Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #195 Highlights from the 2025 Revival Roundtable - with Drew Humphrey and Pastor John Durham

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#195 Highlights from the 2025 Revival Roundtable - with Drew Humphrey and Pastor John Durham · The OneCry Podcast

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And every time we are kind and united and loving to other believers in our city,
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especially across denominational and church lines,
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that that's answering the prayer that Jesus prayed for us in the garden,
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that we would be one, just as He and the Father are one.
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Music.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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Well, once again, thank you for joining us on the One Cry podcast.
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This weekly podcast has just been an incredible blessing to me and to so many
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others, I'm sure, like you.
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And I am grateful for this series that we're in.
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And this series is all about revival, and more specifically,
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in light of the stirrings and the movements that are taking place right now,
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it's about what can we do to advance what it is that God is doing.
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Maybe not even just here in the States, but maybe globally, because God is beginning
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to raise up, as we talked about in the last podcast,
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beginning to raise up a host of people who are believing Him for an outpouring
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of His Spirit, and a host of people who are being driven to their knees in prayer.
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And that's why I think this really is a very special and, in my lifetime, a very unique moment.
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I've not ever seen God working at the level that He is currently in my lifetime.
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So I hope that encourages you. I hope it excites you, honestly.
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And I hope you are gleaning from this series of podcasts that we call Revival
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Roundtable because it was a roundtable gathering of, as we discussed.
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Revival and what it is we can do right now as leaders and voices and intercessors.
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To further his work and activity that has begun.
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And so we heard from Aubrey, who was a Gen Zer herself.
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And then we heard from David Thomas, who is a student, almost a historian,
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if you will, practitioner, however, of movements of God and revival.
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And today I'm excited to be able to let you in on a portion of that roundtable
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gathering where we heard from a campus pastor of a large church in Waco,
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Texas. His name is Drew Humphrey.
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I have highest regard and respect for Drew and also his lead pastor and John
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Durham there at Highland.
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So now we have a lead pastor. We have the campus pastor.
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And what I trust God will impress upon your heart and in my heart in a fresh
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way in this particular podcast is truly how revival spreads on relationships,
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upon friendships, that the kingdom is advanced through friendship.
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So in Waco, Texas, just for context, I'll probably allude to this in a moment, but in Waco,
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Texas, pastors have been meeting together literally for years,
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and there are three pastors that are literally, are the largest churches that are very best friends.
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And I believe the work that God is doing there at Baylor and at Waco is a result of those friendships.
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So without any further introduction here, this podcast, I believe.
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Could really be practically one of the most powerful things that you can not
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only listen to, but apply in your backyard of ministry.
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So God bless you as you listen, and I can't wait to come back and ask God to
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really embed this in our hearts together.
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I've learned over the years that the person who asks the questions should be
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doing the least amount of talking, and so for all of our sake,
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I'm going to ask the questions of Pastor John. Let him do the most talking.
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Um, and so James is one of our elders at Highland, if that wasn't mentioned as well.
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So we work really closely together, both in ministry on campus and prayer as
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well as at Highland, but okay.
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So pastor John, you can ask questions too. I was just, yeah,
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exactly. But, um, they, they may not know you.
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They've already, I've been with them since this morning and stuff.
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And so tell them about yourself and what you, where you come from and all those. Yeah. Thanks. True.
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Um, so I'm actually a Waco boy born there, raised there preacher's kid from there.
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When I graduated from Baylor, I just told the Lord, please get me out of Waco.
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And I never want to come back.
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And so in God's humor, you know, I've boomeranged back since.
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I was in Houston, so not that far down the road from you all.
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There's a youth pastor down there. There was a pastor up in the Dallas area for 11 years.
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And then it'll be 12 years. I've been at Highland come this summer.
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And I remember having this conversation with James seven, eight years ago.
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When I didn't want to come back to Waco as a college student,
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And a fire started burning inside of me probably about 15, 16 years ago to go
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back to Waco, the place I was happy to leave.
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All of a sudden, the Lord's like, it's time for you to go back.
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And then the more Jennifer and I, my wife and I began to pray about it,
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just realized that he wants us back for his kingdom, not just for familiar territory.
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You know, my mom and dad lived there. They still live there.
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And so it was a beloved place because of relationships. relationships,
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but the Lord began to kind of burn in us.
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We have a work. The Lord has a work and the Lord wants Jennifer to be a part of that.
