Last Monday (Oct. 9, 2006), a few old friends gathered for lunch at Chili’s on Knox Street and then reconvened a few blocks away at Cole Park. Cole Park might not seem much like holy ground to you, but it was to BO and Dick Baker, Bob Feather, Russell Dilday, John “Bubba” Wood, Jack Griever, Bob Cooper, and me. (Pat Wood and Carolyn Feather were there as our photographers).
Cole Park was the site of the great Dallas City-Wide Youth Revival in 1946, the first "official" city-wide meeting held outside of Waco. It was the one that gave every participant in the youth revival movement the confidence that what happened in Waco could be duplicated across America and around the world. It was the revival that showed that what we had seen at Baylor was not man-made. As Bruce McIver termed it in the title to his history of the movement, we were “Riding the Winds of God.”
We listened to first-hand, insider stories from BO Baker — BO was the song leader for the meeting as well as one of the six young men who preached — and from Dick Baker, who sang a solo the night BO preached. We went on from there and swapped recollections of other meetings, other miracles, as the “winds of God” swept into many corners of the world. It produced the greatest groundswell of volunteers for religious service in hundreds of years if not in all history, and furnished the forces that have covered the globe with the gospel.
I had my digital recorder going. It's long, so it will take a while if you're not on broadband, but if you'd like to hear that conversation, you can download the WAV file by clicking here: Download cole_park_reunion.wav
But that was 1946. Sixty years ago. What does it have to do with us?
One lesson was immediately evident as I looked around that picnic table. BO has health problems that could shorten his days. Bubba is recovering from heart surgery to repair one artery with 95 percent blockage, another with 85 percent, another with 70 percent, and three ohers that ranged from 20 to 40 percent. Others had other stories of pain and trials, including my own broken heart. All of the above reminded us of the brevity of life.
The lesson? Whatever we are going to do for God, we must do quickly.
Another lesson: It will take a long time for each of us to sort it all out, but I felt a fore gleam of the answer in Bubba’s plea that the Lord might “use an old match to light a new fire.”
The lesson? God isn’t through with us yet, or else we wouldn’t have been there that day.
A week from tonight, I will join a number of others who were part of that great movement in the 1940s and 50s for a reunion. We will take part in Baylor's Homecoming festivities, including a football game, a Pigskin Review, and the dedication of a Heritage Room that will house a history of the youth revival movement along with photos and relics from the era. We'll share a lot of hugs and memories and catch up on what everyone has been doing for the last sixty years.
I'm excited about the fact most of us will speak to the current crop of Baylor students in classrooms of Baylor's Schools of Religion and Music as well as Truett Seminary, sharing what it was like to be caught up in the jet stream of the mightiest work of God in our Century.
Last but not least, we'll pray a lot, for the movement was born in prayer. Those in the know trace its beginnings to the fervent prayers of roommates M.D. Oates and Reiji Hoshizake for the youth of Waco. And we will join Dr. John Wood -- Bubba -- in his prayer that "an old match may light a new fire."
I could wish that it would happen while we're there. Do it again, God. Do it again.
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