Dr. Luther Oconer: Theology & Revival

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Overview

Today on the podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Luther Oconer, Associate Professor of Global Wesleyan Theology on the Florida Dunnam Campus. Dr. Oconer teachers in the area of United Methodist studies, the Holiness Movement, Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement, and church renewal. He has written several book chapters and journal articles on the history of global Methodism, the intersection between revival and missions, and the connections between Methodism and Pentecostalism. In 2017, he published “Spirit-Filled Protestantism: Holiness-Pentecostal Revivals and the Making of Filipino Methodist Identity.” It was awarded the Wesleyan Theological Society’s Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book of the Year Award in 2018.

In today’s conversation, we talk about his story of calling and revival, what revival means for us and how we can join God in the work he is doing around the world. Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Dr. Luther Oconer, Associate Professor of Global Wesleyan Theology

Dr. Luther Oconer has served on the faculty and was the director of the Center for Evangelical United Brethren Heritage at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio since 2012. He teaches on the area of United Methodist studies, the Holiness Movement, Pentecostal/ Charismatic Movement, and church renewal. He completed his Ph.D. in Wesleyan/Methodist Studies from Drew University in 2009. He is also the First Vice President of the Wesleyan Theological Society, current editor of the Wesleyan Journal for Religious Studies, and is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church in the Philippines.

He has written several book chapters and journal articles on the history of global Methodism, the intersection between revival and missions, and the connections between Methodism and Pentecostalism. In 2017, he published his book, “Spirit-Filled Protestantism: Holiness-Pentecostal Revivals and the Making of Filipino Methodist Identity.” It was awarded the Wesleyan Theological Society’s Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs Wynkoop Book of the Year Award in 2018.

Dr. Oconer is passionate about promoting revival in churches and seeing them renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit. He regularly preaches in renewal conferences and lead workshops on divine healing in the U. S., and internationally. He has also served churches in the Philippines, New Jersey, and Alaska. He is married to Marion and they have two children, Ilana and Wesley.

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need.

Heidi Wilcox:
Today on the podcast we’re joined by Dr. Luther Oconer, Associate Professor of Global Wesleyan Theology on the Florida Dunnam Campus. Dr. Oconer teaches in the area of United Methodist Studies, the Holiness Movement, Pentecostal Charismatic Movement and Church Renewal. He has written several books, chapters and journal articles on the history of Global Methodism, the intersection between revival and missions and the connections between Methodism and Pentecostalism.

