It has been proven that problems associated with revivals and accelerated harvesting can take place with or without a church building. The USS Barry Revival of 1979-1981 is evidence of that fact. Establishing house churches, in an attempt to avoid problems often found in church buildings, will not eliminate the age-long difficulties associated with human relationships.
Here are a few of the problems we encountered on the USS Barry.
- Immaturity: No Tested and Tried Leadership
⇒We didn’t have competent leadership to hold us accountable to any moral standards. We didn’t have solid long-term training in spiritual disciplines, nor did we have a leadership development process.
- Doctrinal Divisions / Denominationalism
⇒Water baptism proved to be a divisive issue.
- Sexual Immorality
⇒One of the leading young men fell into this trap and brought a bad report on the work of the Lord.
If a study of historically documented revivals were to be undertaken, it would reveal that problems like the ones above are common. Satan knows how to break up a move of God. Very few revivals last more than a few years.
Bermuda
September 12, 1981
Having participated in a revival and accelerated harvesting onboard the Barry, I made an intentional effort to ensure that the churches I attended after I left the Navy had structures in place to retain and preserve the harvest. Sadly, my intentional efforts have thus far proven to be negligible. There are far too many other priorities that tie up a church’s time than to focus on discipleship and spiritual development. What baffles me the most is that churches will still pray for a revival! If God were to answer their prayers and they would experience a revival with an accelerated harvest, it would all fall flat in a relatively short period of time and leave little lasting fruit.
Praying for “showers of refreshing,” and not preparing for the subsequent harvest season is a demonstration of spiritual negligence.
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