Asbury Revival? Meh – it's just college kids
Exclusive: Craige McMillan advises the established church to check out the Great Banquet parable
By Craige McMillanPublished February 24, 2023 at 7:07pm
The setting: Jesus is eating at the house of a prominent Pharisee. The guests are unresponsive to Jesus' questions to engage their thinking. So He tells them a parable.
Sometimes I marvel at how so many of us in today's churches seem to have ended up in the role of the Pharisees of Jesus' day. I'm not talking about the the new churches of wokism; I'm talking about those of us who have endured lifetimes of good teaching in Bible-centered churches by Bible college and seminary-educated pastors. Could the revival possibly pass us by?
The Asbury University revival seems so foreign to us, because it doesn't look like we expect a revival to look. It's just college kids. No great teachers, no great preachers and no great vocalists. Maybe what God is telling us is that a revival isn't when more people who look like us and think like us and talk like us come to our churches – that's not the revival we should expect.
There is a certain validity to that thinking, isn't there? If the world was already filled with people who were educated like us, looked like us and thought like us, then it would be growing church attendance – not a revival.
In fact, the world today is filled with multitudes of people who don't think like us, look like us and haven't darkened the door of a church in years, decades, or perhaps a whole lifetime. If we believe what we hear preached in those churches that we attend, we would have to admit that the world around us would not be nearly as messed up today as it is, if Christians left the church at the end of the service, went out into the world and practiced what we say we believe.
A revival occurs not when a new family who looks like us, talks like us, thinks like us and has already surrendered their lives to Jesus walks through the door of the church, but rather when God compels people who are hurt, angry, drug-addicted and broken to come into the church to meet with God at the altar, and let Him change their lives from the things that are destroying our world, our nations, our culture, our government and our future.
When God sends those who are broken to His church to be healed, we experience revival. People with impossible lives see them changed, because our God has no limits, and he loves even the broken and those who have wrecked their lives by following the world's advice, which turns out to be very much like Satan's advice for having what they thought would be an exceptional life.
In the great banquet parable, the great man lays out a great feast for his wonderful friends and issues invitations. Unfortunately, all of them are busy with their own lives and offer excuses to avoid attending. The great man tells his servants to "go out into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame." The great man tells his servants to compel people to come in until there is no more room. And then we learn what has happened in the great man's heart: "I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet" (Luke 14:24).
What if this parable is for the established church, which is the invited guests to the revival, but they have no time to attend because they are already so busy "doing church"?
The real Armageddon Story novel series.
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