On Special Meetings - October 2025

On Special Meetings

2 Chronicles 30:6–9 (ESV) — So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his princes, as the king had commanded, saying, “O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers, who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see. Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”

This month we’re going to take a break from the Holy Spirit series and focus a bit on our Special Meetings. Why do we do it? What is the purpose and goal of it? How should we be preparing for it?

Our Special Meetings are a tradition that came out of Westaker’s heritage of hosting special events called “evangelistic” or “revival” meetings. There have been times in our community when these meetings have brought many souls to the Lord and into eternal life. There’s also been a number of meetings where only a handful of the devout faithful have shown up. While those meetings were very likely edifying for those in attendance, it’s not really right to call them “revival” meetings. “Revival” quite literally means to “return to life”, so the title of “revival” doesn’t really rightly apply if a service is solely attended by those who are already spiritually alive.

All that said, the sometimes-used title of “Revival Meetings” does give us a pretty good indicator about what one of the chief purposes of Special Meetings is. We pray that these meetings will bring people from spiritual death into eternal life with Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:1-6).

Similarly they are called “Evangelistic Meetings” because the goal is to spread the Gospel to hearts and minds that have not yet heard or accepted it. “Evangel” is actually just a slightly twisted form of the Greek word for “Gospel” (eungelion). “Evangelism” is really just “Gospel-ing”.

This is also instructive for us as it aims us toward a slightly different objective. The “Gospel” is for everyone, not just unbelievers. Believers need to be constantly reminded of and taught new applications of the Gospel. Evangelism is not only for unbelievers, even though when we speak of “Evangelism” that’s usually what we mean.

Ok so, what’s the short answer to “Why do we do Special Meetings?” The short answer is: To spread the Gospel. For believers, it’s a week for us to focus on our personal relationship with Jesus. It’s a week for us to grow deeper in our faith but also to be better equipped to share that faith with others.

For unbelievers our Special Meetings can be something even more important. It can be a week to meet Christ and enter eternal life. It’s an opportunity to return to the Lord for those who’ve strayed, or come unto the Lord for those who’ve never known Him. Most of all, we pray that for them it’ll be the start of a life-long relationship of worship and service to Jesus.

There’s also a third group that we really should desire to see at Special Meetings. Well, there sort-of is anyways. Though in reality everyone falls into either the category of “believer” or “unbeliever”, in practice we all have lots of friends and neighbors that we could not “categorize”. Our perspective is a limited one. So there’s a huge third group of people that Special Meetings serves, and it’s those who have fallen away from faithful Worship. We simply don’t know and can’t state definitively where they stand with the Lord.

We all know a ton of people who seem like they have fallen away from their relationship with Jesus, and this is evidenced by their lack of engagement with the things of Christ (His Word, prayer, the Lord’s Supper) and with the things of Christ’s Body (the Congregation). In these cases, we can’t know for sure what their status (believer or unbeliever) is, but we know what they need either way. They need evangelism. They need the call to return to the Word of the Lord and the worship of our loving Savior.

This evangelistic call is what we see going out in the 2 Chronicles text that starts this article. At this point in Israel’s history, much of the nation had fallen away from the Lord, but a revival had started in Jerusalem. Under King Hezekiah’s reign, worship in the Temple that Solomon built was restored. But Hezekiah and the priests knew that God was more interested in having the people restored to Him than the building. So that is what you see happening in the text at the start of this article: the message is being sent far and wide, “return to the Lord your God.”

This is a familiar pattern all throughout salvation history. The world never runs out of sinners that need the Gospel, and the Kingdom of God scarcely seems able to break the cycle of apostacy and revival. Another constant runs throughout history though: When the Gospel goes out into the community, people repent and are saved. The Word of the Lord never returns void (Isaiah 55:11).

We have many friends and neighbors who need to return to the Lord. Their eternal souls depend on it. If they return to the Lord, He is gracious and merciful and will absolutely not turn them out again, but if they remain stiff-necked the Lord’s anger remains stored up against them. Even God doesn’t desire that fate for them, but instead desires all men and women to come unto Him and receive eternal life (1 Timothy 2:3-6, John 3:16). We have been entrusted with that message.

I’m very excited for our upcoming Special Meetings. Even if I was the only one sitting there, I would still be excited to hear the Gospel that Dr. Horn will be sharing with us. I hope, however, that you will join with me in praying for and working toward gathering as many guests as possible to join us for our Special Meetings at the end of October.

Brothers and sisters, we are the couriers who have been appointed to carry the message of the Gospel throughout our community. Generally speaking, people are way more likely to come to a worship service if they are invited by a friend or an acquaintance compared to when they are invited by a pastor or an “evangelist.” So I ask that in this next month you would make an effort to invite people to our Special Meetings. Pray for Pastor Horn as he prepares his messages, and pray that the hearts of the people of our congregation and the people of our community will be fertile soil for those seeds to fall in. Pray for the revival of the lost, and pray that the Lord would make you also a courier of the Gospel.