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And, and not just us, but an unbelievable amount of people and puzzle pieces
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the Lord has been bringing together throughout the year.
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So I've been at Highland serving with Drew and actually Drew is a more tenured
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staff person than I am at Highland.
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He's 33 and I'm 55, but he actually started working there before I did.
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So I need to let you do a lot of talking, you know, a lot more than, than I do for sure.
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But true enough, I've had the
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joy getting to serve together for almost 12 years now together on staff.
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So contagious relationships, you know, I think with the unity aspect of the
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harmonizing aspect of the differences.
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I feel like what the Lord has taught me through pastor John over these 12 years
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is that harmonizing those relationships, maybe it's another church in town or another ministry, um,
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To do that, to have that kind of contagious relationship aspect,
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I feel like you have to really die to yourself a lot, die to your preferences a lot.
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The things that we do at Highland are different than the things that the other
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20 to I don't even know how many churches that we work with regularly or ministries
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and colleges we work with, we all are different for good reasons.
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And there obviously is a line. I think there are certain things that would be
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off limits, but there's a lot of dying to self.
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I remember with the FM 72 thing that you guys will hear more about if you haven't
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already, I often felt like, whether I was leading worship or I was directing
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the whole program from year to year, whatever it might be, that if any one of
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us was 100% happy, then we failed.
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We should kind of all be like 90% happy and 10% frustrated. And that's a really
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good unity event, right?
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And I think I learned that from Pastor John. And so that was not true when he came in 2013.
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Before that, we were not a contagious relationship, unity, harmonizing city.
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And one thing changed, Pastor John came and then God used that.
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So was that accidental? How did you get from showing up in Waco?
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I feel like that really marks Waco in a unique way. It's just this true,
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deep friendship, contagious relationships, harmonizing in ministry together.
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And it really goes back to when you got there. So fill me in.
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So I won't mention the city's name I was in before Waco, so I don't throw anybody on the bus.
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But when I was in that city, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I had made several
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phone calls, reached out to other pastors, desiring for unity.
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Can we pray together? Can we at least know one another's names?
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Know how to encourage one another?
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And again, as Afra mentioned, I was there 11 years and just couldn't even get
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emails back from other pastors in town. There was a lot of territorialism, a lot of division.
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I remember seeing one of the pastors in one of the hospitals on a hospital visit,
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and I called out his name. I was like, hey, have you gotten my last...
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11 emails that I've sent you, and I kind of got a friendly wave from him.
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He's like, I'll get back with you. I'll get back with you.
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And to date, still have not heard back from him. So it was a longing in my heart for that.
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And again, in hindsight, one of the things that the Lord did and kind of going
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ahead of me, ahead of us going to Waco is my dad had been a pastor in Waco for 32 years.
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I think I mentioned that earlier, but also retired with a really good name,
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as in a faithful name, had loved the Lord, was faithful to my mom,
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was faithful to the church, faithful to the gospel.
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And so that good name was like gold for me when I got to come step into Waco,
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when people were like, oh, Durham, was your dad Bron?
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All of a sudden that these bridges had been built that I could not build up
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in the Dallas Fort Worth area.
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So isn't that funny how the Lord and his sovereignty, the last thing I wanted
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to be as a teenager was a preacher's kid. And now, you know,
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as a preacher in a town, being a preacher's kid is actually God leveraged that good name.
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You know, and I think we always do better serving together than trying to serve.
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We always do better encourage one another as opposed to trying to be divisive in a town.
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And, you know, Jesus prayed to that end for us.
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You know, I don't have to share with this group, John 17.
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When we're united as churches, it's an answer to the prayer of Jesus.
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And what a beautiful thing for you and I to be a part of an answer to the prayer
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that Jesus prayed that we would be one. But it's not only an answer to prayer.
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Church unity becomes an apologetic thing.
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For the reality that God sent the Son. And that's what John 17 says.
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If the world will see us as one, then Jesus said, then they will know that,
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God, it was you that sent me.
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So it's not just, I mean, there's certainly some really sweet feelings in unity,
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but there's some deep level, again, apologetics for the reality of God sending
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his missionary son, Jesus, to the world by the way that churches love one another.
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And again, the kind of beautiful, maybe even sentimentality in some ways,
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But just the thought of every time we're kind and united and loving to other believers in our city,
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especially across denominational and church lines, that that's answering the
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prayer that Jesus prayed for us in the garden, that we would be one just as
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he and the Father are one.
