Assisting Churches in Multiplying Kingdom Servants

IDEAS FOR CHURCH REVIVAL SERVICES PLANNING

Focusing upon what you want to see God accomplish in your church allows you to know how to pray and how to involve your people.  Revival services are a time of concentrating upon God’s activity within the congregation.  Revival is a word derived from the Latin “to live again”.  We use it to describe the results of God working among those who have already called him Lord but need to return to their “first love” (Revelation 2:1-7).  Revival has as its target group those who are a part of the family of faith.  A church that seeks revival should therefore have the local congregation as its primary focus rather than the community.

Before the special services:

1.       Develop church leadership support

2.       Develop general laity support

3.       Prioritize deacon support/involvement

4.       Set calendar dates

5.       Confirm speaker

6.       Develop music focus

7.       Possibly choose a theme song that will be sung at each service

8.       Additional music that reminds us of our first love, renewal, recommitment, and God’s ever willingness to forgive and restore

9.       Prepare a six to eight week prayer emphasis to precede the Sunday prior to the first service

10.   Prayer emphasis will focus upon personal spiritual cleansing and holiness and the return of the congregation to its first love

11.   Mid-week prayer services focus their time on prayer for personal and church-wide spiritual cleansing and revival

12.   Every member prayed for

13.   Every member contacted

14.   Plan, schedule, and implement pre-revival outreach fellowship events both church wide and through individual Sunday School classes

15.   Personal testimonies in weekly worship services six to eight weeks prior to first revival service anticipating what revival in the church can mean (What I am praying to see happen in our congregation)

16.   A team of counselors is trained to assist the pastor at the time of decision at the end of each service

During:

1.       Prayer teams in action everyday

2.       Each evening a pre-service prayer focus

3.       Mass membership communication

4.       Sunday School high attendance emphasis the Sundays before and after the revival services

5.       Seating arrangements either by Sunday School classes (youth and adult) or as complete families

6.       Worship testimonies in each service emphasizing the long term effects being sought through prayer

7.       The trained counselors are available at each service as needed

8.       A complete attendance record is made for each service (everybody records their attendance)

After the special services are completed:

1.       In the Sundays following, worship service testimonies of answered prayer

2.       Follow up is made on all decisions made during the services

3.       Sunday School inreach continued for third Sunday high attendance emphasis

4.       Develop an up-to-date Sunday School prospect list of unenrolled church members

5.       Follow through on activities prayed for earlier

6.       Re-assimilation process for chronically absent members

7.       Activities scheduled through the Sunday School and possibly other church groups emphasizing the relationships within the congregational family

8.       Appropriate discipleship classes begun

9.       New ministries structured and begun involving new leadership discovered during the revival services