SEKY church hosts 80-day-long revival and has no plans of stopping soon

KNOX COUNTY, Ky. (WYMT) - Across the mountains, many of us have heard of or taken part in church revivals lasting two or three days, but one Knox County church has been hosting one for 80 days now.

“The Bible says ‘He can turn ashes into beauty’. You know, we can find an old piece of furniture and fix it up and make it look good, but we can do nothing with a pile of ashes... but God can take a life that the world says is ruined, gone, no hope for, and make something beautiful out of it. I see it all the time. Its amazing,” said North Main Community Church Pastor Scott Phipps.

Many might look at North Main’s congregation and see your average body of believers, but Phipps said 80 percent of the church-goers have fallen victim to substance abuse, human trafficking or even domestic violence.

These are stories Phipps said he can relate to.

“The day that I met the Lord, I had no idea,” he said. “It was just my wife had come home one night and said, ‘honey, God saved me and I don’t want to do drugs anymore and I love you now,’ and I got so upset about that.”

After discovering a Bible in a new car Phipps and his wife Tammie had gotten, Tammie’s life was transformed.

After nearly 15 years of drug abuse, Scott Phipps decided to change his life, too.

This change ultimately caused the pair to create the church in 1998 and inspired Tammie to open Hope City Rehabilitation as well.

“I see so many people that were like me,” said Phipps. “When I meet someone I have to realize, ‘Scott, you were that person at one time and you didn’t see the love of God and didn’t know there was a better life.’”

The Phipps family has devoted their lives to recovery and teaching the word of God, which has recently inspired them to create a revival that has grown exponentially over the past 80 days.

“If you look around our congregation, we have men with long wild hair, we’ve got bikers, we’ve got elderly, we’ve got young single moms, we’ve got pregnant teenagers; we want them to know we don’t care who you’ve been, we care about who you want to be,” said Megan Hatton, a former addict who has been a member of the church for eight years.

Phipps said these gatherings kept growing over the past few months, prompting them to move to a larger location.

He added he feels the revival offers those in recovery a sense of stability and a community of people who have been there and who care about them.

Phipps said he believes this revival will continue for a long time.

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