Doyle: Difference between praying for revival and being the revival

Published 5:08 am Saturday, October 29, 2022

Doyle shared the latest good news about The Good News at Trinity. For the last 53 weeks, the church has celebrated at least one baptism a week for a total of 208 souls.

“A year ago our church had a burden for the lostness in our community,” Doyle said. “Lake Charles had been hurt, wounded, damaged and was desperately looking for good news, looking to be a part of something greater.”

In the last year and a half the city had gone through a pandemic, two hurricanes, a flood, an ice storm and a
tornado.

“Our prayer at the time is that this city would turn to Jesus and be transformed by the power of the Gospel,” Doyle said. “It’s one thing to pray for revival and another thing altogether to be the revival.”

Trinity has always been a light in the city, Doyle said, but the church began to ask itself, “What would it look like to see lives changed every week?”

They started with prayer.

“Our prayer was that this city would turn to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,” Doyle said, “that we would rally around His name, not our name.”

Vision casting followed prayer.

“The Bible says in Proverbs that “without vision the people perish,” Doyle said.

Church members began bringing friends, family and co-workers to church. They shared the Gospel one-on-one.

“The cool thing about this is, it is a 100 percent God movement,” Doyle said, “the right people, in the right place with the right passion. We are thankful Trinity got to be a part of it. God equips the called. He doesn’t call the equipped. We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ every single day.”

One of the individuals baptized during this period is 91 years old. He had been attending Trinity for 40 years and another church before that. Every week he saw the same message on the back of the church bulletin, “Do you know that you know you know?”

The pandemic changed the way many churches operated. One change at Trinity was encouraging members to text their answer to, “Do you know that you know you know?”

“They could answer the question by texting “1” if they were a believer, “2” if they wanted to take the next step and “3” if they wanted information about the church,” Doyle said.

This “well-loved church member with a servant’s heart” said he generally doesn’t text, but he texted he wanted to take the next step, and he was baptized.

Doyle grew up in a large church in Northwest Arkansas and that church baptized 1,000 people one year. But that church is much, much larger than Trinity.

“To have people every single week to say yes to Jesus, there’s something special about that,” he said.

To find out what’s going on at Trinity Baptist Church, 1800 Country Club Road, check it out. Bible study starts at 9:30 on Sunday. Worship begins at 10:45.