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And this is all leading up to Collegiate Day of Prayer 2024,
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a year ago. So, but I remember when they showed up in about June of 2023,
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you know, I think it was James and some others.
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There were some meetings happening at Baylor. There was university representatives.
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I was there because I was going to be the worship person, you know,
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and of course, Ty and Bob and some of their teams.
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And they started talking about it. And I just said, look, we know we could do this in 30 days.
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This is June, you know, before the February, because we've had the last decade
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of doing these types of ministry events together, there, whether it be university or city.
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And you've heard the FM 72 story. And if you haven't, you definitely will by the end of tonight.
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But one of those stories you might not have heard that led up prior to the Collegiate
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Day of Prayer was the gathering, which happened a few times over the course
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of the 20 teens. I don't know what we're supposed to call those, but the 20 teens.
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And that was really spearheaded by Pastor John and some others.
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And so maybe you could share about how that, you know, was maybe a forerunner
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to the Collegiate Day of Prayer and some other things like that.
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Yeah, those in the room who are planners, you will love this.
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When I say love it, it's going to give you heartburn when I say this.
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Drayton McLean, who has the naming rights to the Baylor football stadium, McLean Stadium.
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Wealthy man here in Texas, loves the Lord. Called a pastor in Waco named Ramiro
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Pena, who is also a huge part of everything going on in that city.
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And so, Ramiro, it's December, and I want to use my stadium on Palm Sunday,
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so that's three months away, and let's
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let it be the largest gathering of Christians in the history of Waco.
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Now, go do that. And so he kind of commissioned Ramiro, and if you know Ramiro,
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he is a prayer and a godly man and doesn't have an ounce of organization inside of him.
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And I would say that if he was sitting right here. And so he called a couple
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of pastors together and said, hey, you know, Drayton's going to pay for this
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and he would love to see this happen. And we've been longing for something like this to happen anyway.
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And so we had about a three month runway and ended up being,
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I mean, I do think it probably became the largest gathering of believers in the history of Waco.
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About 30,000 believers came together to worship the Lord, pray.
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Tony Evans came and spoke. We had a, just, it was a, it was a beautiful,
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beautiful time, but a lot of y'all know this, there's four things that,
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that pulls believers together. When you sing together.
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When you pray together, when you eat together, and when you plan or you move
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toward an event together, which actually all four of those things have happened
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in the last 30 minutes in this room, right?
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As you have sung, you have prayed together, you've eaten a meal together,
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and now we're kind of preparing for this event.
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So those four things, when we started doing those things together,
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the pastors prayed, sang, ate, and planned, it just united our hearts together.
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And so those three pastors turned to about eight pastors. I think we ended up
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with about 85 or 90 churches that jumped on board for the gathering.
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We repeated again a couple of years later.
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But really, that's what I think made for us the Collegiate Day of Prayer organization
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and unity was kind of already there because we'd already sung together.
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We'd already prayed together. We'd already had many a meal together.
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And I do want to say this, because I feel like I said this maybe last year, if you were here,
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I remember James Poole asking Highland, the church where Drew and I serve,
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would Would y'all be willing to host some meetings the day before and the day
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of Collegiate Day of Prayer? Just what's happening right here.
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And in my mind, because I'm an over-administrator, I thought,
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well, yeah, we'll help y'all get some.
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You don't need to work on logistics. You need to work on timing.
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Help with some lights and maybe some camera work. And when James explained,
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no, there's people around the nation that want to gather and share with one
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another what God is doing.
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One, I was very convicted that I'd already jumped ahead to the logistics and
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forgotten about the prayer part and the bragging on God and boasting in what the Lord was doing.
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But it was a humbling experience for me last year that people would fly to Waco
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and want to boast in the activity of the Lord.
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And I love that you're here again, and I'm joyfully here with you again today.
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And I'll be here the rest of the day and this evening and tonight.
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I'm so grateful for women and men like you who would say, God, we don't want to miss it.
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We don't want you to be at work and you just kind of passed us by.
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We want to be there and soak in the glory and be a part of rejoicing in that.
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So I'm grateful for you who had to fly in, drive in, taking some time out of life to do this.
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I never quote from Mr. Holland's opus. One, I thought was a really weird movie,
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but there was a tagline in it that said, life is what happens on your,
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as you're making plans for other things." And I started realizing really that's
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so much, you know, really it's not the collegiate day of prayer tonight.
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That's going to be the pinnacle. I think the pinnacle has been everything leading
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up to it tonight and everything that flows from it.
