I was in my first pastorate after seminary. Emmanuel Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, was struggling to find its identity.  Made up primarily, I was told, of people who had joined from other churches, and thus a weak fellowship unsure of themselves and of their purpose for existing.

In time this was to become the sweetest of any of the six churches I pastored.  And it all happened because two teenage girls were faithful.

Debbie and Becky. Two champions for the Lord.

Debbie is married to Charlie and they’ve lived in Vicksburg, MS for all their adult lives. Serving God faithfully.

Becky is married to Larry, a pastor, and they’ve served churches in Texas all their adult lives.

They are something special.

The time was the late 1960’s.  I pastored Emmanuel from November 1967 through December 1970. Only three years and two months. But a lot can happen in three years.  Ask our Lord and His disciples.

There was no unity or cohesion in the church.  The Sunday I preached “in view of a call” (that is the term we Baptists employ) I told a joke.  Consequently, twenty-five people voted against me.  The chairman of the search committee gently rebuked me for such foolishness from the pulpit.  And next Sunday, when he called me in Louisiana to announce the vote, I turned it down.  I said, “Well, I think that’s too many people against me.”

Mr. Bryant said, “Preacher, ask the Lord. Then do whatever He tells you to do.”  It was good advice.  When I asked, within five minutes of praying, I knew we were going to Greenville.

Gossip raged throughout the congregation.  People were unhappy with themselves, with God, with me.  So, sometime in my first year there, I felt we should have a revival meeting.

That day a flyer came in the mail from Evangelist Don Womack of Memphis. I’d never heard of the fellow but decided the Lord must mean for us to invite him for a revival.   I would have to learn the hard way not to be presumptuous.

He came in with a motor home which they plugged up at the church.  We did the revival Sunday through Sunday.  The attendance grew less and less all week.  We had one kid saved Wednesday night. I complained to Mr. Bryant, now the chairman of deacons.

“Where are our people?  They’re not supporting the revival.”

He said, “Preacher, the man can’t preach!”

I said, “I know that. But other than that, where are the people?” I smile, but that is the exact conversation.

The second Sunday morning, the evangelist and I met in the auditorium with all the children in the church, perhaps forty or fifty.  Any pastor will tell you, that’s when you will probably have several to accept Jesus as Savior.  But not this time. Nobody.  No one responded.

Final sermon of the revival was the morning service. Don preached and no one responded.  Then, he sat down.

I stood before the congregation, perhaps 150 people.  I honestly did not know what to say.  I was so frustrated.

I said, “Folks, I don’t know what to do.  Brother Womack and I have worked hard all week, but most of you have not even attended.  We have visited and prayed and worked. We’ve had one child saved. This morning we met with the children and no one responded.”

“Looking across the congregation, I see several of you who need to be saved. But you have not come.  And I see a number of you who have told me you’re going to join the church. But you haven’t.  And I just want to say….”

“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t join this church either.”

That got their attention.

“There is a bad spirit in this congregation.  And the Lord is not going to send a revival to people who do not deserve it.”

I thought of a Scripture I’d not used or read in years.  “Folks, God says the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God.”

“We are going to continue the invitation. Some of you need to come to the altar and repent. You know who you are, if you’re the one resisting God.  If you are the one blocking revival.”

As we sang, a number of people came to the altar.  Ask any pastor; those who came were the best people, the sweetest people, those with the tenderest hearts.

“Oh pastor,” they would say, “if it’s me I want to get out of the way.”

I would say, “It’s not you. Go on back to your seat!”

That’s what I said. I was young, folks.  Twenty-seven, I think.

After a bit, we closed the service and went home. The evangelist returned to Memphis.

It happened that night. 

As the youth were gathering for church training–remember that?–Debbie and Becky entered and said hello to Randi.  These girls were all the same age, sixteen or so.  Debbie and Becky were cheerleaders at the local high school. And Randi just knew–she thought she did–that they must have been compromising their convictions to be so popular.

When they greeted Randi that evening, she turned up her nose and said, “I don’t speak to hypocrites!”

Later, when they were entering the sanctuary for the evening service, Debbie and Becky walked over to Randi.

“Randi.  We love you.”

That’s all they said.  But brother, was that ever enough.

I forget what I preached that night. But during the invitation time that followed, Randi was the first one down the aisle.

“Oh, Brother McKeever. I have such a bad attitude.”

I said, “You certainly do.  Kneel down here and talk to the Lord. Come back and tell me when He has forgiven you.”

In a few minutes she was back. “He has forgiven me.”

I said, “Okay, Randi. Here is the mic.  Tell the congregation.”

And she did.

Then, it began to happen.

Others came to the altar and prayed.  When they finished, they went to the microphone and shared their decision, their commitment, with the congregation.

That invitation went on for over an hour.  When it ended, almost everyone in the church–a hundred or more–had been to the altar and then had shared their decision.  We had ten people saved that night.

The next morning, a young woman came by the church to say she had gotten saved while working in her yard earlier that morning.

Wednesday, a young married woman came  to my house to tell my wife that she had gotten saved while vacuuming.

I asked her to share her testimony that night at church. And afterwards, during the invitation–which I would not normally do on a Wednesday night–the first one down the aisle was the WMU president.  Ethel Keeling had been on the pastor search committee and was a true southern gracious lady.

“Brother McKeever,” she said, “I realize I’m not saved. I want to be saved.”

I argued with her.

“Mrs. Keeling, how could you not be saved?”

Over the years, she said, she had joined several churches, transferred her membership from one to another, and been a Baptist for years. But no one had ever told her how to be saved.

She and I knelt and prayed. Next Sunday I baptized her.

The revival went on from there.

For the rest of my ministry there Emmanuel was in a constant state of revival.

A pastor friend from a nearby town told us preachers that two couples from his church had moved to Greenville. “They’re going to make some of you some excellent members.”

Max and Betty Loper.  Stan and Pat Odom.

It was almost funny the way the various Baptist churches of Greenville swarmed around them. They were young and attractive, loved the Lord and were delighted to be the focus of the local churches. Some nights when we visited them, two more church groups were in their living room.  They laughed and said, “Come on in!

The more the merrier.”

My church got both couples.  They loved the fellowship of Emmanuel.

We had become a church on fire, in love, with joy.

At the end of 1970, the Lord moved me to the state capital where I joined the staff of the First Baptist Church of Jackson as their minister of evangelism.  That was life-changing for me.

Emmanuel continued reaching people for Jesus under the next pastor. Many of those we led to Christ are serving Him to this day.

Many years later, I had a phone call.  A pastor of a church in North Carolina was being inaugurated as the first leader of the divinity school of a Baptist university there.  I had baptized him at Emmanuel as a seven-year-old.  He wondered if I would come and speak at his inauguration.

Jamie and Barbara Kinman have pastored churches in Texas for all these decades since they joined at Emmanuel as newlyweds.

How do you measure a revival? You don’t.  Only the Lord knows the entire story and only time will tell.

Becky Stephens Sullivan and Debbie Thrash Bennett will have all kinds of rewards in Heaven for their faithfulness.  They were champions for Jesus as teenagers and they still are!