effort was organized by Laura Silsby with support of two Idaho churches.

Initially, they were trying to move children away from a damaged orphanage in Haiti to a makeshift facility in the Dominican Republic. Along the way they also encountered children whose parents asked them to take them to safety temporarily. By the time they reached the border, the group was caring for 33 children and was detained due to the lack of an additional required document.

According to a statement posted on the church website at paramount.org/news-events, Lain disputed what he described as inaccurate media reports questioning the motives of these Baptists. “Be assured that their motive was to take care of ‘the least of these’ just as Jesus said,” he said, citing Matthew 25:40.

“You may have read the statement from the Associated Press that these missionaries knew what they were doing was wrong,” Lain added, citing their defense that they were moving children from one damaged orphanage to another safe place in the nearby Dominican Republic. “They spent three days getting the proper paperwork in order. The problems arose when they got to the border and still lacked something due to a change in the laws.”

The group met with an investigating Haitian judge on Feb. 2 and 3, then were charged on Feb. 4 with child kidnapping and criminal association for allegedly trying to take children illegally out of the earthquake-ravaged country. The Amarillo church posted a link to an MSNBC report that Lain described as fairly accurate. The report, which was shared by many media outlets, quoted Haitian Deputy Prosecutor Jean Ferge Joseph as telling the five men and five women during the hearing that the investigative judge “can free you but he can also continue to hold you for further proceedings.”

Lain told the TEXAN that all cell phones were taken away from the group, making it impossible for them to contact their families or seek U.S. legal assistance. Like everyone else, the church and family members are dependent upon media reports for updates. However, Lain said the Amarillo congregation is checking into the possibility of obtaining U.S. legal counsel to assist with Allen’s release.

“We’re saddened and disappointed in the charge. Of course it is a charge, not a conviction. It’s not a sentence,” Lain reminded, “but they’re talking three months before a trial and a potential sentence of 15 years in prison.”

“I cannot imagine them not eventually releasing him,” Lain said, making clear that he was sharing his own personal opinion. Referring to the Haitian prime minister’s remark aired live on Larry King’s broadcast, Lain noted, “He said he will be cooperative with governments who try people in their own country, but apparently no one has even asked for that.”

Lain said “it is impossible to know the inner workings” of U.S. officials seeking to resolve the situation. Praising the local media coverage as representative of the interest the Amarillo community has shown in Allen’s release, Lain said one member of his church had contacted U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry and U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn.

Interviewed while in detention, the group’s leader told the AP that they were “just trying to do the right thing” amid the chaos.

Two others in the group, Paul Thompson and his son, Silas, are related to Allen and also former Amarillo residents, according to the Amarillo Globe. Thompson was the youth minister at Second Baptist Church in the early 199s and now pastors East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Eight of the members of the group were from either the Twin Falls congregation or Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, both of which are SBC churches, with another coming from a Baptist church in Topeka, Kan., that is not affiliated with Southern Baptists.

Conditions in the Haitian prison were considered dismal with allegations that the group had been treated poorly, lacking medical care and food. The accusations of human trafficking caused the story to gain widespread international media attention, including a Larry King interview with family members of the detainees aired on CNN that included Allen’s wife, Lisa. She told King that she had not spoken with her husband since he was arrested.

“I think it’s a big misunderstanding that’s kind of been blown out of proportion,” she said. “Their intentions were to go there and help the kids that were in need.”

Paramount Baptist posted a statement from family members on their website late on Feb. 4.

“We are anxious, fearful and concerned about our family members, especially the young people who are jailed in a foreign country. Obviously, we do not know details about what happened and didn’t happen on this mission. However, we are absolutely convinced that those who were recruited to join this mission traveled to Haiti to help, not hurt, these children. We are pleading to the Haitian Prime Minister to focus his energies on the critical tasks ahead for the country and to forgive mistakes that were made by a group of Americans trying to assist Haiti’s children.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Silsby and a friend incorporated a non-profit group, New Life Children’s Refuge, last November, stating it was “dedicated to rescuing, loving and caring for orphaned, abandoned and impoverished Haitian and Dominican children, demonstrating God’s love and helping each child find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ.”

