Local pastors planning multi-day August revival in El Dorado

Photo By: Michael Hanich
Wade Totty speaking to the audience of Kiwanis of Camden.
Photo By: Michael Hanich Wade Totty speaking to the audience of Kiwanis of Camden.

Wade Totty, former pastor at Cullendale Baptist Church, is no stranger to Evangelical preaching in Camden. Now at the Liberty Baptist Association, Totty is reaching out to a bigger audience with a bigger net.

Totty was the guest speaker at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Camden Thursday, where he talked about his career shift and new goals in mind. One example of the change in his work is that he will be preaching at three different churches over the Memorial Day weekend.

One of the biggest projects that Totty and his network of churches will orchestrate is an Evangelical event set for August 27-30 in El Dorado called South Arkansas Together. The goal of the event, as explained by Totty, is to spread the word of God in a 30-mile radius.

"This is not going to be your your old fashioned -- I don't like to use the term, but maybe -- your grandfather's Crusade," Totty said. "It's going to be a little bit different in the way that this is put together."

Jay Lowder is set to be the pastor for the four days of the revival in El Dorado.

"He's from Wichita Falls, Texas and has been in evangelism for several years and has had a lot of a lot of success in what we would once called 'Crusade evangelism,'" Totty said.

Totty plans to have the event at different venues with different targeted demographics. On Sunday, August 27, the revival will be focused on a women at the Murphy Art District auditorium. The following night, the men will be the focused demographic, also at the Murphy Art District auditorium. On Tuesday night, the revival will shift to a student focused service in the Municipal Auditorium. Finally, the conclusion service will be a community-wide event at the Wildcat Arena in El Dorado High School.

When the idea of a community Evangelical service in South Arkansas was formed in November, Totty and his team wasted no time to put the pen to paper.

"I'm one of these that believes that you don't have to pray about sharing the gospel. You just need to go share to the gospel," Totty said.

"(It's) all across the Evangelical spectrum, all across races." Totty continued. "I mean, it has been a remarkable thing that God has put together in a very short amount of time.

"There's not been any area-wide type Crusade Harvest event in South Arkansas in decades," Totty added. "From what I've been told, there's some communities have done some things -- community-wide prayer meetings here in El Dorado over the years --, but nothing like this has been done."

The overall purpose of this community revival is to ease tension from a religious perspective.

"The thing that I really like about what we're seeing happening in El Dorado with this, and what I hope that will spread into communities like Camden, is that we all know there's a there's still a tension in South Arkansas between the Black and white communities," Totty said. "What we're seeing in El Dorado already is that we're moving past that and we've got to get folks to share the gospel. It is time to put racism to death in South Arkansas, and it's time to put racial division to death in South Arkansas. So we have got to find a way to do it and the only way that can be done is at the foot of the cross."

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