Basically, I cast a vision for being a catalyst for other churches and a catalyst for something that God might be stirring across our convention and across our town. “Following lunch, we finished the whole time in an emphasis on what God has done with us individually and collectively with other churches. When we reconvened after that, I had everyone get into their small groups that they meet with every week, and in a similar fashion, they went through a Scripture text that had them praying for one another and confessing their sins to one another,” the pastor said.īrewer had asked the group to fast for a day and a half before the solemn assembly, and they broke the fast with the Lord’s Supper during the gathering. “It was the first time that the majority of them had ever had verbal confession with a trusted other on sins like that. Then they got with a prayer partner of the same gender and basically spent the next 45 minutes in confession with one another, verbalizing what they had written down in the private time.
“After close to an hour of that personal time, we reconvened. After that, I invited everybody to engage in a private exercise of going through 20-something questions that kind of probed their life about whether they were in alignment with God on this or that or the other,” Brewer said. “I began the day with a brief reflection on Joel 2 and introduced the whole idea of a solemn assembly. Church leaders had asked that participants commit to the entire five hours. It was higher than I anticipated,” he said of attendance.Īnother obstacle for some, he said, was the length of the event.
Brewer said more people would have come if childcare had been provided. The congregation averages 200 people on Sundays, and 67 adults participated in the solemn assembly on that Saturday in October. Why are you asking me to do this?’ That was a little more of the minority, but to their credit they were honest about it and then they showed up, overcoming their fears,” Brewer said. I’ve been a Christian for 10 years and I’ve never confessed any sin to anybody. “They were like, ‘I think you’re going to ask me to do things I’ve never done before. Others were fearful of the idea, he said. I just feel like God’s going to do something special in my life.'” “They were like, ‘I can’t wait until this. 16, drew nearer and people got more of a sense of what they would be doing, some were eager. “I just kind of kept pressing forward, saying I think God wants us to continue on this note until He’s through, whatever that looks like.”Īs the date of the solemn assembly, Oct. “Some of the remarks initially were more questioning about why I was giving so much attention and emphasis to sin and to holiness and to confession,” Brewer said. The pastor taught on the holiness of God for four Sundays leading up to the church-wide event.
At a fall retreat, Brewer presented the idea again and led in a preliminary solemn assembly. Once he believed God was leading him to initiate a time of solemn assembly at Meadowbrook, Brewer took the idea to fellow church leaders and they began having prayer and confession time during their meetings. “It basically served to confirm in my own heart something I felt like God was up to, not just in our region but across our country,” said Brewer, who is serving a second term as president of the Northwest Baptist Convention. Though his idea for a solemn assembly grew out of a personal retreat with God a year ago, Brewer said he was encouraged by the call of Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright and other SBC leaders for churches to observe a solemn assembly in January. I think by and large, our churches are void of a manifest sense of God’s presence that results in His empowerment of the mission,” Brewer said. “We are well past answers found in new strategies and new innovations and the best that we can produce. “I’m absolutely convinced that if there is not a significant awakening in the church, we’re in serious trouble,” Scott Brewer, pastor of Meadowbrook Church in Redmond, Wash., told Baptist Press. Now he is challenging other churches to throw off the grip of worldliness and set aside a day for repentance and renewed commitment. (BP)–A pastor in Washington state led his congregation to observe a solemn assembly this fall, to repent of sins and seek God intensely - and lives were changed.
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