MY PERSONAL FAVORITES

I've posted nearly two hundred times on my VTM blog. Some have been pretty good and others have been otherwise. Some I might think of as my personal favorites and I'm going to repost a few of those in the next couple of weeks. Let's see what you think.
----------------------------------------------

Here's the first one... I'm not into name dropping...but here I go.

T.W. Hunt. That name is well known in Baptist life. I know that name well. I know the man who wears that name. He wears it well. Laverne. Another name. That's the woman married to the man who wears the name T.W. Hunt. She's as fine a human being as he is...maybe better...as most husbands in saner moments will confess of their own particular wife. T.W. does. So do I.

The reason I know T.W. and Laverne is because I was privilaged to be their pastor for several years of his tenure as a Professor at SWBTS when they were members of and I was Pastor of the Southcliff Baptist Church in Ft. Worth. Laverne still calls me "Pastor." She always told me she thought I was the best preacher she had ever heard. I told her I thought she was the smartest person I had ever met. Just kidding. [She said that..but I think she says it to all her Pastors.]

The purpose of my dropping T.W.'s name today is to give a final small follow-up on my post addressing worship. But before I do, I want to press the envelope personally and tell you of one of the more significant spiritual moments in my life that involves T.W. Hunt. It really is personal and I do not wish to diminish it for anything....in fact....I've just changed my mind..... Maybe some other time.

But the follow-up has to do with a morning I sat with T.W. in a Dairy Queen in Ft. Worth. He and I were eating ice-cream and talking. [Who says you can't eat ice cream in the morning?] Before long I was writing on a napkin. It usually wound up that way. Something he would be saying was always of the nature that I must not forget it. So....write it down I did.

T.W. said that he was a student of revival. He had, in fact, studied every known revival in history beginning with the Old Testament events going right through Acts and into the Awakenings, as well as the "Charismatic revival, as it was being called in that day in which we were living and conversing.

T.W. said that every genuine move of God that he had studied had produced it's own music. The new music of those moves of God were new, not just in lyrics, but in meter, rythmn, notations, and a whole bunch of other stuff that didn't then and doesn't now mean much to me. But I kept listening.

He said that those involved in the revivals usually wrote and produced this "new music". His example was Charles and John Wesley. He reminded me of the many songs written by the Wesleys during that Great Awakening of which they were such a major part. "The Church's One Foundation" was one of those.

T.W. said there were several odd things about the music being produced during each revival. For one thing, it was not only different, it was rejected by the religious establishment. Wesley sang his songs with the crowds on hillsides but was not permitted to do so in the churches. He was shunned.

Then, T.W. said, after a while, the religious powers that were, gradually accepted the music, by now being sung by the masses. Finally, that music was "the music" and was "the music" until another revival came along producing it's own music which was rejected as ungodly by those singing "The Church's One Foundation" and, again, the new was not permitted in the churches. So, again, the masses had to sing in isolation from the religious establishment.

You see the pattern I'm sure. That's why, according to T.W. Hunt, the Charismatic movement was in his opinion, while not agreeing with it's theological excesses at all, a real movement of God. The music evidenced it.

I finished writing. He'd finished talking. We finished our ice-cream. But I've never forgotten that day and what he had said. I wrote it down remember. I think time has shown the validity of that view of the history of revival. Look at the music we're singing now. I wonder where revival will happen next? I know it will have it's own music. I know some won't like it. For a while anyway.

Paul B