Tent revivals began in America on the frontiers in the early 1800s as outdoor camp meetings, later evolving into large traveling gatherings under canvas tents where evangelists preached and crowds sought spiritual renewal.
Last week in Greenville, the community-wide passion week held in the Greenville Mall parking lot captured the essence of those early revival gatherings, drawing the community together under an open sky for shared worship, reflection, and renewal.
The revival began on Wednesday, which was set aside as youth night, with Pastor Darrell Evans of The Way Church delivering the message.
Evans told the crowd talking about people behind their backs damages a community.
He used an analogy of throwing a rock at someone and then hiding the hand that threw it.
“I’m Pastor Darrell Evans from the Way Church, and you don’t even know me,” Evans said. “But you don’t like me, because someone threw a rock.”
That is the sort of trouble in our schools, our churches, and our community that keeps us apart, Evans told the hundreds of people who came on the first night of the three-night event.
Evans’ sermon touched on the dangers of creating a negative environment because the enemy wins when that happens.
Using the story of Judas betraying Jesus from the gospel of Matthew to explain that Satan will take hold if you give him a chance.
At the end of the first night, Domino's Pizza delivered 100 pizzas to feed the crowd.
The second night, Pastor Chris Vowell from Emmanuel Baptist Church was tasked with giving communion, and he remarked on how wonderful it was to see so many black and white people sitting alongside each other.
“I’ve never been in a meeting this large doing communion with this many white folks and this many black folks,” Vowell said, “It had me tearing up early, our father in heaven looking down, saying ‘What’s going on in Greenville?”
He was right, night one was predominantly black with small handfuls of white people here and there, but night two, with the addition of some of Vowell’s congregation from Emmanuel Baptist, tipped the scale at or about the halfway point.
The third and final night had Pastor Jessie King of Greater St. Peter M.B. Church offering a message of hope, salvation, and unity to the crowd, and then Pastor Luther Chip Martin testified before the people gathered, telling the story of him facing a lifetime in prison for drug dealing, only to have the Lord lift him up and set him on a new path, one that led him to Greenville to preach the word.
With God’s help, Martin said he has become a new man doing the Lord’s work.
Throughout the third and final evening, the Mississippi Mass Choir filled the night with beautiful hymns that lit a fire in the crowd; everyone was on their feet, singing along and dancing.
The night ended with the laying on of hands to heal those who came forward.
