History of Area
Wide Crusade
God began to speak to my heart and burdened me with a strong desire to return to my spiritual roots and those of my ancestors. Union County, Tennessee has a long history of supporting day and night revival meetings with the public school system attending the day services. After researching the law on “release time,” we found a way to reinstate these revival services with the school system. This allowed us to accomplish God’s will and our goal.
We contacted the principal of our local school with a legal opinion about “release time” and received the blessings to move forward and organize a revival. From there, we went to the director of schools, and then to the school board with a legal opinion from Matthew Staver with Liberty Counsel. With approval of above mentioned, we set a time agreeable with school officials and lunchroom personnel. Lunch had to be moved to accommodate a morning schedule to begin services at 9:30 to ll:00 a.m. Local school bus owners were contacted to provide transportation. We offered to pay for their services. Our buses are privately owned and contracted to county school system, enabling them to provide much needed help. Most of them donated their equipment, fuel and drivers to help our students.
Chaperones were chosen to ride buses with the students from school to the revival site, which was in our church, where I pastor in the community. Permission slips were provided by Crusade Ministries and sent home with the student to obtain parental permission to voluntarily attend the revival, on release time, during the day. Teachers, who had assistants, could take leave without pay and attend on the same voluntary basis with the students.
We provided a regular church revival service format for our students. We invited our reining Miss Tennessee, University of Tennessee athletes and other local celebrities to speak or sing and give their testimonies. Special music was provided daily before preaching. As Pastor, it was my responsibility to see that the gospel was the hub of our revival. Attendance was about 200 for our first effort. The first morning service, I asked for a show of hands of those who were attending a church service for the first time and approximately 25 hands were raised. I then asked how many were attending a revival service for the first time and approximately 15 responded. I was ashamed to admit, that as Pastor, I was out of touch with my community. In three day services there were 68 students that had made a profession of faith in Christ, as their personal Savior. There were also many responding to rededicate their lives to Christ. We provided a ratio of one counselor to ten students and chaperones for one to fifteen students. We invited grades 2 through 8 to attend. Revival services were held for three days and nights and our church paid the expenses.
From this humble beginning and after continuing these revivals for three years with similar numbers each year, we moved to a central location in our County and brought three schools to an off campus setting calling it now a crusade. There were four hundred and eleven professions of faith in Christ and several hundred rededications to the Lord. We remained with the three-day schedule for our crusade.
The following year we invited the entire county with awesome response and results. We renamed our work and call it the “Area Wide Crusade.”
We then founded Crusade Ministries, Inc., which remains in service today. I serve as president, Nancy Dalton as secretary and Eddie Perry as treasurer. We have continued to enjoy annual crusades in our county. We have also helped our neighbors in other counties to organize crusades for their schools. To God be the glory, and now these crusades are being made available to your community.
We have a wonderful crusade team, whom I could not possibly provide a crusade without. We used the structure in the Bible as our guide to setting up our organization. It takes approximately two hundred people to provide a crusade for our county. This includes our county sheriff and his staff, city law enforcement, rescue squad personnel, ambulance service, medical personnel, chaperones, counselors, ushers, recorders, with audio and video teams. This help is onsite throughout the crusade. We provide first responder services and first-aid. Twenty four-hour guard services are required. We have phone service and two-way radios for our team members for constant communication and emergencies.
As Crusade Pastor, I live on site in a large camper, provided by volunteers in our church. We have electricity, telephone, water and sewer. Many of the women of our church cook food and bring to my wife and I. Thank you God and church, I can not describe to you the coming together of church and community in these crusades. As our young people often say, “It is awesome.” Many other churches and denominations come together in this privileged opportunity. We work as non-denominational and invite our area churches to participate. Area wide organizational meetings are held throughout the county in preparation for the annual event. We schedule our crusade for the first part of May. We chose this time of year because of favorable weather and because it’s near the end of school, after achievement tests.
Our location, Wilson Park, is central to area schools and is in an outdoor amphitheater setting that will accommodate many thousands of people. We provide chairs and have a sound system that is state of the art, housed in a special built trailer. We provide audio and video with all volunteer people. Video has been an excellent security measure. We have a live broadcast on a local FM radio station covering a tri-state area. We always stage a press conference for the local media and have been treated very fair by all. We advertise the Crusade with a wide variety of area media.
There will be obstacles, like the weather that test your faith-We pray much-We have been rained out, but very few times. Even with rain, we were blessed.
In looking over our history, there are so many stories and blessed events that have taken place over these years that it is almost overwhelming for me as I reminisce. Thank you for taking your valuable time to read and respond to this wonderful, glorious work. I have seen so many faces and so many tears of joy, so many shouts of victory. Thank you again Lord.
I hope you enjoyed some of our precious history. Who knows, God may let us meet face to face somewhere across America in helping you organize a crusade in your county. If God leads your organization in this manner, then I will be willing to travel to your community to speak, equip, and help you organize a Crusade for you students. Contact info:
Pastor Gary
Beeler Home Phone: (865) 992-8639
Crusade Ministries
P.O. Box 40
Luttrell, TN 37779-0040
Fax: (865) 992-1143