Calvary Chapel Columbia

For over a year there has been a church in Anaheim, California praying for God to revive the city of Columbia. On this side of the coast, another church was praying for God to revive Columbia. In the perfect timing of God, the two churches came together last week for Revive Columbia.

Calvary Chapel Open Door and Calvary Chapel Columbia joined with folks from several other states and spent 5 amazing days praying, worshiping, witnessing, and hanging out. In all of my years of going to conferences, seminars, and other events, this past week was the best. I knew the moment I met Pastor Roger, with his contagious smile, and the “Jesus loves you” greeting that it was going to be a great week!

The group arrived by bus on Tuesday night, and we had a spaghetti dinner together at the Church. After dinner we had a time of worship and prayer, ending with a time of Communion. When the service was over, we spent the remainder of the evening preparing packages to hang on the doors that we would be visiting over the next 3 days. There was a great sense of excitement, and people were filled with joy and anticipation.

Beginning on Wednesday, we had a time of worship, bible study, and training on evangelism each morning, and then from around 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon we went out in every direction putting into practice the things that we had just learned. There were as many as 14 teams, with four people on each time. We knocked on doors, talked to people on the sidewalks and shopping centers. We saw a number of people come to Christ, and had the opportunity to pray with dozens of people. Over the course of 3 days, we talked to hundreds of people.

Each day ended with a service at the church where we had a concert with Deaf Generation. After the concert, 2 people had the opportunity to share their testimony. After the testimony time, we had worship and a Bible Study. It was a great way to end the day.

We had been praying for so long for God to move in our community, and our prayers were answered. I suppose the thing that impressed me the most, was that God did an amazing thing in the hearts of the people who were participating. We thought that the community was going to be revived, but it was us that were revived. You should've seen the faces as the teams came back together and shared the events of the day! The testimonies were encouraging and exciting. It was almost like, “Is it time to stop already?”

We finished the week on Sunday, and the team left to go back to California, but something has been birthed in our hearts here at Calvary Chapel. One of the folks who was so excited about being able to lead some one to Christ this week said to me, “Pastor, this is the kindling that is going to start the fire in our church!” Amen!

Thanks to everyone who prayed, participated, brought refreshments, and were involved in any way. To keep learning and growing, we are planning to get a group of people together this Friday night (July 15) at 7 and hit the streets with the message that has blessed us all week long—“Jesus loves you!”