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And so sometimes we get really event-oriented where we think,
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okay, God, move tonight from 7 to 9. And then that's where we want to see you move.
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But just think of all the great things that have happened leading up to tonight
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and then some of the things that prayerfully will flow out of tonight as well.
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And I want to share one of those things.
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Then I'm going to turn the tables and ask Drew some questions here.
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One of the great things that came out of the Collegiate Day of Prayer at Waco,
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at Baylor last year in Waco, was leading up to it.
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And again, all these types of things, prayer, singing, eating,
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planning together, expectation for what the Lord could do. We asked for him to do.
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And I had a small little speaking part at the very end of the Collegiate Day
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of Prayer last year on Baylor's campus.
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And really a few minutes before that, just heard the Lord say to me,
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and I'm Southern Baptist, the Lord rarely says something out loud to me.
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And so I heard the Lord say to me, these last Thursdays that we've been doing,
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the last Thursday of the month, we've been praying in the city of Waco for about
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four or five months at that point, and really felt impressed from the Lord to say,
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let's keep last Thursdays going in Waco at least until Jesus comes back or all
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of the city of Waco is saved.
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Whatever comes first. Let's see which of those comes first.
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And I didn't want to say it. So I turned to a couple of pastors,
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Pastor Jimmy, who's at Antioch, Pastor JP, who's at Harris Creek.
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And so I feel like this is what the Lord is saying. But if you tell me that
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wasn't the Lord, I'll go with y'all. But I felt like that was the Lord.
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And both of them were like, yes, we're with you on that. So I stood it at the
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very end and made that announcement.
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And so this morning was our 10th last Thursday meeting since collegiate day of prayer last year.
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And I brought one of these little cards with you. Yeah, we can thank the Lord for that.
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And so, Brad, I know you've been a part of these as well.
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Last Thursdays, it says the city comes together to pray for church unity,
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Generation Z and our city.
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And on the back is all the churches that are hosting it every month.
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So this morning, it was Columbus Avenue Baptist, ironically,
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the church where my dad was pastor for 32 years, got to go back there this morning.
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It's about 50 pastors and leaders gathered together to pray.
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Sometimes we have 20, sometimes we'll have 200 plus.
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Sometimes it kind of depends on the weather and what else is going on.
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But I wanted you to know about that, that last Thursdays, our goal in Waco is
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just to pray on the last Thursday every month together,
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the Capital C Church in our city, until all of Waco is saved or until Christ returns.
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And it was beautiful this morning, Drew, because I got to my right was Pastor Jimmy from Antioch, a
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non-dominational, more charismatic church. Then to the right of him was Ben
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Faust, who pastors a small little country church called First Baptist Church
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of Crawford, right outside of Waco.
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Then next to him was Pastor Slim, who actually is now, but he wasn't when I
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first met him, but he actually is Slim now, Pastor Slim.
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He's a pastor of more of a kind of a progressive, moderately church downtown.
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Then next to him was Mario Sandoval, pastor of our largest Spanish-speaking church in town.
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Next to him was Kyle Van Pelt, who's just a deacon at our church at Highland.
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And then, God, there's one other person that's right next to Mario.
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Oh, Ronnie Holmes, who is the pastor of Church of the Open Door,
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which is so charismatic, it gives Baptist fits like me, but I love getting to pray with him.
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He's such a fun guy to get to pray with. And so around that table,
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I mean, we prayed for church unity. We prayed for God's blessings.
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We prayed for Gen Z.
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We prayed for our city leaders. But at the very end, all of us circled up into
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the big parlor there at Columbus Avenue.
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I think only Baptist churches have parlors. We had a big parlor.
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And we prayed specifically for you and for tonight and for God to stir in such
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a way at Bryan College Station, Texas A&M, that the whole world would be aware
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of his movement tonight.
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And so that's been a great outcropping and overflow of what the Lord did last year.
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Real quick. All right. But the cool part is it's not just the coordinated things.
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It takes that coordinated work that has been these pastors coming together,
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leading the congregations to come together.
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But then about a month ago, our community had a series of suicides in our police department.
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I think three in three months, two in that week. And it was just really affecting,
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obviously, our city, but especially our officers. And so I think I got the email from you at 5 p.m.
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To show up at the police station at 5.30 a.m. or 6 a.m. or something.
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5 a.m., yeah. So it was a 12-hour call.
