No one thinks of a Southern Baptist evangelist as a guitar-playing, kilt-wearing Scotsman converted while listening to Billy Joel\u2019s hit song, \u201cI Love You Just the Way You Are.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then Bert Rait is not your average evangelist. In fact, \u201cevangelist\u201d is not a term he uses to describe his calling and ministry. Rait says he sees his task as \u201cbuilding up the church,\u201d a job he considers essential if churches are to become more effective in missions and evangelism. \u201cThis is where my heart and my greatest vocational concern is,\u201d says Rait, director of Calaedonia Ministries, the name of the ministry he founded in 1987 in the Washington suburb of Springfield, Va., to assist local churches to experience revival.<\/p>\n
Rait says he works best where he is able to encourage the congregation\u2019s leadership, minister to the pastor and \u201ctake the blindfold off sleepy members.\u201d Rather than lead evangelistic crusades, Rait does concerts, leads conferences on witnessing and finding spiritual gifts and preaches revivals. \u201cI like to touch people, put my arms around the kids, pat the dog. You can\u2019t do that in a stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sixteen years ago Rait was a 29-year-old entertainer making a more-than- adequate living delivering his polished comedy and pop music routine in British nightclubs. He traveled England and his native Scotland, playing 20- minute gigs to warm up audiences for featured performers. He was raised in Aberdeen, an oil city on the North Sea, the oldest of five children in a working-class family. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren or Puritan Church, a denomination Rait says \u201cwould make fundamentalists look like liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Rait was taught the Bible and remembers making \u201csome sort of profession\u201d as a boy, he says he was \u201cabsolutely nothing\u201d spiritually. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, rock music and guitars were his life. By age 17 he caught his first big break as an entertainer, a gig in London, the equivalent of \u201cbeing invited to Hollywood or New York.\u201d The next 12 years Rait traveled and did situational comedy and concerts. He admits he was a \u201crecycled teen- ager\u201d and life was \u201cunfulfilled.\u201d \u201cI was engulfed in secularism. Music was my god and life was alcohol and parties.\u201d Occasionally he returned to Aberdeen to visit family. During one of these visits, in 1979, an encounter changed his life.<\/p>\n
Rait\u2019s mother and brother had become active in a year-old mission church planted by a Southern Baptist foreign missionary. Through what Rait calls \u201cthe quiet manipulation that only a mother can do,\u201d the missionary visited the Rait home one Tuesday afternoon to meet the entertainer and invite him to lead the music at the following Sunday\u2019s worship service.<\/p>\n
Rait saw through the scheme but did not object. \u201cI expected to get preached at, a guilt trip. But he (the missionary) was interested in me, not preaching at me or to me.\u201d Rait agreed to do Sunday\u2019s music at the mission. Between Tuesday and Sunday, in what Rait describes as a \u201cmiracle of miracles,\u201d he attended a Christian rock concert which the mission sponsored to reach young people in Aberdeen. During the concert, as he listened to a rendition of Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cI Love You Just the Way You Are,\u201d Rait was saved. \u201cI knew it was the Lord speaking — it was very clear. It was an offer too good to turn down, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat night I gave my life, not just my heart, to Christ. I gave him my home, my possessions, my goals, my vocation, my vacation. I gave him everything — not just what I was, but what I was to become. That was the end of my first life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone was ecstatic over his conversion. Some, even in the church, saw the change as \u201csuspect.\u201d So for the next two years Rait says he \u201claid low\u201d to \u201cwork out a map for myself, to come to terms with my decision.\u201d To pay bills the former nightclub performer took a job as program director of the local YMCA, \u201ca godsend,\u201d he says, because he had Christian bosses. A summer missionary assigned to work in Aberdeen rented a room in Rait\u2019s house. When he returned to the United States he engaged Rait in 1982 for a five-month music tour in several eastern states. The next year Rait returned for a three-month stint.<\/p>\n
The missionary and Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, whom Rait met while in the United States, encouraged him to attend seminary. In 1984 Rait sold his home, furniture, and with only his guitar and a suitcase, moved to Louisville, Ky., to enroll at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Seminary proved to be a \u201cmarvelous experience,\u201d says Rait. In seminary Rait learned self-discipline, a trait he never needed in his profession as an entertainer. Also in seminary he continued to hone his skills as a Christian entertainer.<\/p>\n
After graduation from seminary in 1987, Rait moved to Virginia to begin Calaedonia Ministries. Since then his ministry has grown steadily. He has done revivals or concerts in 33 states, and later this year will return to Great Britain for several bookings. Rait and his wife of three years, Laura, are members of Ivy Memorial Baptist Church in Newport News, Va.<\/p>\n
Ted Harvey, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in McLean, Va., who used the Scottish revivalist last year for a Sunday-to-Wednesday revival, praised his style. \u201cBert\u2019s ministry was anything but traditional. His combination of music and contemporary preaching reaches people in the 90s. He tells the old story in a way that it has a new and refreshing affect on people. Our seniors enjoyed him as much as our children.\u201d<\/p>\n
The life of a revivalist is not without risks. He is on the road 40 weeks each year and has no income apart from what he receives from his ministry. But Rait says he believes he has the gifts and optimistic, energetic personality necessary to thrive in this form of ministry. \u201cI regard my calling as lifelong. I have never felt so fulfilled as I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
NewsCopyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No one thinks of a Southern Baptist evangelist as a guitar-playing, kilt-wearing Scotsman converted while listening to Billy Joel\u2019s hit song, \u201cI Love You Just the Way You Are.\u201d But then Bert Rait is not your average evangelist. In fact, \u201cevangelist\u201d is not a term he uses to describe his calling and ministry. Rait says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4080,391,718,117,171,908,1868,1940],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}