Revival, edited by John Avant, Malcolm McDow, and Alvin Reid

During my last semester on campus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminar in Fort Worth, I attended a chapel service in which students lined up at the microphones confessing sin.  I thought it was rather strange, hearing these fellow students airing their dirty laundry in public, but that service deeply impacted many students and faculty.  I left campus shortly after, happy to leave the contentious atmosphere that had come to dominate with the firing of the president the year before, and never got the full story of this brief but intense time of revival.

Out of curiosity I picked up the 1996 book Revival! The Story of the Current Awakening in Brownwood, Ft. Worth, Wheaton, and Beyond.  Edited by John Avant, Southwestern professor Malcolm McDow, and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Alvin Reid, Revival! is primarily a compilation of journal entries and recollections of several people who were at the center of this revival movement. 

John Avant was pastor at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood, Texas, when a revival broke out, marked by confession, salvations, and intense worship and prayer.  Soon students from Howard Payne University in Brownwood began traveling to Southwestern Seminary, Wheaton, and dozens and dozens of other college and seminary campuses testifying about what God was doing in Texas.  In most cases, similar revivals broke out on those campuses and spread to other churches and schools as students carried the news onward.

Revival! gathers together Avant's journals, journals of some of the key students, and messages they gave at other schools.  As you might expect, there is a lot of crossover and repetition as the story is told from different perspectives.  Also included are reflective chapters from Southwestern professors Roy Fish and Dan Crawford, who offer insights on cultivating and maintaining revival.  Finally, Henry Blackaby, whose study Experiencing God provided the kindling for revival fire, contributes a closing chapter.

Movements like this are so unpredictable and spontaneous, but, as Avant and the authors point out, there are conditions that can lead to a revival movement.  I was encouraged by their stories and convicted of my need to walk more closely with God and confess my sin.  I still think the public confession of sin as described here and as I witnessed in chapel is questionable, yet it was the trigger for some life-changing experiences.  I would be curious to hear from some of these students two decades later, reflecting on the long-term impact this powerful but brief revival movement had on their lives.