The Time I Allegedly Preached the Gospel to My Entire High School

The Real Story & A Warning About Idolizing Revival

The summer before my senior in high school, I began attending an Assemblies of God (AOG) church. They had a Campus Missionaries program that I signed up to be a part of at that time. The concept behind Campus Missionaries was to make students more aware of the opportunities that they had as students to preach the gospel to their peers.

I was sent a Fire Bible, an “Ask Me About Jesus” zipper pull for my backpack, and instructions to report regularly via email to a ministry representative.

The reports of my evangelism are greatly exaggerated.

I was already very vocal about my faith with my friends, so my email reports consisted of my retelling stories of my conversations about Jesus with my buddies. Except for one time. One time I reported a story of a conversation that I had with a substitute teacher while some of my classmates listened in.

It was my Government class. The regular teacher was gone, and we had a substitute. He gave a talk that made a lot of us uncomfortable.

He talked about how he was originally from Egypt, and he detailed some of the things he saw while living in the middle east. Highlights I can recall: He told us about seeing people beheaded. He talked about the Israel-Palestinian conflict and how the “barefoot Palestinians” only had rocks to defend themselves against Israel’s rockets.

After his talk, he let us have free time. One of my classmates went up front and began asking the substitute questions about his outlook on the world. He said that he was a Muslim and they began discussing religion in particular. Listening in, I decided to join the conversation.

I knew enough about world religions at the time to realize that Christians, Jews, and Muslims shared a reverence for the Mosaic texts. It just so happened that the creation story is where the conversation had landed, so I felt confident we would have the same concept of the story.

The teacher said that God kicked Adam out of heaven and made him live on earth. I then countered with the Genesis account of Adam being made from the dust of the earth. He replied that it was a dirt sample taken from earth and then used to create Adam in heaven. That was a take that I had never heard before! I continued to share what I knew from Genesis.

I don’t exactly remember how the conversation went on, but we chatted about religion up until the bell rang to change classes, and at that point the substitute teacher told me that he had to cover another class, but that he was enjoying our conversation. He invited me to go to his next class and continue talking about religion.

I remember going to my next class and telling my friends what happened. They were all shocked by what the teacher had shared with the class and how the conversation went between us. I did not go to continue the conversation, but stayed in my regularly scheduled class.

That evening, I told my mother about what had happened and she was so disturbed by the details of the political things that the teacher shared with the class that she actually called the school to report the teacher.

The next day at school, in my Government class, our regular teacher was back. He led a discussion about what had happened and some of my peers specifically talked about my conversation up front as well. We were assured that the substitute teacher was asked not to share his graphic personal stories or political opinions with students in the future.

An interesting note about this story- a few weeks before I felt that the Lord was asking me to pray for my Government teacher. I asked him if he needed prayer for anything and at that time he politely said no but thanked me for asking. Flash forward to the day of the big class discussion, and my teacher caught me in the hallway between classes to let me know that he understood that my faith was important to me and he was sympathetic to the idea that I felt I needed to defend my views on religion.

I reported what happened.

The Campus Missionaries representative that I had been emailing thought the story was amazing, and he asked my permission to share my report with others as a testimony to what the youth were doing in their schools. I obliged, and I felt pretty cool knowing that my story was something he wanted to share.

The annual youth gathering of AOG ministries from across the state was held later that year. There were banners with each Campus Missionary’s name & school printed on them, hanging up front on the side of the stage. The rep was up front at one point, calling each campus missionary up to receive their banner, announcing scholarships for some, and telling anecdotes about others.

When it got to my name, I was called up and the rep told my story. Well, his version of my story. It was recounted that not only was I invited to continue my conversation with the substitute teacher, but that I had gained an audience in front of my entire high school.

“She preached the gospel to her entire school!”

I was dumbfounded. I was handed my banner while this large church full of students, pastors, and volunteers, applauded and whooped for my grand evangelism. What a great thing I had allegedly done for the kingdom of God!

I wasn’t asked to say anything. I went back to my seat, now some kind of legend among those hearing the story, feeling like I must look like a deer caught in the headlights.

I’m not sure exactly what to make of this exaggeration. It’s embarrassing to think about standing there too shocked to say anything, letting a lie be told about me. I think my story was interesting enough without exaggerating about the ending.

I don’t understand how the person who originally received the email could get it so wrong. I can only imagine the logic:

If this story could be exaggerated in such a way to inspire evangelistic zeal in the youth, that could lead to revivals in the schools, and that could be the next big move of God!

A quick disclaimer before I go forward:

I recognize that the AOG is a denomination that seeks to be biblical & God-honoring in its expression. I appreciate that the AOG has made stands against some hyper-Charismatic teachings which are being popularized today, particularly those promoted in the New Apostolic Reformation camp.

That being said, the AOG church I attended absolutely revolved around the seeking of revival. They wanted another Pentecost, another Azusa Street. Another revival.

Every summer they hosted a tent revival & invited evangelists and prophets to minister.

Each Sunday service, people prophesied from the pews about a coming revival.

Weekly prayer sessions were motivated by a hunger for God to do again what was seen in previous revivals.

It was often debated if revival was sovereignly sparked by God or if the people must do something to bring it into being.

Everything revolved around this idea of revival.

It is possible to make revival an idol.

An idol is something that has graduated to greater importance than God to us. An idol, by definition, is a deity created by pagans, and it can only be properly worshiped using pagan means. This means that Christians who have an idol in their hearts will do unchristian things in order to serve that idol.

Idols don’t produce the fruit of the Spirit in us and they don’t encourage righteousness. Idols encourage lust in us. Lust is desire that can never be fulfilled because it always wants more. Lustful desire is like a black hole, always taking things in but never filling up; this lustful desire leads us into sin and eventually results in death. (See James 1)

My church was destroyed by a lustful desire for revival.

The AOG church that I attended as a high school student, and into my college years, fractured when a traveling evangelist came to town for the summer tent revival one year.

This traveling evangelist convinced the church worship leader that the pastor was incapable of leading revival. A chunk of people left the church, in order to seek revival under the leadership of the traveling evangelist and the worship leader. Congregants publicly rebuked the pastor and his wife for holding back revival and left.

The group that left began advertising revival meetings and met on property outside of town. The AOG pastors posted a notice on the church property that clarified that the church did not endorse the traveling evangelist, the former worship leader, or the meetings that they were holding.

In the end, the fruit of this was strife, broken hearts, and confusion. There was no revival. Both groups fizzled into obscurity. The AOG church where I cut my spiritual teeth is gone, an overgrown field and a slab of pavement are all that’s left.

All of the prophecies about revival starting in that town, either at the church or at the traveling evangelist’s meetings, are ghostly memories. False prophecies. Lies in the name of God, meant to stir up revivalistic zeal.

We are told to guard against idols in the Bible. Let’s do that.

This has been the real story of the time that I did not preach the gospel to my entire high school.

I hope that my story can be a cautionary one. There is much more to be said on the topics that this story brings up. It’s a tangled web- Revival, Idolatry, Prophecy, Church Rivalry… There will be more blogs in the future. If there is anything specifically you’d be interested in my expanding upon in the future, let me know.