[Note that these are my personal thoughts. So I'm not trying to persuade you to see the revival from my perspective...just trying to relate to those who already feel this way. But if you can see parts of the truth in this review that you'd have never seen otherwise, then that's fine too. Also, if you've grown spiritually from the revival - don't let this deter you in your spiritual walk either. If you grew from this, I am extremely glad...]
Oh dear...here we've got a man with the confidence level that not even Jesus Himself can top. (Not a bad thing per se, but I felt that in this particular context it was.) We don't know this guy (at least I don't) - so the faith level isn't going to be very high. Now when I say "faith", I'm not taking about the faith we have in God - that happens all throughout our lives, inside and outside of chapel. What I'm talking about here is faith in this man. Throughout the sermon, I noticed that he gave a lot of commands. Now don't get me wrong - we need to be commanded to do things sometimes because we need a sense of authority in our lives. But when the commands are loaded with abstractions - blanket terms whose meanings differ from person to person - the intent gets lost somewhere along the way. Or it doesn't get lost per se, but rather miscommunicated. Miscommunicated, because we don't really know this person very well. (The pitfall of having guest speakers, I guess.) :/
For example, there was one point in the sermon where he broadcasted an altar invitation to "depressed" people. At the first sound of this word, I was like, "I need to go up." But as I thought about it afterwards...what did he really mean? Did he mean people who were sad, or people who were living in self-hatred? You see, more communication needs to happen in order for me to unite my metaphor system with his metaphor system. It is when this happens that I will see God from his eyes, which, although I felt like I was on the brink of doing so, I never ended up doing... :(
For my psyche and my emotions, the revival session followed a strange dynamic. We started off with some classic worship...you know, the normal stuff. Then when the "It's TIME FOR THE OFFERING!" siren rang, the salsa-dancing, Life from Wine (or something similar-sounding) immediately assembled on stage and decided to go all speedy on us with their instruments! Dance, dance, dance! IT was all about dancing. And so the majority of us - excluding me, unfortunately - were dancing away. We were dancing so much, that we thought it would never stop! Unfortunately, it did stop - and very abruptly when the preacher (I forgot his name, sorry), commanded us to sit down at a very out-of-place time. With a stern face that totally belied his previous expression, and with an ambiguously-angry face; he paced back and forth across the stage, yelling and shouting like a spirit-filled, Pentecostal version of Hitler (and did I mention always wanting us to say "Amen" at the times where hardly any of us felt lead too?). He did all this for the next hour or so, after all of us froze in our dance and plopped back down into our seats all of a sudden. And then somewhere towards the end of it all, a song played. Now it wasn't a happy, danceable track. No, it wasn't that at all... It was a sad, melancholy track - a tune that matched the powerlessness we felt in the presence of God's awe.
So let's recap. First it was normal, then it was HAPPY!!! Then, it was fearful/angry (the minions certainly felt the heat when their master's chalice was devoid of water). And then it was serious, and then to top it all off - sad (and I thought I was the one who had emotional issues). So what we have here is an emotional roller coaster - and thus, the conclusion I've reached from all this, is that the emotional roller coaster syndrome is not actually an ISSUE. Apparently, as we've seen tonight, it's actually the most Biblical and spiritual thing that can happen to an individual! (Oh my, so I was actually being spiritual all along! No need to visit a counselor after all, I guess...)
Yep, it ended sadly (I walked away pretty depressed, no joke). And I'm not talking about the type of depression the preacher invited me up for either - I'm talking about heavy grief, in addition to a sense of compassion for these two types of people: those who didn't believe in ANY OF THE REVIVAL at all, and those who were listening to him without question. And we know that when you believe SOLELY in somebody, or believe in a context that is only a VERY small portion of reality (for instance...an enclosed auditorium?) - you will fail. Seriously. When this guy leaves the stage, your life, what now? I guess we need to learn to rely on God again? And when you're out of the chapel, and out in the real world...what then? Oh I get - just realize that God is everywhere.
On the other end of the spectrum, however, we DO need to believe. Not necessarily in the unclarified techniques of a preacher, but in the fact that God will carry us through things no matter what. He always has a way out for you, even if you screw up. But I digress. Anyway...
I felt that the preacher would have been better off if he were familiarized with us first, before acting smug and over-confident in front of everybody. Honestly, I think if he did - if he knew us on a personal level - he could have done some great and mighty things in a lot of our lives. One of the things I noticed that set him apart from everyone else WAS his confidence. However, the thing that's lacking here, is an accurate understanding of the context (the ORU students and the chapel) and how it operates. But once he's got that down...I think that he'd be good. (No, let me rephrase that: he'd be great.)
Now, this is just the way I - and I'm sure at least a couple others - felt about tonight. But that isn't to say that I'm ignoring the fact that at least SOME people were touched in a way they've never been (and I'm certainly happy for them, no doubt). But hopefully, we'll all get to the point one day in our stay at ORU where we receive more personalized messages, rather than ones that cater to an unprobed crowd.
(Don't even get me started with the whole "deaf ear" episode either...classic example of what I mean by "not knowing the individual" and "relying on smug, inaccurate pre-perceptions."
And also...how many times do we have to say "NOW"? A million times? "NOW" is soooo 30 minutes ago.)
But I really do feel bad for being so harsh. In reality, it wasn't really that bad. (Just next time don't block off the doors an hour after the service has ended, okay administration? And maybe allow a little more room for the Spirit to move, too...)
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