Spring 1972
Revival Kindles Laymen’s Faith
This article was published in the Spring 1972 issue of The Yale Standard.
A nationwide Christian revival, spread primarily by church laymen, has broken out in Canada and is moving into the United States.
From its beginning in a small Baptist church in Saskatchewan, the revival, sparked by two 39-year-old evangelists, has reached as far east as Toronto and as far west as Vancouver. In the United States, it has touched several hundred churches since January, when it began in Mansfield, Ohio.
“God is breaking in on the scene with a real spiritual awakening move among His people.… It’s a spontaneous, grassroots, layman’s move,” said Louis Sutera, who with his twin brother, Ralph, saw the beginning of the revival in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Saskatoon.
“People started getting right with each other, confessing faults to each other—things they had harbored for years. They started to talk about it and other people from other churches started to come and see.”
Burglaries Decrease
As soon as the revival began, the whole town was affected. “Stores downtown said people were coming back and making restitution. There was a decline in night burglaries and juvenile problems,” Sutera said.
On October 13th we started preaching in the little church in Saskatoon with 150 people, he said. But after two weeks, they had to move into the largest church in town to hold the daily revival meetings.
“We realized we were in something bigger than we had ever seen before,” Mr. Sutera continued. The two evangelists canceled all of their scheduled commitments for meetings for the next three years. They decided to wait for God to show them where they should go.
Sometimes as many as 12 churches closed their Sunday evening services to join in revival meetigs in this town of 18,000.
“Crowds were at least 40 percent under 21 years old. Not much music. We opened the platform for people to come and express themselves as to how God was dealing with them and what God was showing them and how they were getting right with God.”
“I would say much of the power of the meetings was the fact that the laymen had opportunity to express themselves—come right to the pulpit and say whatever they felt. Sometimes this would go for 30 minutes in the meetings, or 45 minutes or sometimes an hour and 15 minutes.
Ralph and Louis Sutera, who describe themselves as nondenominational evangelists, have been preaching together since they were 16 years old. They have ministered in churches of nearly every denomination, though primarily in Christian and Missionary Alliance churches.
Mr. Sutera said that the twins’ preaching had initially emphasized God’s demands on a person’s life and what the church must do to have revival. They also preached about God’s judgment on nations that depart from God’s truth.
When you do find God’s plan for your life, “you’ll find the essence of living. You’ll resound to the glory of God, and then the church will be the church an do what the church should be doing in society.”
In Saskatoon, the church members began to pray for one another. After the regular meetings, people gathered for “afterglow” meetings, where they discussed problems and needs.
These “afterglow” meetings often lasted into the early morning—sometimes until 4:00 A.M.
As word of the revival spread, busloads of people traveled up to 300 miles to attend meetings. When they returned home, they took the revival back with them.
The teams of laymen that went out to churches in other cities, including Toronto and Vancouver, were not made of trained ministers. They were ordinary church members and their message was simple—what God had done for them, their families and their churches.
The Sutera twins visited Corona, British Columbia, and again revival came to the churches.
“At least 12 preachers on one Sunday (in Corona) never got to preach their sermons in their churches. As they opened the pulpit, people started to share what God had done for them. Spontaneous revival broke out and people were getting right with God,” Sutera said.
“They’re (the pastors) saying more has happened in their churches in two weeks’ time than has happened in five years under the pastoral ministry.”
Overflows into U.S.
But Canada’s revival has not been contained in Canada. It has now spread into the United States. If there is an identifiable place where it first touched the U.S., that place is Mansfield, Ohio, where the Sutera brothers and their families live.
After over two months of revival meetings, the two preachers returned home in late December. They arranged to speak in one of the local churches about what they had seen.
“On December 26th we told the story—gave a report. There must have been 100 people from different churches from all over who came to hear at the First Alliance Church.”
“The next Sunday night we preached a little bit on revival and that night it started in right here.”
“The revival came with great power on the second of January,” said Rev. William Allen, pastor of the First Alliance Church in Mansfield.
“We were in church ten and a half hours that day and from that time to this we haven’t hardly had a service that hasn’t been at least three hours in length. We’ve just taken the clock…off the wall.”
“Hundreds of people have met God, and through them other churches have been revived,” he said.
At one meeting in Clyde, Ohio (near Toledo), a group of laymen spoke and “over 60 people met the Lord…. Our laymen just stood there with their mouths open. They had never dreamed that anything like this would ever happen.”
“The revival in the Mansfield area has affected thousands of people,” Mr. Allen continued. “It is spreading and gaining momentum in a way that I never dreamed of in the 33 years that I have been a Christian.” Teams have gone from the church into Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
Family after family in Mr. Allen’s church and in other churches have said home is a new place. Children and parents have found a new relationship. Marriages once tottering on the edge of breakup are solid again.
“It’s a quiet moving of God. There’s no fanaticism,” Mr. Allen said. “The one thing that is characterizing this revival is holy living and absolute honesty about sin and inner purity that’s been thrilling to my heart.”
“So many times Christians call sin faults, or weaknesses or errors and idiosyncrasies. Well, we’re calling it what God calls it, and that’s sin. And Christ’s blood doesn’t cleanse faults, it cleanses sin, and we have to confess it as that. Bitterness and envy and pride—we’re just calling it what it is.”
Like Sutera, Allen calls the revival going on now in his church and others in the north central and northwestern United States a layman’s movement.
“There’s very little preaching,” Mr. Allen said. Meetings “break out into testimony or people coming forward to pray and get something fixed up in their hearts. And then, after they do, they stand up and share what God has done for them.”
“I feel that this is more powerful than preaching or anything else, because people can relate to a layman.”
“The thing just spreads like fire in every direction.”
“Some say Christians are being prepared for the Lord’s return.”
A New Direction
Yet, from accounts of those involved in the revival, one can see that God is moving in a new way. No longer are the ministers doing most of the praying and all of the preaching in the church services. God has led church members to do these things. No longer are the laymen putting the responsibility of spreading the Gospel on their ministers. Laymen are doing the traveling and speaking themselves.
The direction of the revival is clear. It is moving toward what the church was like when it was founded. Originally every church member took part in the worship services. Each one had a psalm, a doctrine, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation; in this way the church was build up in its faith (1 Corinthians 14:26).
As both Mr. Sutera and Mr. Allen pointed out, the power in this present revival lies in the active participation of the church members. That was the strength and power of the early church. There was no such thing as two distinct groups: those who ministered and preached, and those who listened and received.
As the revival continues, the great need will be for those who can lead it on in this direction—toward the pattern and functioning of the New Testament church. There is a great need for Spirit-filled teachers to be raised up who can make known the way into God’s perfect will for the whole church.
People said of the early church, “These that have turned the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). As the church comes into being after its original pattern, not only will people testify what great things have been done in the past, but what miracles are being done today. God’s people will be drawn together into one body—the “Body of Christ,” through which the will of God will be accomplished on earth in our generation.
God grant His people knowledge and understanding of what He is doing in our day.