Heidi Wilcox:
In 2017, he published Spirit-Filled Protestantism: Holiness-Pentecostal Revivals and the Making of Filipino Methodist Identity. It was awarded the Wesleyan Theological Societies, Timothy L. Smith and Mildred Bangs, Wynkoop Book of the year award in 2018. In today’s conversation, we talk about history of calling and revival, what revival means for us and how we can join God in the work he is doing around the world. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
Dr. Oconer, it is such a delight to have you on the podcast today. I’ve been looking so forward to our conversation. Thank you for joining me.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Well, thank you so much, Heidi. Thanks for having me. And also, to the Thrive listeners who thrive.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, we’re delighted to have you. I just want to start out you’re associate professor of theology, Asbury Seminary. So I want to get to how you came to the seminary in a minute, but to start out with, how did you first encounter Jesus?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. Actually, I’m originally from the Philippines, and I was born and raised Methodist, I’m a third generation Methodist. It was my my grandma who became Methodist because in the Philippines people there are predominantly Roman Catholic. So, that faith kind of carried on to her children, and then, of course, the grandchildren. And so I’m the third generation Methodist, so to speak.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I grew up in church, went to Sunday school. I did all of that. I did VBS, taught VBS. But also there was a point in my life when I started to experience what I would call awakening, when I started to become much more serious about the faith. It’s funny though, because I just kind of realized that later as I was studying my mother’s history and learning more about Wesleyan theology, where John Wesley talks about awakening and the work of the holy spirit to convince us of our unbelief. So, I went through that, but when I started to become much more serious about the faith. Also that sense of, “Oh no.” I’m looking at myself and I realized, “Oh, I’m a sinner and I’m going to go to hell.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
So, there was at a time when I was probably around, around 12, 13. And then suddenly at the age of 14, a good friend of mine convinced me to attend a youth camp. In the Philippines, we have an annual youth camp called the Christmas Institute. It’s like a mixture of a camp meeting kind of thing. That was began in 1921. It came from The Airport League. Airport League is a youth organization in the Methodist Episcopal church at that time. They call it The Airport League, and they would have this Airport League Christmas institute. It’s like a rite of passage for Methodist young people in the Philippines. That’s [inaudible 00:04:12], now we’re celebrating the centennial this coming December.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, that’s right. Yes.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
You can guess who wrote the history behind it. Me. I wrote the history behind it.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
But, anyway. It was at that camp called Christmas Institute that I got first exposed to evangelical preaching. It was during the evening, probably on the second night of that camp in 1985 where, in the preacher, when he was preaching, I felt like he was speaking directly to me. It felt like he knew my heart, and then when he did the altar call I found myself in front with other young people. The neat thing about it is I went front to give my life to Jesus, to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and savior, but this was also at the same time that I also said I’m going to enter the ministry.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, okay. So, you accepted Jesus and found your calling or found you at the same time?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. It’s kind of customary during those events in those Christmas Institutes. They invite young people to make a profession of faith in Jesus, and they also would invite them to ministry if they want to become pastors or deaconesses. In the Philippines, we still have what we call deaconesses. I was one of them to say yes, and then I go and start a ministry. Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Actually, it was, in a way, it was not a, I think, random thing that I did because prior to that, even when I was little, even my grandma would tell me whenever I would visit her, that I’m going to become a pastor.

Heidi Wilcox:
Really?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. Then other people would affirm that in church. I think it kind of just kinda went on naturally for me. It all made sense to me that night when I made that declaration, that I was not only going to accept Jesus, profess my faith in him, my saving faith in him and also, and enter the ministry.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. So, when you say ministry, where you thinking pastor and professor at that time?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was not thinking of professor.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That wasn’t even my thinking at that time, but that’s another story. You can ask me later.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
In the Philippines, when you say enter the ministry, it only means two things, either you become a pastor or you become a deaconess.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Okay. All right. What was your journey to be a pastor like? Because, as a teenager, I mean, I don’t want to assume you didn’t start preaching immediately because some people do, but what was that journey like?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
After that camp, I started to become much more active in church. Because I come from a family that is quite nominal, my mom was a nominal Methodist, my dad was Catholic. So, we don’t obviously not really regularly go to church. But, somehow that moment of profession of faith for me and declaration that I was going to enter the ministry kind of really turned things around for me. It was a pivotal moment that made me more active in church as a result. I became actively involved with youth ministry in my local church. I became youth president later on, and then I got promoted into becoming a president of our youth organization in the district. So, that meant that I was going to be the ones that organized those camps.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That was already in college. High school and then went on to college. So, I was very active in, in youth work.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, while I was in college, I became a licensed lay speaker. I didn’t know at that time what the implication of that was, but I said, “Okay, I wanted to become a lay speaker.” I was like, “Okay, cool.” I guess that gave me the license to speak in churches because I was youth president, so I got invited on special occasions to preach.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, at the same time. as I was doing that, I was in college. Going to college, it was not really a preparation for ministry for me to begin with because I was starting to become an engineer. Yeah. It didn’t make sense. The idea was, I knew I was supposed to do ministry, but I still went to an engineering school. I did my degree was on… in the Philippines, we have what we called BS, Bachelor of Science on Electronics and Communications Engineering. Electronics and telecommunications stuff.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I really enjoyed doing that. After graduating from college, and then I pass the board exams and got to work in the telecommunications industry in the Philippines, I began to realize that maybe I wasn’t really called to the ministry. Maybe I heard wrong because I kind of enjoying that line of work. I really began to pursue this, I would call it this secular dream, of becoming an engineer like my classmates, like the other folks around me.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I worked for a telecommunications company. Then, afterwards, left that company and moved to another similar company, but a cell phone company. It was a dream job for me because it was a prime company. It’s a startup but there was so much prestige to it with being someone from the province. Now I got to work in Manila. This is the main city in the Philippines.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, you were going places.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was going places. I really enjoyed the work. Then, as I was doing that, I was engaged in that work.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I also sensed the emptiness of life doing that because I was just so busy with work, work, work. There’s always overtime. There’s a lot of infrastructure that we had to build around the country. This was the advent of that communication in the Philippines. Not a lot of people had dead opponents at that time. And so we’ve our building infrastructure. There’s a lot of work to be done.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was spending a lot of late nights at work, and sometimes I would even go home or go back to the apartment at around 3:00 AM in the morning and then be back at work 9:00 AM. Work ends for me five o’clock because that’s the time that the meetings are done, my boss meetings are done. Then, as I am about to go home, he would tell me and the others, he would tell me, “Hey, Luther, you stay. We have work to do.” It’s always like that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I ain’t got time to do that. I got exhausted doing that. There was even a point that my boss and I never got home. It’s like, we just stayed until the morning.