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And there were 200 people there, most of them pastors, church leaders, deacons.
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And I think that would have been really hard to do if we didn't have all of
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these years, all of these moments of trust, of praying together.
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You know and when the city needed us the the
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leader of for the city pastor john you know sent out
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that email 12 hours later 200 people are there praying laying hands on the building
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you know praying with officers um and that was so i think i think we need those
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moments those those have to rely on the infrastructure times of unity the infrastructure
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times of prayer so then the spontaneous response moments can happen more easily as well.
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Awesome. So one of the fun things I've been able to observe as,
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again, mid 50 year old is watching a resurgence of prayer desire in the hearts
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of Gen Z, in the hearts of college students.
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Again, when I was growing up and we had prayer meetings, it was the 75 year
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old people that came to it.
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I mean, sweet gray hairs, sweet blue hairs, faithful saints of the Lord.
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But, you know, if anyone would have walked in at age 50, they would have brought
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the age curve down in a prayer meeting, you know, a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
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But one of the things we're seeing, I know that y'all have seen it when I said
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it just in thought, saw a lot of y'all nodding your head is just a resurgence,
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a revival, renewal in the hearts of kind of 18 to 30 year old to pray.
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And so Drew, one of the questions I'd love to ask you is why is that?
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And then how do we as mature believers, how do we serve as an incubator and
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really fan into flame that heart of Gen Z to pray and want to pray?
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Um, I think one of the things that I'm noticing about a lot of categories of,
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of Gen Z and coming into Gen Alpha as well now, but is that because of COVID,
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all of the hype things that the millennial generation loved,
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you know, the, the big camps and the big D now, and like, can we get the smokes,
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uh, you know, and the, and the lights and all the things going.
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Um, and that was, I'm, I'm from that I'm a millennial. So I like,
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I, I get that, you know, going to those kinds of conferences and those kinds
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Wednesday night college gatherings,
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something about COVID, just like we lost all of it, you know,
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especially on a college campus where it's not just the Texas,
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you know, we were closed down for like 90 days, but a lot of our students didn't
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go back to church for two years when they were 16 years old.
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You know, now they're college students, depending on what state they were in, what we're in.
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And so I have found that because of that, we obviously lost a lot of people
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who were kind of nominal Christians in that sense.
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We all have felt that in various ways in our churches, But with Gen Z,
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specifically the collegiate prayer with college students,
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what happened was they were forced, those who stuck with the Lord were forced
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during those months and years to go to the only things that they could do,
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which was things like in their living room, in their bedroom,
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small groups, the secret place of prayer, falling in love with the word of God,
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worshiping on their own instead of being led in song on a Wednesday or a Sunday.
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And that became just something that really marked them. And they still enjoy some of the big events.
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We can still gather them in large number. We'll see that tonight.
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But that's really kind of the extra part. The core of their faith comes back
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to those true things of the Lord that we don't need any hype for.
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You could put me in a prison cell and I could still do those things.
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Because for them, at 16 years old, they were put in a prison cell.
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There was no youth group. There was no prom. There was no athletics.
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They couldn't even go to their friend's house anymore.
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And so I think we just, there's a leadership lesson that someone taught me one
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time talking about the principle, the wave principle, where I think all of us
24:29
have this responsibility to, in leadership,
24:32
when you're on a surfboard and you're just kind of paddling and you have the
24:35
responsibility to see the wave coming up behind you, to paddle into the wave.
24:39
But then once you hop on that board, really, you're not doing any work.
24:43
It's just you're riding this wave, literally riding the wave's power.
24:47
It took a little work to turn around and time it and to paddle.
24:50
And so I think the last maybe few years was the timing and the paddling and
24:54
just kind of seeing some of that happening.
24:55
It certainly wasn't intentional or any kind of strategic moment.
25:00
It was just we started to see what students were hungry for.
25:03
We saw that wave coming up. And then what used to be five students coming to
25:08
a prayer meeting became on a Sunday morning, sometimes there's 150 college students
25:13
at a prayer meeting at 8 a.m.
25:15
And there's never a Sunday that there aren't 100 students at our prayer meeting at 8 a.m.
25:19
You know, and that doesn't include Sunday afternoon when we have another prayer
25:22
meeting. Tuesday afternoon we have another prayer meeting. And Thursday mornings
25:24
when we have two prayer meetings every single week.
25:27
You know, and so that was not true three or four years ago.
25:30
The wave came. There was a few moments of coordination, but really,
25:34
I think it does come back to that place.
