Revival at Hermleigh church began with kids

A year ago, Central Baptist Church in Hermleigh—100 miles southeast of Lubbock—no longer needed all 144 seats in their auditorium. Only a dozen or so faithful members were coming each Sunday, so a third of the space had been taken over for storage.

Then a steady stream of children and teenagers began accepting invitations from friends to attend a discipleship program on Wednesday nights, and their parents took notice. Young adults who had given up on church began returning and inviting other families.

With 20 baptisms since Thanksgiving and a crowd that surpassed 130 in late May, now the congregation needs every available seat.

“Our church is experiencing revival,” said Pastor T.J. Harkness. “Every single day I get a phone call of a new story of God working with these young adults.”

“We were such a small church, but we are growing so rapidly,” shared Alan Celoria, a retired music evangelist who works with the youth along with his wife, Jan. They were used to teaching a few teenagers in Sunday School. Now there are over 25 attending on Sunday mornings and around 50 on Wednesday nights.

“All of a sudden, God is doing big things in a small place,” he told the TEXAN.

In the remote West Texas town of around 400 people, Harkness set forth a big challenge, Celoria recounted. “God gave him a vision that we were going to see the church packed.”

Church members were enlisted to help with a growing youth ministry and provide transportation home for those who visited. Couples took turns cooking breakfast for students on Sunday morning.

“The approach was to do everything we possibly could to bring these kids in no matter what their motivation so that we could feed them the Word of God,” Harkness said.

Avenue D Baptist Church in Snyder offered the Hermleigh church a 15-passenger bus to transport more children and youth. Young adults began visiting the church as they saw changing habits of their children.

“They started going on Wednesdays and then on Sunday mornings and started asking if we’d go,” recalled Beatrice Thompson.

“Some kids you have to force to go to church, but I started noticing they’d want to get up and go on Sunday mornings,” she added.

“They would come home and tell us what they learned and then we were learning from it,” Beatrice said. That caught her by surprise. “I told my husband we ought to go and check it out.” Once they went, they were hooked, she recalled. “You can tell that they care about God by the way they treat you.”

As an interracial couple, the Thompsons felt uncomfortable with the reception they received while visiting other churches. “Here they don’t look at you that way,” she stated. “They see you as a person. That’s when you know these are people who are really into God.”

The pastor welcomed Rodney and Beatrice when they walked forward at a worship service to ask how to join the church and in the process realized they first needed salvation.

Celoria recalled how the Thompsons’ children began noticing a difference in their parents following their decisions to follow Christ. “Their three older children came to us and said something has happened to our family and we want that too.”

After the 11-year-old publicly professed her faith in Christ, two siblings followed and Beatrice quizzed them to make sure their decisions were sincere. “Pastor T.J. had a real good sermon on things that made sense to them and I could tell they were paying attention. They felt it in their hearts and I knew it was the real thing,” she added.

“The next Sunday we all got baptized—the whole family,” Beatrice shared, “except my baby,” she said, referring to their 3-year-old. “Her time will come.”

Thirteen-year-old Tommy Haynes showed such enthusiasm for the Team Kids program that it made his mother curious. “He had never been a church-goer and so I was really shocked,” shared Misty Haynes. “I said, ‘Tommy, if you love it so much, I might give it a try.’”

Through the invitation of their friends, Tommy and his brothers began attending and soon their mother followed. “I just absolutely loved it the first time. I felt so welcome and so at home.”

When the pastor stopped by their home to talk with Tommy and his brother Dylan about their decision to become Christians, Misty began asking questions to gain assurance of her own salvation years earlier.

“In talking to her,” Harkness said, “Toby realized he hadn’t made a decision at all so I explained the gospel to both of them.”

“I had no clue that my husband didn’t feel he was baptized for the right reason when he was younger,” Misty said. “He was ready to take his own step and do it for the right reason,” she added, recalling her husband’s profession of faith that night in their home. Haynes and the two sons were baptized April 29.

“What’s been going on in that church has been really amazing,” shared Michael Hildebrand. He and his wife, Tiffany, left a few years ago. “Some things happened that I didn’t agree with at the time. I didn’t trust God that his work was going on, but we were drawn back to the church by listening to what God was telling us,” he said.

Now he sees that the seeds for growth had been sown for years. “The youth group is growing outrageously and we’re getting more and more adults. They’re being drawn in by the kids,” he explained.

More than 150 people attended the May 26 service followed by lunch at the community center to share elements of Bible drill, Scripture memory and character study taught throughout the year on Wednesday nights. Half of the parents of the teenagers had never attended the church.

“We’re reaching people,” Celoria said. “The Word of God is taking hold so that when they share with their parents what’s going on in their lives, the parents come out of curiosity as the Holy Spirit draws them.” Celoria said. “Men are being saved and baptized. Entire families are getting reunited. It’s amazing.”

Long-time members have made good on their promise to follow the direction Harkness believes God is leading, he added, embracing an appeal to repair and renovate church facilities.

“They started seeing the growth with a younger generation of youth starving for God’s Word and their parents following and being baptized and put to work almost immediately,” Harkness said.

In fewer than 45 days, over $30,000 was given to more than cover the cost of materials and labor on the to-do list compiled by a church committee. “It’s just absolutely amazing to see this, especially as a young pastor serving in my first church,” Harkness said. “I’m absolutely humbled God chose me to be a part of this growth.”

He remembers the lessons he learned in patiently waiting on God while attending Jacksonville College, confident that God would bless his ministry even when that took him to a small, rural church with only a few dozen members when he arrived.

Even after the special service in May that attracted a record-breaking crowd, attendance held steady the next week with 96 people in worship and 76 in Sunday School.

Talking recently with her husband about the change in their lives, Beatrice Thompson said, “I can’t believe we’ve lived this long not knowing how good life is with God in your life, knowing you’re doing work now that is so much different, so much more. We didn’t realize how good it feels.”