Heidi Wilcox:
And started all over again.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. That was Valentine’s Day, and he’s married and he was in trouble with his wife. So, he brought me to their date. He brought me through that to their date because he know that he was going to be scolded, so he brought me along to control it. To soften their fight.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, to soften the…

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes, yes. Yeah. To soften the blow, so to speak.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The final…

Heidi Wilcox:
So, then-

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah, go ahead.

Heidi Wilcox:
I think I was asking what you were fixing to tell me. How you then returned to seminary and pastoral work.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. Yeah. The final straw for me was… this was 1996, Christmas. December 24 we were still working. As I went back to the province, it was December 24, I’m just coming out the office. Now I was scrambling to buy gifts for my nephews and nieces, and realized, “Is this it? Is this what you wanted? Is this the life you really want?”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The pay was great because I was earning overtime pay a lot, probably three times or four times of my regular pay. I was single, of course. I was making all this money, but no time to spend it. There’s no quality. At the same time, the real drawback for me was what was happening to me in my spirit. I was dying, so to speak. I was dying. I felt like I was kind of pushed back against a wall, and there was no way that I could turn towards where to go to.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was really becoming more spiritually bankrupt as a result of that. This has been manifesting in my attitudes and my struggles with sin. I think it got to a point that Lord, I don’t want to leave this kind of life. I don’t want this. So, went on through that Christmas break. Then, I told my boss if I could extend my break to attend Aldersgate, a youth conference.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
There was this Aldersgate gathering. It’s under the Aldersgate Renewal Fellowship. It’s a charismatic organization in the United Methodist church that was founded in the U.S., but in the Philippines, it has a big following. It was just growing, and so they have this youth conference. It was, I think, second time that they had it. I realized, “Okay, this is my last chance.” I needed to be there. I needed to recenter myself as to who I am and my connection with God.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I went there hungry because it started January 2nd. It was really an encounter with the Holy Spirit. It was at that event, this is the first night, they did an Alder Call, and everyone was in front, crying, weeping. I was one of those people, and I had this wonderful experience with the Holy Spirit that I’ve never experienced in my life. It was just the whole spirit just feeling me. It’s like waves upon waves, that I found myself on the floor.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
People call it seeing the Spirit. I was one of those people, and I was there. As I was gripped by the power of the Holy Spirit, I just felt this… it kind of felt like as if styled in John’s experience. You know, when I had that waves upon waves, the touch of the Holy Spirit upon me. I was weeping, I was laughing, weeping laughing, and I was in that state for more than one hour. I was on the floor. I’ve never experienced that before.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
One thing led to another during that event that it became clear to me. One of the things that became clear to me was the reality of God. That God is real. God works intimately in the lives of people. I could no longer ignore that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, another thing that happened to me was the confirmation of my call. Because during the prayers, during people praying for me personally words would be revealed or what we would call words of knowledge, this kind of affirming God’s will for me, and really just calling me back to ministry. It became clear to me that God really wanted me to to follow him in a journey of ministry.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I made this decision right then and there that I’m going to quit my job.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. That’s a big decision.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It was a big decision.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
After that conference, went back to my job the week later, and I asked to meet with my boss. I told him that I was going to resign. It was fine though, because he’s the one who called me to his office because he wanted to reward me.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
He said, “Luther, I’m just proud of you. I just thank you for all your contributions to what we’re doing. And so I wanted to reward you with a trip.” He said, “I’m going to send you to Malaysia to train on this new equipment.” It’s a switching equipment, so to speak, that they use for cell phones, for cell sites and all of that. “I wanted you to be one of the first ones to learn this, the switching. I’m going to send you there.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then I told him, “But, boss, I was going to tell you I was going to resign. I want to resign.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
“What?”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I haven’t been outside of the Philippines at that point. I’ve never been on a plane prior to that and he’s giving me that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Wow. Yes.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
He was shocked, but then he said, “You know what? You still deserve it. I’m going to send you there.” That the backup was that I was going to change my mind. None of that would change my mind. I was determined.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I think the final confirmation was I was in Malaysia for that training. I called my parents who were… they were in the U.S. at that time. They were in New Jersey. My mom said, “So, it looks like you’re enjoying yourself. You’re very happy with your job, you said.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That was a cue for me. I told her, “No, I’m not happy. That’s why I’m resigning.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
“What?” They were shocked, but then they gave me support. “We support you, that’s your decision.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
In a way, I think my mom already knew that I had been called to the ministry. Her and my dad, they said, “Okay, you’ll have our blessing.” That was it.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
When I got back, there was no turning back. That was February. Come June, I was now pastor in a church because that’s how we do it in the Philippines.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh wow.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah, if you say you’re going to answer-

