Founders 2025

Steve Fishbaugh and I had the joy of traveling to Fort Myers, Florida last week for the annual Founders Ministries conference. The elders at Bayview Bible Church believe in the mission and ministry of Founders. We find great theological alignment with them and have decided to partner with them financially.  

Though it’s not the point of this post, here at the start is as good a place as any to tell you that getting to know Founders is worth your time. They publish helpful blogs and articles and an excellent podcast dealing with current theological and cultural issues. They also run their own publishing house for theological, historical, and practical books. Speaking personally, I have benefitted more from Founders and the content they produce in the past year than any other single source outside of Scripture. The point is, you really ought to go check them out. You can start by following this link.
 
Back to the point: Steve and I spent several days fellowshipping with the good people at Founders, and I want to tell you about our time and the biggest “takeaways”.  

Psalm 85:6
[6] Will you not revive us again, 
that your people may rejoice in you? (ESV)

This verse served as the theme of the conference. All the speakers addressed the concept of revival in one way or another, taking different portions of Scripture and bringing them to bear on the lives and situations that pastors and churches face today. We heard from Tom Ascol about the importance of prayer in connection to revival. Dr. Joel Beeke helped us define biblically what revival is and what its true marks are, as well as highlighting the Puritans and the revival they experienced in their day. Jeff Johnson emphasized that revival anywhere begins inside the soul of each person. Dr. Voddie Baucham showed us instruction from 2 Timothy 4 about what characterizes a gospel preacher. These messages and others were extraordinarily helpful. I commend all of the sermons to you when you find time to listen to them.  

We also came home with an unprecedented amount of great books. Some were given away to us as part of attending the conference. Others were sold to us at the conference bookstore. Safe to say, I’ll be taking an extra suitcase in the future. If you’d like to hear about which titles I was excited to bring home, just holler.
 
Let me share quickly what, in my mind, were the biggest principles and ideas I’m bringing home from the conference.

Consider a survey of God’s activity throughout the Bible. There are multiple instances of revival, if we are understanding revival to be an obviously expedited or accelerated work of the Holy Spirit in a time and place to bring conversion or significant sanctification. You know what they have in common? Prayer!  

In Luke 11:1-13, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray earnestly to God to bring about his will as they ask for good things. Church history also is a story of amazing acts of God that were always accompanied by prayer. As we think about Bayview, Athol, Careywood, and Spirit Lake, we have to realize this: God seldom does noticeable and mighty works separate from the prayers of his people. Are we praying for God to act in noticeably mighty ways in our part of the world? If not, why not?

 Another notable distinctive of revival (both in the Bible and in history), is that there is no secret sauce.” There is no special formula, plan, or roadmap to revival outside the pages of Scripture. The Holy Spirit isn’t waiting for us to sing the right song, dim the lights just enough, or shed the right amount of emotional tears before he “shows up” to begin a revival work. None of these superficial elements are connected to God’s work. You know what brings revival time and again? God’s appointed means, which he’s already revealed in his Word. I’m talking about the ordinary means of grace.  

If you aren’t familiar with the term, the ordinary means of grace are just what they sound like; God’s ordinary means to minister to people. These would include the preaching of the whole counsel of God, prayer, the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, gathering with the collected local church, evangelism, and using our gifts and abilities to build one another up. Let me put it simply: God is pleased to carry out mighty acts as his people walk in simple obedience to his word. We live as Christians ought to, we ask for revival, and we trust God’s will and timing.

Very briefly (and implied by the previous two paragraphs), when God brings about a work of revival in a place, he does so as an overflow of what is happening in the local church. Put another way, if a town’s local church is an absolute mess, they shouldn’t expect God to work in the hearts and lives of people outside the church. This is because the local church is God’s chosen means of gospel presence on earth (Ephesians 3). The church is his means to disciple the nations to obedience. If blessing is going to come to a place, it’s going to start with the church.

The last bit of encouragement I’m bringing home is this: revival may never come to Bayview in any noticeable way in my lifetime, and I have to be ok with that. I’m going to pray for it. I’m going to do what God has asked of me, and I’m going to be expectant that His will be done. Don’t misunderstand me – I desperately hope that God does many mighty works here, and we are going to labor hard in that direction. At the end of the day, though, my hope is not in the amount of conversions I see in this community over a span of many years. My hope is in Jesus Christ, who lived and died for me. My status as a Christian and as a minister of the gospel is not measured by whether or not revival sweeps through our village and the surrounding towns (though I earnestly hope it does!). Will I be content living a very simple life and seeing very typical results? What if God only saves one or two people each year in our place? What if we never see an immense outpouring of the Spirit or never witness a mass conversion?

Saints, we find our rest in the perfect God who exercises his perfect will. We can do nothing else, nor should we try. Let’s join our hearts together with the psalmist in asking God to revive us again!