25:36
And then it's sort of like, I think on the back end of, to talk about the gray
25:39
hairs or the blue hairs at the end of life, I think most of the time when people
25:43
age, they are forced into that realization as well.
25:47
The opportunity to do all of these big church events or to gather as they're
25:53
aging, as their friends are aging.
25:57
They are forced to go to the only things that they have access to,
26:00
which oftentimes ends up being prayer.
26:02
They can't do movies anymore. They can't go into the mall with their friends
26:06
like they did in high school when you're in your senior adult ages,
26:09
right? And they fall in love with prayer.
26:12
And so for me, what's marked me is trying to help 20-year-olds identify that
26:16
at the beginning of their life.
26:18
And COVID helped us to give them a lens for that in a way where I didn't have
26:21
to convince them to reprioritize, it sort of forced them in high school.
26:25
And so it's been special to see that. And then it's a bud into,
26:29
as someone prayed earlier, Lord, that this would grow into evangelism momentum,
26:33
that this would grow into outreach, missional sending.
26:35
And we're starting to see that so much more in Waco at Baylor with multiple
26:39
groups going out every single day.
26:41
It's totally common to have multiple salvations a week.
26:44
In the last 14 months, we've had 150 baptisms at our church alone in the last 14 months.
26:50
And so just like, which was not the case before, you know, and we didn't change
26:55
the pastor's look or his hairdo or anything like that.
26:58
It was, it was really just reemphasizing prayer and God started to bring out
27:03
all sorts of other fruitful things grew out of that garden.
27:08
And so that's what we've been seeing with the young people and it's impacted
27:11
the whole church for sure.
27:12
Yeah. The pastor actually has lost a lot of hair. I think since that happened.
27:16
College pastor too. Exactly, got that in common.
27:19
So Drew, how about that last question? Then we can do some Q&A after this if
27:22
there's anybody that has anything.
27:25
I'll look around the room. Most of us, so don't be offended when I say this,
27:28
most of us are over the age of 40 in this room.
27:31
So that over age of 40 group, what would you say, I know that's even older than
27:36
you are, but even on behalf of Gen Z, what do they want from us?
27:40
What do they need from us?
27:41
How can we contribute to their spiritual success? and how can we contribute
27:45
to their sense of that revival, renewal, we definitely see across their generation.
27:50
I think about at 7 a.m. every Thursday morning, a widower named Mike Nelson,
27:57
who's probably 50 to 55 years old. He's not that old, but his wife passed away from cancer.
28:03
And he comes to college prayer at 7 a.m.
28:07
In the middle of Baylor's campus every single Thursday morning to pray with about 30 to 40 students.
28:14
On Sunday mornings with this prayer meeting, it's really a church-wide prayer meeting.
28:18
A huge majority of them are now college students. But one of the special things
28:22
to see them sit down oftentimes with the same older, you know,
28:26
big brother in the faith and they kind of almost save seats,
28:30
you know, next to each other so they can pray together.
28:32
And then I do think, you know, I'm so grateful. I grew up at First Baptist Church
28:36
in Allen, Texas, and then found Highland when I was 18 years old.
28:39
So, you know, for the last 25 years, I've been in those two churches and in both of those places.
28:44
Is there were other people who were older than me,
28:48
older than 50, some of them older than 60, who had been faithfully serving for
28:51
so long, who saw something in me, and they stepped aside so that I could learn,
28:57
so that I could serve, whether that was on a platform or in a small group.
29:01
But they invested in me. They didn't just say, hey, good luck.
29:04
I'm super glad to ride off into the sunset. There was still so much investment.
29:09
Even just Glenn over here just pulled me aside as we were about to eat lunch
29:13
and just saying, from states away, praying for me regularly,
29:17
sometimes even daily, certain weeks.
29:19
And just really thankful for that kind of support that the older generations
29:23
can give, but also that wisdom. I think about my Mount Rushmore of influences.
29:28
I'm sitting around most of them, Reuven and Janet Ross over there,
29:31
James Poole, John Durham, Mark Weibel, Jeff Humphrey, my dad,
29:36
these people who are all over 50.
29:41
Sorry, just have not only created space for me to lead, but have really taught me things.
29:46
There have been times where I've walked off a platform as a young leader,
29:50
and Reuven will pull me aside and say, you did a great job, but there's too
29:56
much stuff in your pockets.
29:58
Something like that. Or something much more spiritual than that.