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That happened fast.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. They don’t say you go to seminary. No. They’re not sending you to seminary, they send you to a church to pastor right away.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, wow. Wow.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Because of my exposure with the young people, with youth ministry, and so that’s why they trusted me with a church. So, there I was from the asphalt jungle of Manila now pastoring in a small, rural, rural church in the Philippines.

Heidi Wilcox:
What was that transition like for you as you went from the corporate world to a church setting? I’m sure it had a lot to learn. I can’t imagine being thrown in just to any type of job. What was that like for you?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It was a big culture shock to begin with.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was going not really nine to five but going everyday to the office with a neck tie and all of that, riding the public transportation in Manila, getting to work. Now I’m in what they call a barrio or a rural village, a farming village. Life is very slow, surrounded by farms, and there’s a lot of poverty in that area that even the church could not even afford to pay me.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I really survive on my severance package from my previous work. That’s how I survived that first year. I was never happier than that in my life. Being in that kind of a place, I felt this nearness to God and, and also, just to be able to serve people, to bring hope to the lives of people, and see change happening in the community of that church. It’s something that can’t be bought with any amount of money. I really felt that I was called to this. That I was called to ministry.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, the neat thing with that church, we saw a revival happen in that church. It all happened as a result of prayer. We were just praying. We’d been praying, me and a few leaders who would wake up around 5:00 AM in the morning, and we would gather at church and just pray for for an awakening in that community. It happened eventually a few months after that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Also, we’ve seen a lot of miracles happen in that church. We’ve seen healings take place. Most importantly, we’ve seen life change for the better turning to God. I was only there for a year, but the neat thing is I feel like I was there forever because we were doing a lot of things. We were seeing a lot of things, great things happening in God’s kingdom.

Heidi Wilcox:
You were there for a year. How did you come to U.S.? Because you have mentioned that you’ve lived in the U.S. for 20 years now.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. After that, I got appointed to another church, to another district and ambassador for three years. But, as I was pastoring, I was going to seminary.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That was the thing. They sent me to seminary. It’s called the Wesley Divinity School.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Did that. Did my M.Div. there. But, there’s also this sense within me wanting to find out more about Wesley, wanting to find out more about Methodism. So, I made it my personal goal that, after I finished seminary, that I would try to apply and study the U S.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I did that in my last year. I began the process of applying, and I got admitted at Drew University in New Jersey. We have there the UMC seminary called Drew Theological School. The reason I picked that seminary was because it’s closer to where my parents were that time.