The Meridian church embraced the vision as part of their own international mission program, according to the Journal in an interview with one of the church leaders.

P.J. Crowley, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, was quoted in a CNN.com report as saying American and Haitian officials are “working to try to ascertain what happened [and] the motive behind these people.”

“Clearly, there are questions about procedure as to whether they had the appropriate paperwork to move the children,” Crowley said.

Silsby was seen in several video interviews Feb. 1 and Jan. 31, which were permitted by authorities, as stating that the group had thought their plans were in order for transporting the children into the Dominican Republic until they were stopped by Haitian guards as the border between the two countries.

Silsby, in a Feb. 1 interview with a CNN reporter, said, “We believe that we have been charged very falsely with trafficking, which of course that is the furthest possible extreme, because, I mean, our hearts here—we literally all gave up, you know everything we had, I mean, income, used of our own funds to come here and help these children and by no means are any part of that horrendous practice.”

SBC President Johnny Hunt and Executive Committee President Morris H. Chapman urged Southern Baptists to pray for the jailed volunteers. Hunt said, “We are grateful for the efforts of the U.S. State Department to provide services for the brothers and sisters in Christ, praying that our government will be able to work with the Haitian government to effect an amicable resolution to this tense situation.”

Hunt applauded efforts of state convention disaster relief teams, the North American Mission Board and International Mission Board “in their immediate and timely responses to the ongoing humanitarian crises in Haiti. They are working closely with other disaster organizations and with governmental entities in Haiti to bring resources to those who are in need.”

Recognizing that the convention cannot require any church to coordinate its local church ministries with SBC ministries, Hunt cautioned, “We strongly encourage all cooperating Baptist churches planning ministry trips to Haiti to contact their respective state conventions and our two mission boards, which are working together to provide ministry to this devastated region.”

Separated by a distance of 2,400 miles from the group detained in Haiti, Lain appealed to Christians worldwide to pray for these volunteers.

“It’s just a total misunderstanding,” Lain said, expressing his own frustration and that of his church in West Texas, the families and a host of Christians worldwide. “The press here has been wonderful because people have said, ‘Let’s get our guy home.’”

The current stage production of C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” offers a visually engaging way to consider the ways that we are tempted while maintaining the wit and essence of Lewis’ classic book. The 90-minute production is fast moving and will leave you with a lot to discuss on the way home.

Max McLean plays Screwtape, a chief tempter in Hell who corresponds throughout the play with his nephew/apprentice Wormwood. McLean’s character is reptilian from the start with a undisguised menace beneatha demeanorof sophistication. College grads should think of the meanest (not most difficult) and most petty professor they ever encountered. By the final curtain, Screwtape is a raging beast, fearful of his own sinister master and spewing threats at his doomed nephew. No creature is the master of his own sin.

The chief tempter is assisted by a raggedy but attentive cat (imagine that) portrayed by Karen Eleanor Wight. Miss Wight also provides some visual comic relief in her character’s role as personal assistant to Screwtape. Adding her to the stage makes the dialog between Screwtape and the unseen Wormwood work as she takes dictation and sends the correspondence. Wight contorts herself and lolls about on the furniture as you’d see a housecat do. It’s a great diversion that does not distract.

Tammi and I very much enjoyed the production and noted the way Lewis’ observations on sin and temptation from nearly 70 years ago (and the adapters’ selections from them) hold up so well in our present day. It’s a testimony to the unchanging nature of people as well as to the timeless perspective of a great writer.

McLean also served as one of the adapters of Lewis’ work. He is the president of the Fellowship of Performing Arts, an organization that seeks to engage a diverse audience with literature based on a biblical view of God, man, sin, and redemption. Screwtape’s clear description of sin and temptation cleverly gets under the defenses of those who might downplay the sinfulness of men. Mission accomplished, in this case.

Screwtape sold out in Houston before moving on to Austin. The only other date currently on their schedule is in New York. Here’s hoping they’ll have some other performances in Texas, maybe Dallas and San Antonio. Don’t miss it if you get a chance to attend.

You can keep track of future dates and learn more about the FPA and its production of The Screwtape Letters at ScrewtapeOnStage.com.