The schedule for this week and the weeks to come has been fluid because of the pandemic. It is starting to jell together a bit now. I like it when a plan comes together.
Working with Pastor Kelly Rogers and the Dodds Pentecostal Church next door to the Ranch, we are planning to set up a small tent in the grass of our property and have a combination Tent/Cruise-In Revival.
There will be no seating under the tent. The idea is for people to Cruise-In to the church parking lot and enjoy the revival there. We are asking people to remain in their car or near their car and fellowship from a distance.
We desire revival for our community, but we must do it as safely as we can. We will see how well people are able to adapt to the necessary protocol and go from there. I would love to have sure-enough revival! God knows we need it.
I wanted to purchase a 20' round tent top from Miami Missionary Tent Company in Miami, Oklahoma for this. There is no sense in getting seven or eight guys together to set up my 48' round tent if we are not going to use it for seating.
Mr. Tromsness at Miami Tent was covered up with work and did not have a small round top in stock. I am thankful he has lots of work, I have prayed that God would bless his business. He did have a new 20' square tent in stock. Although that is not what I wanted, I took it.
I did look at renting tents or purchasing a round tent here in Ohio, but nothing was even close to "right" or financially smart. I was also hating the idea of buying an inferior tent. Watching videos of setting up some of the tents made me thankful for a well made Miami Missionary Tent.
I will use the side poles, stakes and straps that I already own. I also have center poles, but they are completely different than the one needed for this small one-piece tent. So I had to pick up a 12' pole and that eliminated picking it up in the Green Machine.
I drove a Dodge pickup from Wichita to Miami, Oklahoma and back to Wichita on Thursday during the revival week. I was there by 7:00 AM and back in Wichita by around 10:30. It was about a 380 mile loop and all went well.
This shows a little of the shipping area of Miami Missionary Tent Company.
When I arrived back in Wichita, we put the tent bag in the Green Machine and the pole under the bus. Before we left Bethany Saturday morning, KJo and I put the pole in the bus and laid it on the floor. We laid the ends on rugs and it rode over 800 miles perfectly.
There seems to be a lot of excitement about revival. I think people are hungry for revival, but reluctant to gather with people from outside their normal circle in the church building. For better or worse, this pandemic is changing the way we do things.
This revival will be a learning experience and we will make changes as we go. You are certainly welcome to join us. We would love to have you. The plan is to begin service about 8:00 PM each night and run the service about an hour. The dates are July 31-August 7 and those dates are flexible.
We plan to have our sound system set up and we hope to hook up an FM transmitter so that people can listen on their car stereo if they prefer. I have never used the FM transmitter before so that will be a work in progress too.
I am thankful that Pastor Kelly Rogers was interested in revival and is willing to work outside the box a bit to get it done. We also received an anonymous gift that purposely covered the cost of the new tent piece. We appreciate all of this tremendously. May God cover you with blessings, friends.
You can download the flyer for this revival HERE. It is two 1/2 page flyers on one 8 1/2 x 11 page. Please come be with us IF you can at all. We are hoping to run the services live on our YouTube channel too.
Thank you for dropping by Mile Markers today.
Davy