Heidi Wilcox:
Of course. Of course.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That’s why. I was also kind of thinking about applying at Asbury, but the process was much more difficult, I guess. The scholarship package is was not there.

Heidi Wilcox:
It makes all the difference.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That’s why I went with Drew, although my preference was Asbury, actually. Not Drew.

Heidi Wilcox:
Well, we’re glad to hear that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
On the record, I got to say that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Went to Drew and did my MA. It’s called SCM, Master of Sacred Theology, with the intent of being there for only a year or two. In that year of study, my professors would confirm to me, “What are you doing here? Why are you taking this?” Oh, I just want them to do it there for a year or two, and then go back.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, one of my professors, he told me, “You know what, I think you can do the PhD program.” I was even clueless at that time. It’s like, I don’t even have any idea what a person with a PhD does. But, okay. So, I applied. The neat thing was the Lord provided, I got scholarships and all of that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
So, after this period of doing the master studies, I transitioned to the PhD program at Drew. I came into the program not emotionally and mentally prepared, so to speak. But the Lord provided the way, and I really enjoyed it because I got to focus more on what I wanted to learn. And that is more on the Wesleyan study side. Got to know more about Wesleyan theology, rather than just history, because the program was on Wesleyan and Methodist studies.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. All right. Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I was part of the last batch of students in that program at Drew.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The neat thing was also allowed me to be able to study more about the history of Methodism in the Philippines. So, that’s where I really focused my energies on when I started working on my dissertation because there, on-campus, we have the United Methodist archives which has the largest collection of materials from Methodist missionaries, those who went overseas, and even those who went to the Philippines. I really got to work on those materials, those journal reports, those diaries, journals, personal journals of missionaries, and other primary materials.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s awesome.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
God used that period of study as a period of personal revival for me as well.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How so? Because I want to talk about revival, for sure, because you’ve done a lot of work and research and thinking in that area. What does revival mean to you, personally? And then, how does it look out in the community and then the world?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I think before I define what a revival is, I think there’s a misconception about revival. It’s not like when we say revival, we mistake it for… what really is what people call revivalism?

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Yes. I think that’s what I think of, I think of a scheduled week, a camp meeting service, and it’s a revival meeting.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
That is what I think of when I think of revival.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes, that’s what we typically think about when we say revival. But, really, that’s what we call revivalism. It’s our attempt to really hope for revival to happen. It’s like we imitate something and then we hope that God will show up.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I’m not saying that it’s wrong, because sometimes God shows up, and I’ve experienced that in my life. I think revival is much more deeper than that. Revival is more of a divinely-initiated process in which a dying church is revitalized through the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s not my own definition, I’m actually quoting here Mark Stebe from a book called On Revival. He’s an Anglican priest, a former Anglican priests appointed to a church in England at one point.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Anyway, that’s what he said. It’s a divinely-initiated process in which a dying church is revitalize through the work of the Holy Spirit, but then something happens as a result of that. One of the things that happens is that, as the Holy Spirit moves in the midst of its revival, this leads people to a new love affair with Jesus Christ. They fall in love with Jesus, so I think that’s really neat, I think, because that’s a nod to what Jesus said in John 15 verse 26, when he said, “When the advocate comes,” referring to the Holy Spirit, he said, “he will testify about me.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Basically, when he sends Holy Spirit, he will point us to Jesus. I think that’s what happens when Holy Spirit shows up at revival, when revival takes place, people recover this new love affair or gain this new love affair with Jesus Christ. But, it doesn’t end there. As people are drawn, as they fall in love with Jesus, this transforms the community. There’s a transformation that takes place in the community itself, and not only within that community, but also in the surrounding community or even the region and even the whole nation where that revival has taken place.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I think that’s really a revival for me. It illustrates well what also happened in those powerful moves of God in the past in history.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. A good example would be the Great Awakening. You have the Second Great Awakening taking place actually right here in Kentucky. I got to visit a few years ago.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. Revival is much more impactful because it’s a genuine move of God through time and space. It’s Holy Spirit revivalism. Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. So, how do we transition? Because I hear what you’re saying that revivalism isn’t a bad thing, but how do we join with God to partake in the revival work that He wants to do?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. So, how do we join?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Again, we have to put ourselves in dating the means of grace. That’s very Wesleyan, I think. You have to put yourself in a place whereby you can receive grace.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I think that’s what revivalism does, I think. It’s more of a means of grace. It is not revival itself, but it is spoofing yourself. It is a prayer, so to speak, that you want that. I think that’s why, even though they’re not revival, per se, still, it’s like a prayer.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It’s like, say, “Oh, I want to experience God in a special way. So let’s do something to put ourselves in that place.” I feel like we have that understanding that I think is okay. But, the problem lies with when we have a misconception of I would say, “If I’m going to do this, then God will show up.” That’s a wrong idea, I think, we’re manufacturing revival in that case.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
If we’re recognizant of the fact that it is God that does revival and recognizant of the fact that we just need to put ourselves in a place whereby we can experience it, then I think that’s a good way to do it. Also, when we say revivable, it involves repentance. It involves much repentance, people just repenting of their sins. I know something of that nature happened there at Asbury-