30:02
And I just think that really is an example, I think, of what we need to do with
30:08
this younger generation.
30:09
And I've been seeing in college ministry, as a worship leader,
30:11
as a preacher, I've never led worship or preached less than I have this last
30:16
year. And our ministry has never been bigger.
30:18
We're probably two times bigger than we were five years ago,
30:20
but we have students preaching, students leading worship, students leading the
30:25
prayer, you know, and so just trying to support them, help them,
30:28
let them learn, but watch the Lord bless that,
30:32
whether that's a 34-year-old or a 21-year-old.
30:35
That's good. I was checking my pockets to make sure I didn't have too much in
30:38
my pockets up here, Ruben.
30:41
One last thing, and then we'll do a QA. Drew mentioned this.
30:45
We have a men's prayer time on Sunday mornings that used to really faithfully have 10 to 12 people.
30:51
And it was, you know, well, six of them were probably required staff.
30:54
So half of them, if you want to get paid that week, you had to be there to pray.
30:58
And then all of a sudden college students started flooding again,
31:02
8 a.m., which means you're having to leave Baylor campus at 7.40, 7.45,
31:07
which means you have to wake up at 6.45, 6.50 on a Sunday morning and to watch
31:11
this room, not about this size of a room, get filled with college guys.
31:17
There's a college women's group meeting, college ladies come to there.
31:22
But we'll have 90 to 110 men gather.
31:26
But what's interesting, if 80 of those, let's say about 75% or 80% are college
31:30
students, when they walk in and they see, we meet in little triads, so three chairs.
31:35
If they see one of those chairs filled with an older man, they'll go sit with
31:40
that older man as opposed to trying to stick around with their collective age group.
31:46
And when I've asked some of them about that before, I see, in fact.
31:49
Some of the most awkward senior adult men go to that men's prayer and some of
31:53
the coolest college guys in the world gravitate straight toward the awkward
31:57
senior adult guy because this awkward senior adult guy is transparent and authentic with them.
32:02
And so when you ask the college students, and I've asked this of several,
32:06
like, why do you come and why do you sit with the old guys?
32:09
Their response is almost the same. My dad never taught me to pray so I can come
32:13
here and learn from older brothers how to pray.
32:16
It's Titus 2, right? Being passed down. So it's not, certainly it's God accomplishing
32:20
things through prayer, but more than that, it's the passing down of sound doctrine
32:24
of prayer from the older brothers to the younger.
32:28
I'll tell a really quick story that this happened in the last 16 hours,
32:33
18 hours, have a young adult man in our church who, so maybe to answer your
32:39
question, yes, we do see the Lord doing things.
32:42
And my encouragement to this group is, and I know you're not,
32:49
is to never back off truth when it comes to ministering to anybody with any kind of sin issue.
32:56
And so, you know, Highland has been very unapologetic of, you know,
33:00
here's what God's word says.
33:01
And we're just going to let it let it land and had a 33 year old guy come to
33:05
office yesterday and say, I've been at Highland every four. We have a 4 p.m.
33:11
Gathering and I've heard the story of Jonah and just realized in my homosexuality,
33:17
I've been running from God.
33:19
And so I'd like to surrender my heart
33:22
to him and stop running and would
33:25
like to be baptized at Highland and really the the question
33:28
he had is is it okay in my testimony if I tell the church that the Lord has
33:33
delivered me from same-sex attraction and from homosexuality and I was like
33:37
please do I mean if you couch it under anything yeah I mean there's there are
33:40
people in the church so James don't even know that yet I got this happened yesterday
33:44
um but really seeing the Lord um even recently,
33:48
as long as we don't back off the loving truth or speaking the truth in love,
33:53
I feel like we're going to continue to see, because eventually the gay lifestyle,
33:57
one of the most misnamed groups ever,
34:01
the gay lifestyle leaves you empty,
34:04
dead, dry, exhausted.
34:07
And so if they can come to living water and find life in Christ,
34:11
that's why we got to keep holding out the truth that this is the only place.
34:15
This is the singular designation of Christ as he is the way,
34:19
the truth, the life. And we've got to keep holding that out to that group.
34:25
Pastor John does a good job. I don't know if it's rhythmic, might be yearly
34:28
or every 18 months, but gathers usually somewhere between 150 to 200 ministers.
34:34
It could be lead pastors all the way down to youth ministers or anything else
34:37
for various city leader. It's like a lunch that one church will host and you sign up for.
