Eastern KY church removes interior wall, switches location to welcome big revival crowd
What was initially billed as a three-night church revival in one Eastern Kentucky city is now going on its 18th consecutive service, and organizers are preparing to temporarily occupy an abandoned home improvement store to handle the crowd.
Hager Hill Freewill Baptist Church, just south of Paintsville, hosts a fall homecoming revival every October, but this year’s services, which kicked off Oct. 26, have struck a chord in the community, said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Ronnie Spriggs.
Motivated by a recent football-celebration-turned-prayer-service and word of mouth at a local high school, hundreds of people have been filing into the small mountain church every night. Worship leaders said they intend to keep hosting 7 p.m. services as long as the droves of churchgoers keep showing up.
“The second night of the revival, the tenor changed completely,” Spriggs said. “It became something I’ve never seen before, and no one else around here has ever seen anything like it.”
An interior wall was removed a few nights in to handle the unexpected crowd, but even that was not enough, the 43-year pastor said. Starting Wednesday, Nov. 12 nightly services will take place on the floor of a now-defunct home improvement outlet on Paintsville’s east side. Leaders are putting the finishing touches on a new stage and seating to accommodate worshipers.
The church has been averaging about 250 people each evening, Spriggs said.
“People are talking about this in restaurants and things all around Eastern Kentucky,” Spriggs said. “People are hungry and thirsty because they’ve seen God do miraculous things.”
Attendance started picking up after teens at the church missed Thursday’s service to attend a rescheduled Johnson Central High School home football game against Harrison County. The students celebrating the Golden Eagles’ first-round playoffs win over the Thorobreds asked Spriggs and churchgoers to move the service to the football field, and Spriggs said they happily obliged.
The home bench was quickly turned into an altar the church’s youth occupied for much of the night, youth leader Tim Case said.
“Our youth, they’re not a bit backward,” Case said. “They don’t care to give God praise. They don’t care who sees it. They’re very bold in what they do, I’m very proud of them for that.”
Thursday’s impromptu field invasion had Spriggs delivering a post-game sermon to a crowd of nearly 700 people. In fact, the pastor has delivered most of the nightly sermons since the persistent revival kicked off, and a new recurring theme during his live morning prayer times on Facebook has been the state of his voice.
“It’s been a battle, but my voice has been recovering,” the pastor said with a chuckle. “It’s usually very weak in the morning, but comes back for each night’s service.”
Asked when the nightly services will come to an end, Spriggs said he has “no idea.”
“Whenever the Lord says stop,” he said. “I didn’t call this revival; he did.”