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s true.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
… in 1970 when you have that revival that took place there at Asbury. I think there are also some minor, little manifestations of that here and there, you know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. Yes. Sure.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It’s really that. It’s people getting… when they’re confronted with the presence of the Holy Spirit, that they’re also get to see what’s happening in their own lives and get to reassess their lives and they realize, “Why mess up? I’m in the presence of the Holy One, and I’m not worthy. I’m just like Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six.” You know when they’re in the temple and Isaiah creates the presence of God there. Instead he said, “I am a pile of unclean leaves.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
So, something like that. When we experience the holiness of God, then we realize how truly fallen we are and all you can do is really, if you repent, if you confess. That’s what happens in revival.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Can you tell me about… because I’m struggling to get it out of my head, the revival week that I’ve experienced, and I know that’s not what you’re talking about. So, can you give me a picture of what revival looks like?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. There’s a supernatural aspect to it. I think God is there, so I would call it an encounter. It’s really a moment of encounter with a living God in ways that you’ve never experienced before although we believe in the omnipresence of God, that God is everywhere. He’s all powerful, omniscient, but he’s also omnipresent.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
When we’re talking about revival, we’re not talking about the omnipresence of God. We’re talking more about the manifested presence of God, God is omnipresent, he’s everywhere, but God’s manifest is not everywhere. There are certain conditions that need to be met before that can take place.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That’s what happens during the revival. You have God’s manifested presence, or what people would call the shekinah Glory of God.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, and it’s not necessarily in one service or something like that, or even in a church at all. It can be in your house.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It can be in your house. Yeah. It can be anywhere.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
We’re God’s Glorified. We’re recognized. You have the manifested presence of God. And, once you have that, that’s an encounter. The presence of God is just so thick that the atmosphere in the room is different. Then you are just compelled.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That is what happens in that event, going back to that event or asking me about. You just feel the thickness of the presence of God in that auditorium where we were gathered, that there’s a lot of manifestations. People are being delivered from their own personal interest. There’s a lot of people who are having convulsions, people who are shouting, weeping, and it’s very loud. There are people being thrown out from their chairs, and no one is even touching them. It’s like bam, bam, bam. It’s like from one event after the other during that conference. It was like that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The funny thing was, the last day, our consecration service, it was the last service, and we had the bishop, one of our bishops preaching in that service. This bishop is not charismatic, he’s not aware of all of these things. He just came there. We did a usual Methodist service with a profession. There was piano music or organ music in the background. There’s nothing charismatic about about it. After a bit of us professing in the middle of the aisle, you would see these young people seated, one by one, as if they were being thrown out from their chairs. Bam, bam, bam.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Then, when he started preaching… I mean, it was just a normal sermon, which was weird, and then suddenly would have outbursts of manifestations. He was kind of shocked, but the neat thing was, he was cool about it. It was like, “Okay.” He kept his composure in the midst of that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
There were people who were being thrown out from their chairs and they started spinning like tops on the floor. Then, you would have people come in, bring stretchers, and take these people to what we would call the ICU section. We even had an ICU section.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. That’s how intense it was, that event was.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. What is the role of prayer in going from revival to then going out into the community and sharing it with other people?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. Yeah. Prayer, I think it’s necessary for revival.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. I asked that because you said you had prayed for revival intensely in the first church that you pastored.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Heidi Wilcox:
So, is that the only way to invite the Holy Spirit to then move in our communities and in our midst? Because, as we talked about off the podcast, we are in desperate need of a revival. So, how can we make ourselves available for this?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. So, I’m not gonna say it’s the only way, but there’s no way that you can have revival without prayer.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
There has to be this hunger. Actually, Charles Finney in his book On Lectures On Revival talks about mighty, prevailing prayer. We’re just pushing through a sense of desperation that it’s like you’re running out of air to breathe. That’s how desperate you are. You’re desperate for God’s presence.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I think that’s what prayer does. It really conditions us to have this hunger for that. And, I think for me, personally, I experienced that going to that conference, which I was already hungry for in far. My prayer prepared me for that. But, also, there were other people praying for that prior to it.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I’ve experienced it myself when I was pastoring a church, and we were having these prayer meetings early in the morning every day. Three to four people gathered every day at the church, praying for revival. So, I guess what it does, it’s kind of just saying, “We want it.” You know?

