God decides when there will be an outpouring of his Holy Spirit. Nobody “schedules” the Holy Spirit. Nobody scheduled Pentecost, or the Great Awakening of the 1700s, or the Jesus People Movement. Nevertheless, world revival has been scheduled for tomorrow night, August 30.

Michael W. Smith feels God has called him to spearhead the next Great Awakening, and he found an available date. What form will it take? It’ll be “a massive concert in Nashville, Tennessee, which he believes will be the beginning of the next great awakening throughout the U.S. and the world,” according to the Christian Post.

That concert will be held tomorrow night, August 30, at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Smith points out that the name “Bridgestone” is significant, since both “bridge” and “stone” are “instrumental” in the Bible. Plus, there’s a big antenna atop the arena. “Is that coincidence?” he says. Sounds like a foolproof fleece to me.

Smith has partnered with TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) to bring to us, in living color, the next Great Awakening. It, obviously, must occur in the United States and be sponsored by Caucasians, like Jesus was. Legitimate revivals don’t occur in countries which aren’t Blessed by Gaaawd.

Says Smith, “Other than Jerusalem, I think there’s something very strategic about Nashville.” It’s unclear if the Holy Spirit was given any other venue options for this “next great move of God.” If Jerusalem is Number 1 on the list, why settle for second best?

Sorry, but you can’t experience revival live. This is a tape-delay revival.

The concert will be taped and then aired sometime during the fall by TBN. So if the Holy Spirit descends on that gathering tomorrow night, I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen–bottle him up until the fall broadcast date? Digitally record the Holy Spirit onto a DVD? I’m sure the technicians at TBN have it all figured out, and will remaster the Holy Spirit’s Outpouring in a cutting-edge way. I assume you’ll be able to buy the Great Awakening on DVD.

Silliness aside, you can’t schedule a Great Awakening. You can’t even schedule Woodstock, not with the magic. You can only schedule a bunch of recording artists for a Thursday night gig. But I’m sure it’ll be a very worshipful event with a lot of good music, and somebody will make some money.

As for me and Pam: we’ll be in Shipshewana at a Three Dog Night concert. With Jeremiah singin’ Joy to the World.

Last week I followed the Southern Baptist Convention meeting. Some interesting stuff was happening, beyond the Paige Patterson controversy. Ed Stetzer wrote a great piece about it, and the Washington Post covered the convention well.

The only story you probably heard was about Vice President Mike Pence’s speech. The audience was expecting an affirmation of the SBC’s ministry and influence, but all they got was a campaign speech. Which Stetzer said shouldn’t have surprised them. “The reality is that we should expect politicians to act in political ways.” But it upset a great many people–conservative, Southern evangelicals, Trump’s base.

Pence cited all of the Trump administration’s accomplishment, such as they are, and basically exalted President Trump, as Pence usually does. One person counted up the references Pence made: President (61 times), Trump (12 times), Donald (6 times), God (9), Christ (2), Jesus (1).

After the speech, JD Greer, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted this:

“I know that [Pence’s speech] sent a terribly mixed signal. We are grateful for civic leaders who want to speak to our Convention—but make no mistake about it, our identity is in the gospel and our unity is in the Great Commission. Commissioned missionaries, not political platforms, are what we do.”

Good for him! The question that people were then asking was: why invite politicians? Stetzer wrote:

“We must ask ourselves, what is our goal? And who do we want to be? If the focus is evangelism, discipleship, mission, and church planting, having a Vice President come to speak doesn’t actually significantly help us with our goals. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest denominational missions-sending organization in the world, represented in numerous countries. So how does highlighting ONE country’s leadership help us model and show diversity and inclusiveness with other countries?”

He also pointed out an irony. Two hours before the speech, the Mission board told the inspiring story of a Muslim in an undisclosed country whom a Baptist missionary had led to Christ. Then Pence bragged about how the administration had radical Muslims “on the run.”

Said Stetzer, “We should not be confused about which of those scenarios should have us cheering the most. Our ultimate desire is not to have any people on the run, but rather to have them running to Christ.”

Stetzer and he and others basically said, “Enough with inviting politicians to our convention. There’s a time and a place to talk about politics, but it’s not at our conventions that are meant to be focused on the gospel mission.”

CNN reporter Daniel Burke, who spent a couple days covering the meeting, tweeted: “They’ve spent the vast majority of that time talking about evangelism. Not politics, not the role of women, not the culture wars. Church planting and baptisms are the core focus.”

But because they invited Pence, the news coverage was dominated by politics–not the work of the Gospel. From everything I read, the Southern Baptists aren’t going to let that happen again.

I was looking for an article in some old United Brethren magazines when a teaser on the cover of the May 1988 issue grabbed my attention: “Can Evangelicals Regain Integrity?” The article was by Dr. Paul Fetters. I vaguely remembered publishing that article 30 years ago, when I was the editor. I reread it, and found it uncomfortably relevant to today.

At the time, Christians were reeling from affairs by high-profile televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. Fetters wrote, “During the past year, the Christian church has suffered an enormous loss of integrity. But we didn’t lose integrity overnight. I see three elements which have contributed to it.”

All three points were excellent, as were his three points for regaining integrity. But it’s the first point I’ll cite here: replacing a God of Holiness for a God of Love. He wrote:

“A Holy God is more demanding than a God of Love. In fact, my understanding is that God COMMANDS us to love, but he DEMANDS that we be holy. The problem is, we don’t want anyone to demand anything of us. We love ourselves and others, our objects and objectives, more than we love a God who says, ‘I am holy and jealous, and I will not share the supreme devotion in your life with any other.

“In the past 25-30 years, we have smothered the earth with ‘God is love.’ What would happen if, in the next 25 years, we blitzed the world with, ‘God is holy’?”

Well, it’s more than 25 years. I would say we’ve drifted much further away from a God of Holiness, and have become increasingly infatuated with a God of Love, who will accept and forgive just about anything.

Was Jesus capable of exercising bad judgment? According to most Christian teaching, no. Bad judgment sounds too close to sin. We explain away everything Jesus said and did, even when it grates on us in some way. We focus on his “divine” side. We portray Jesus wandering blissfully through Israel, pious and smiling and always saying and doing the exact right thing.

In the words of Philip Yancy, we view Jesus “from above.” But when we view Jesus “from below,” legitimate (in my view) questions arise.