34:43
And then who was at our last one this last time? We had our new mayor,
34:46
our new hospital CEO, and our new superintendent from the fire chief.
34:52
That's right, all four of them.
34:53
And then they share a little bit. We pray over them. So it kind of does two things at once.
34:58
It's praying for our city, putting those people in front of our pastors,
35:00
but also side mission, unifying us around a meal.
35:04
And so that's been a good use of time. I think what does that happen about once
35:07
a year or maybe? Yeah, once a year, once every 18 months.
35:10
Anytime there's a new leader in town, we always kind of assume that may be the
35:14
Lord giving us an opportunity to invite them in.
35:18
And we also think it's important for our city leaders to know here's who the
35:21
pastors are and they're praying for you.
35:23
And lovingly, maybe the unwritten thing is, and we're going to hold you accountable
35:26
to be a faithful leader, you know, and to lead us faithfully.
35:31
The other thing, and this sounds so trite maybe, but just a quick text message.
35:35
It's amazing how far that goes. A quick text on the way down here.
35:40
Don't tell my wife, but I texted all the pastors that I prayed with this morning
35:44
while I was driving and just said, I enjoyed praying to you today.
35:47
And I love you and enjoyed that. And immediately, all of them,
35:52
you know, we all know this.
35:54
Pastors are probably the, there's no such thing as an over-encouraged pastor,
35:59
right? There's no such animal.
36:00
And so to be able to send out short text messages to your leaders,
36:05
your spiritual leaders, your pastors, this goes a long way.
36:09
Because most text messages we get are, this is wrong. This isn't done right.
36:13
This, you know, this, here's an emergency you're going to have to take care
36:15
of. So when those messages are messages of encouragement and love, it goes a long ways.
36:21
I hope you caught a few of the things Pastor Durham talked about,
36:26
how the power of the Word of God.
36:30
Don't sacrifice, he kept saying. Don't limit your use of the Word.
36:35
Bring it to the forefront.
36:36
Don't think because God's Spirit is moving in a revival that it's secondary.
36:40
It's the Word of God that is central. I just love that about Pastor Durham and
36:45
other pastors there in Wackel, and also, I.
36:49
The fact that he makes a point to invest in other pastors and leaders to cast
36:54
a vision for what God can do.
36:56
But again, he'll do it once a year, I think they said, and host a luncheon or whatever.
37:01
But for what reason? So their friendships would deepen, so the glory of God could broaden.
37:07
And then not backing up on confrontation of truth with the individual that came
37:12
to his office, acknowledged he was gay. He didn't cut any corners,
37:17
and God will honor that and pour out his spirit in a powerful way.
37:21
So this whole roundtable experience for me there at Texas A&M and at Waco previously
37:28
and in conjunction with Asbury previously, it has been so helpful and insightful.
37:35
And I think one of the things, as much as any, is this whole area of the kingdom
37:40
has advanced through friendships.
37:41
Revival spreads through friendships. And so I hope you're finding friends who
37:47
share in that vision and you're resourcing them,
37:50
maybe by recommending the OneCry podcast or resources at theonecry.com,
37:55
but you're resourcing them.
37:56
So not just you can be mobilized in your community for revival,
38:01
but those friends of yours, wherever they are, they are mobilizing and being
38:08
mobilized to spread the hope of revival where they are.
38:11
Don't forget to go to the show notes and at the show notes, we're going to have
38:16
a link where you can go to that declaration, that prayer declaration.
38:20
Our one cry for more, for more, for more.
38:25
I believe this is just the beginning. We ask God for more. So,
38:28
Lord, we do ask you for more.
38:30
Lord Jesus, thank you for every person that listens to this podcast.
38:34
May they become a catalyst for spreading the hope of revival.
38:40
May they become a catalyst, Lord, to exalt you in such a way and to exercise faith in what you can do.
38:50
And God, we just pray that what we have seen you do is only the beginning.
38:55
There really would be exceeding abundantly more than we could ever ask or think.
39:00
So do it, we pray in the powerful name of Jesus.
39:03
Amen and amen. And I trust you'll join us for the next podcast,
39:07
another revival roundtable.
39:10
This time, you will get to listen to a panel of Gen Zers.
39:15
That's right, a panel of Gen Zers and hear their heart in relation to what God
39:20
is doing currently in their generation. I can't wait. I hope you look forward
39:24
to it as well. God bless you.
39:28
Music.