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
We want it to take place. Lord, when it happened, it happened amongst the people that we were praying for. it didn’t have o happen to us to begin with. We were praying for our young people, and then it happened amongst them.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I should tell this story. This happened Sunday, Sunday afternoon. I was having my usual Bible said in one of the homes in that village, when suddenly… I have a youth volunteer, who’s not from that church, but he was a good friend of mine, but also experienced revival in that camp that I came from, helped me in that church. He was teaching the young people Bible study the same time I was teaching the adults in another house. He came rushing to that Bible study and said, “Pastor, you better come to me right now. Come with me right now.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I’m, “What? What happened?”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
He went, “No, I’ll explain to you later. Just come. Let’s go to the church. Something’s happened,” he said.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
We rush to the church, and then, lo and behold, I got to the church and saw that all of our young people kneeling by the outer rail.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh wow. Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
And they were all crying. Crying and weeping, and then they started confessing their sins. I mean, it’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. They were all kneeling in the outer rail. Even the ones I would say are quite hard-headed or not responding too much, and when I tried to approach them, but suddenly I find them there, weeping. They were confessing their sins to me, they were telling me stuff. We were crying, and we were praying for them, and then suddenly the parents started coming.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
When the parent sees this, they all started weeping as well. The kids would talk to them and also confess their sins to their parents. It was powerful. This started probably around four in the afternoon, and we ended around past ten in the evening. We were just there in the church, worshiping, singing, and crying, weeping before the Lord. That marked a change in the life of the church because the lives of these young people, it also had an impact with the adults in that church. Adjacent communities also started checking us out.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. After people have these experiences, how do we help people go beyond checking the boxes and continue to live the renewed lives that they’re called to?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. That’s the hardest part, because people don’t know how to handle revivals, so they don’t know how to handle what to do next after the experience.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Typically when revival takes place, typically they just fizzle out. Typically, they just get trapped into the understanding that revival is about just the manifestations, and they get fixated on that and they start looking for it. But, then they forget that there’s a purpose why that happened. They forget that the main purpose, I believe, is just like what happened to Isiah in Isaiah Six, when he said, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

Dr. Luther Oconer:
That’s mostly the part that people miss, the, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” There is no act of sending that takes place, so they get dragged into that other aspect of revival. I think that’s how you maintain revival.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I’d say, even when revival happens, they usually happen in a particular time and space. I don’t think they’re meant to stay that way, because we’re meant to be driven out. Not driven out in a bad way, but driven out in a good way. We are moved to do something because if we’re stuck there, then we’ve missed the revival if we got stuck there.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It’s like the transfiguration, when Peter said, “Lord, can we just stay here?” We want to stay here in the moment and just feel this. Let’s stay here. But, the point is to go down the mountain and leave that place. There’s so much to do. I think that’s how you really maintain revival is to be part of the aim of that revival, of what God wanted you to do after that revival.

