JACKSONVILLE — Sometimes it can be difficult for people of different backgrounds to come together, especially when it comes to religious differences. Later this year, however, members of at least 17 churches in Jacksonville will look past denominational, racial and even language lines and barriers for the benefit of their city.
On May 17, churches across the city will participate in a simultaneous revival with the hope that their congregations’ prayers will make a positive impact on Jacksonville. This revival is unlike anything that has happened in the city in recent years and something spirtual and city leaders alike believe can make a difference.
Mayor Gary Fletcher said there is a stack of paper in his office that documents the 911 calls from across Jacksonville. He goes through and color codes the calls so he can see what issues need to be addressed, and he said most of the problems in Jacksonville stem from domestic issues.
“To truly know my city is to know what’s going on. I want to know the places where we have repetitive problems,” he said. “Our problems are more domestic-type stuff — domestic violence, runaways. They’re family-oriented issues. Our answer is not to hire more police.”
The answer Fletcher and several pastors in the city have found lies in the spiritual health of the city, he said.
Several years ago, Fletcher was talking with the then superintendent of the Pulaski County Special School District about the prospects of Jacksonville getting its own school district when he was told that the community needed to be more engaged in schools if it was ever going to have its own school district.
“He said it might be years before we got our own school district, but those students needed the support of the community now,” Fletcher said. “At the same time, I had churches calling me asking how they could make an impact outside their four walls.”
Fletcher did not take long to notice that he had one problem and one solution, so he reached out to Jacksonville’s church leaders to bring them together for the betterment of the city. Two and a half years ago, Fletcher started a weekly meeting with local pastors, and in those Thursday-morning meetings, the pastors have seen how their smaller denominational differences have divided the churches. Now they pray together regularly for the city.
“The people are looking for communities that are clean, quiet and safe,” he said. “The issues we have are social issues, and the social issues are spiritual issues.”
Meanwhile, another party was thinking about revival.
Dennis Wilkins has been serving as the interim pastor of Second Baptist Church in Jacksonville, but his thoughts about community-wide or nationwide revival started long before he began his service at the church.
“Revival and spiritual awakening have been a part of my prayer life for more than 20 years,” he said. “I have prayed and asked God to not take me out of this world until I have had a chance to see it.”
Twenty years ago when Wilkins first started thinking about this idea, he was not even in Jacksonville. At the time he was serving in South Carolina, but through the years he has returned to his native Arkansas, and that idea has remained. When he started his interim position in Jacksonville, he talked with pastors and the mayor about an idea for an organized revival, and the idea continued to grow.
“I started talking to churches in and around Jacksonville, and then it started to snowball,” he said.
When Wilkins and Fletcher realized their goals were one and the same, a more defined idea for the city’s spiritual community started to form. Toward the end of 2014, Wilkins helped organize two meetings to see how the simultaneous revival could work. The first meeting had 20 people in attendance. That number grew by the time the second meeting was held, and several speakers were brought in to discuss the need and the purpose of revival and spiritual awakening.
“You have all of this crime, and then you start reading about how revival is working in communities. It often means that crime has stopped or has at least slowed down when there is concentrated revival,” he said.
Pastors have already committed to the project, and Wilkins said many have already started praying for the May simultaneous revival. Each church will have its own service on May 17, but the idea is that all will pray toward the same goal of having God be present in the city.
Currently, the churches committed to holding revival services on May 17 are Bayou Meto Baptist Church, Bethel Baptist Church, Christ Centered Fellowship, Gravel Ridge Baptist Church, Second Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Maddox Road Baptist Church, Military Road Baptist Church, Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, Victory Baptist Church, Zion Hill Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church, First Assembly of God, McArthur Church, Runyan Baptist Church, Fellowship Baptist Church, St. Mark Community Church, and Victory Praise and Worship Church.
Any other congregations wanting to be involved in the revival effort may contact Wilkins at (501) 259-8197.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.