Signs Of Revival (October 29, 2006)

Our hardworking committee has fixed a time and a place for a church-wide retreat: August 10-12 at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana. I rejoice. Turkey Run is one of my favorite places - I take the boys there about once a year for hiking and canoeing.

And the date is perfect! It is during the time of the Perseids meteor shower, which usually peaks in the early morning hours of August 12. Every year for the past five years I have wanted to go to some isolated spot far from Chicago to view it, but there has always been cloud cover, or a full moon, or I've had duties the next day which prohibited a middle-of-the-night excursion. Hopefully in August of 2007 I'll get to see the shooting stars I've missed for half a decade. I look forward to the pre-dawn sky-gazing already.

I'm grateful that our committee has made plain that the purpose of the retreat is not mere recreation but renewal: as individuals and as a church we want to draw closer to God. This is very good indeed. Every church has its strengths and weaknesses - one of our weaknesses is that we have tended to be better at assembling people for social events than spiritual ones. A retreat for the sake of pursuing God's will is exactly what we need.

But how will we know, at the end of it, if we have been revived?

I have three measurement criteria that will help us move beyond the subjective "That was so refreshing!" to the objective "That benefited our church and its ministries - we have moved closer to God." My list:

Prayer
I've pushed the Wednesday night prayer meeting for years now, but sadly it is still the case that I am the only member of Faith Bible Church who attends it. Will August 15, 2007, be the date on which my prayers are answered, and long-time members join with newcomers to praise God and offer their requests?

Tithing
I remain deliberately ignorant of what individuals give, but it is not hard to calculate that our weekly offerings still do not add up to 10 percent of what our people earn. Will August 19, 2007, see a dramatic spike in the church's income?

Hospitality
Someone indicated to me a while ago that Faith Bible Church was simply not ready to respond to my pleas to invite visitors into our homes. Will that change in the fall of 2007 after our summer renewal?

I choose to have high hopes and demonstrably fulfillable expectations about the results of next year's retreat. Of course, it goes without saying that if anyone prefers to get revived and renewed ahead of time, that's fine too.