Heidi Wilcox:
After we’ve had our encounter with the Holy Spirit, and I’m not assuming that it’s one encounter, it can be multiple over our lifetimes, but as we then go on from that encounter and go out, why is it so important that we recover our theology as we do that?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. I think it’s because belief matters because beliefs, they really ground us. They define our practices. Because, otherwise, you’re moving… how do you call that? The cart is pulling the horse, so to speak.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Action follow belief. Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. That’s why we need to be clear with our beliefs. We need to be clear about theology because everything flows out of theological reflection. We read scripture, but then, how do we reflect on scripture? And, when we reflect on scripture, when we think about scripture, it has to be consistent with the understanding of the cloud of witnesses that came before us, those early Christians.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
We’re talking about Christian theology as it developed from the Palestine region and then among the early Christians in the Mediterranean basin and then it developed from one century to another. It has to be connected with that.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It’s important because it defines our practices, what we do. Because, otherwise, if we have bad theology, then we’re also going to have bad practice.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I feel like when we-

Heidi Wilcox:
When we-

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. As a professor. Do you see yourself as also a pastor for your students and helping them connect?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah, most definitely. My calling was a pastor. I was a pastor first and foremost, and that never went away when I transitioned into teaching, starting 2012. I always approached teaching with a pastor’s heart. I understand where my students came from, that they were told to minister.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
They’re not there because they’re pursuing a career, but because they also felt the calling. I also have to be mindful of that, that we’re all called. I am there not only to reaffirm that, but also to enhance that call to make them effective ministers of the gospel. I think my students would always say that to me as well.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
When I get a chance to speak with them, I think they usually detect that, that I’m a pastor which is kind of a neat thing. I feel that that’s a part, a piece as well of my call as a pastor.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Because I thought that when I when I entered teaching ministry, that that was it. That I was no longer going to be a pastor, but time and time again, God has been telling me that I’m still a pastor, but now I am a pastor of pastors, so to speak.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. Yes. I love it. I love it.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:50:55].

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I love that. Before we wrap up today, this conversation has been an absolute delight. Before we wrap up, we have one question that we ask everyone, but before we do, is there anything else you’d like to mention that we haven’t already talked about?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The Philippines.

Heidi Wilcox:
I’m sure. I’m sure. I feel like we could keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
I’m cool with what we’ve talked about so far.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Awesome. All right. So, because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Right now what’s making me thrive in my life right now is I think my own reflection of how God moves in history. Because, right now I used to teach a lot on [inaudible 00:51:52] history in my previous seminary where I taught. I’ve been doing that for the past nine years. It got to the point that it got a bit stale.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
The neat thing now is with Asbury, I was asked to do a new course for me, and that is Christian history. Now as I begin to review what I know about church history, especially now in this semester, I’m teaching Church History 1, just learning more about how God moved among the early Christians, in the early church. It’s like my [inaudible 00:52:42] right now.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
It’s all making sense to me right now, in terms of the connection with what we read in the Bible. it’s like a missing link. In learning and seeing that missing link, for me, it’s quite reinvigorating. It’s making my understanding of Christianity and who I am much richer. I find myself just being excited about that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Huh. Yeah. You’re seeing the foundation.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Yes. I’m beginning to understand the foundation in a much more intimate way than I had three years before. So, it’s really making me excited, just every week after week as I was doing a lot of prep work, prior to last week. I’ve never seen myself as excited as that as prepping for this courses. It’s an amazing experience for me.

Heidi Wilcox:
Awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s just been a joy to hear more of your story and just get to know you a little bit better. Thank you so much.

Dr. Luther Oconer:
Well, thank you, Heidi. Thanks again for having me. I look forward to getting to be immersed in our community right here at Asbury.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, of course.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Dr. Oconer. So appreciate him sharing his story and giving me, at least, a fresh idea of what revival means and how to connect that with mission and theology. So appreciate him being on the podcast today. As always, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.