A Hymn in Springtime

The word revival has not entirely disappeared from today’s religious vocabulary. Most often when I hear the word these days I hear of something the church desperately needs. Revival is a work of the Holy Spirit among God’s people, a work for which we are to pray without ceasing. I believe this true. While my own prayers are fitful and forgetful in this matter, I know the church needs revival and I know that only God can bring it about. But in the churches in which I grew up revival meant something more. Revival was an annual event. It was scheduled and planned. Usually a guest preacher was invited to come to the church. There would be revival services each night of the week. (As I grew older the week-long event shrunk to a three night event. Some churches now have abandoned the practice altogether).

At some point during the week there would be a gathering of the people that involved no small amount of food. The preaching was intense, the singing was robust. Typically held in the springtime of the year, these revival meetings were the congregation’s rousing from the slumber of winter: A yearly shot-in-the-arm for the faithful, a frequent Damascus road for those who had never made a commitment to Jesus Christ. This is what was happening at the North Trenholm Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina in the spring of 1970. I had just turned eight years old. My uncle Earl was the pastor of that church, and the guest preacher for the week was my Dad.

I wish I could remember more of the details of that particular April evening – the look of the church, what I had done that day, the very spot in the sanctuary where I was seated, the words of the sermon my father preached. I honestly can’t recall much of that evening (I think it was a Thursday). But there are a few things that have remained with me over the past thirty-four years. As with almost every worship service in a Baptist church, this one ended with an “invitation” to respond to God’s work, and especially God’s promptings through the preached word. The most urgent invitation, especially in revival services, was often a call to make a decision for Christ. This response or “decision” usually meant walking down the aisle to speak with the pastor who stood at the front of the church as a hymn was being sung. This coming forward was an open declaration, the act that constituted a public profession of faith. My father, having finished the sermon I don’t remember, extended the invitation.

I remember the mingling of longing and dread, knowing that I needed to go forward, and yet not wanting to move. Still, for whatever reason, this was the moment when I knew in my eight year old spirit that the time had come to respond. I remember moving to my left to exit the pew. And above all else I remember the hymn that was being sung at that moment: I Surrender All. In the years since my eight-year-old-center-aisle journey, I have sung that hymn time and time again in a variety of worship settings. However, it has been only recently that I’ve begun to feel the weight of what the hymn says. The act of yielding one’s life, handing it over, letting it go, lies at the heart of the Christian life.

The night I went to the front of the church to speak to my father about trusting in Jesus, I Surrender All was background music. Now, thirty-four years later, “I surrender all” is becoming a theme song. In a sesne, it defines what I’m seeking to do every day as a follower of Jesus Christ. Honestly, those words are much easier sung than lived. Those words name the struggle, the fight. Why do we find it so hard?