The Daily News Network presents FaithWorks hosted by “Finding Your Frequency’s” Brian Sexton. Today, he chats with Chris Widener of Revival 250.
Chris Widener
President of Revival 250
Website Address: revival250.com
Short company description:
Revival 250 is America’s 250th Anniversary Revival. On May 3, 2026, 12,000 people will gather together in VyStar Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. We will then be live-streaming through the Pray.com app with 26 million downloads, to homes, churches, colleges, and military bases. We will also be streaming globally. Revival 250 will bring together the best preachers, worship leaders, singers, and testimonies from across our nation to challenge Christians to turn their hearts fully back to God. Headline speakers include Jonathan Cahn, Dr. Tony Evans, Dr. Alveda King, President Emeritus of Promise Keepers Raleigh Washington and John Rich. We are partnered with Pray.com, the National Religious Broadcasters Association, Resi, the US Christian Chamber of Commerce, Pushpay, Salem Media, and more. Revival 250 is a 100% nonprofit event with all proceeds being distributed to Christian ministries.
What is a tip for success that you would provide someone in your same industry?
Follow God’s lead.
How do you encourage your team to make a difference?
Serve others.
Transcript:
Brian:
When?
Welcome back to Faith works TV. Brian Sexton, thrilled to be joined by a friend who is here in town promoting and building revival. 250 Chris Widener.
Chris:
Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian:
No, it’s great to have you.
Give us a Strat. You’re coming with revival 250 May 3rd at Vystar arena. Revival two 50.com.
Give us the story of of what revival 250 is but more importantly, why Jacksonville?
Chris:
Yeah. So it’s interesting. Revival 250 is a concept that a bunch of our friends came up with, and we started praying about it and we thought, okay, we’re coming up on the 240th anniversary of America. There’s going to be military parades and business parades and tech parades, and every little town is going to have their little parades and their celebrations.
And we thought, you know, America was a country built on faith, Christian faith. And, and so we said, well, why don’t we honor the God that, you know, that made this all possible? Make sure we have at least one thing like that.
So we went out, we found partners. We’re partnered with Parade.com. They have 26 million downloads that will stream through that, partnered with the National Day of Prayer. They have 19,000 volunteers who are going to host home watch parties.
And then, we started praying about where to do it. And, and, you know, at this stage, your life. I’m 60 years old. I’ll be 60 next month.
Brian:
Well, you don’t look it.
Chris:
Thank you. I don’t look at a day over 58.
But no, you start, you start thinking, okay, where are we going to do this? And, and so we started praying about it and we just kept all of us were like, Jacksonville.
And I’d been to Jacksonville two times my entire life to give a speech. Once at Sawgrass, once at the convention center. And you fly in, you fly out, you don’t hang around. So I knew virtually nothing.
But I’m at this stage in my life where I’m tired of just going, hey, God, I’m going to go do this. Bless it. Instead, I want to say, and this is based on an old book called Experiencing God by Henry Blackburn, where he says, you don’t say, God, I’m going to go do this. We bless him. You say, God, what are you doing? And how can I be involved?
So I said to God, I’ll go anywhere you want in Omaha. We’ll do it in Omaha. You want it in Philadelphia.
And we just all kept coming back in a very weird, supernatural way.
Then when I got down here and I heard the stories and, I mean, I’ve met people who said, one gal told me I’ve been in a group of seven women who have prayed for revival every Friday for ten years.
Brian:
So you open your heart and you follow him.
Chris:
Yeah.
Brian:
He leads you right where he wants you.
Chris:
100%.
And it made sense once I got here because I’m like, I don’t know anybody down there.
I still have been coming down here for 11 months, a week, a month. I still don’t know when I’m heading west or north or, you know, whatever, because I basically just follow GPS.
I should turn the GPS off in order to learn the land.
But, once I got down here and the story of the French Huguenots and the history of Christianity being based in our country right outside of Jacksonville, it all made perfect sense at that point.
Brian:
And so what is the overall mission of Revival 250, if you’re looking at that day in the five hours that you’re in, based on, what do you want people to think coming in and what do you want them to believe going out?
Chris:
So it’s interesting, if I said to somebody, hey, I went to a revival the other day, what do you think it looked and felt like? They’d say, oh, people jumping up and down and pumping their face and they’re all excited.
And that’s really where I think there’s some understanding that needs to happen.
So I think most people think that revival, the way to get to revival is, sing louder, clap faster, and jump higher.
But I had an old Pentecostal preacher friend of mine who said, it’s not how high you jump, it’s how straight you walk when you come back down.
So our theme verse for the event is Second Chronicles 7:14.
And this is what God said to Solomon right after he built the temple. He said, when things go bad, here’s the remedy.
And he says, if my people who are called by my name, that’s the first one, that’s the target audience, my people.
So Jews, Christians, my people, that’s what he’s talking to.
If my people who are called by my name will, and then he gives him four things: humble yourself, pray, seek my face and turn from your wicked ways, then that’s the result.
I’ll hear from heaven. Forgive your sins, heal your land.
So when we’re as a church in America, going culture has gotten so horrible and the church has become anemic and we have no voice in the culture.
I mean, the church used to have the biggest voice in culture. Now it has virtually no voice.
Like when was the last time culture said, you know, we should ask the church what they think.
They just never go.
We have no influence in the culture around us.
And so if we want to see an enlivening of the church, we have to use the recipe for it.
Or the subtitle of my book, The Coming American Revival, is The Biblical Blueprint to Ignite a Nation Soul, and the Biblical Blueprint is us.
You know, John Rich shot a video for the event, and he said, you know, we always point outside the church to say those people would get their act together.
If those people would do this, if they’d stop doing that.
He says, that’s not who God is talking to. He’s talking to us.
And then pray, humble yourself. Seek my face. Turn from your race.
Those don’t preach really great in a megachurch, do they like it’s normally seven steps to a happy you. God wants you happy.
How are we happy? God’s way. It’s not this Sunday morning sermon that is turn from your wicked ways, right?
It’s like, I think we’re going with breakfast today. Is it?
Brian:
I heard a guy say, Chris, and it sounds like what you’re talking about is every person who goes to church would just bring a fallen away Christian back.
Numerically speaking, Christianity would have a loud voice in the culture because if people would turn away from their wicked ways and turn back towards him, then all of a sudden there would be such a tidal wave in this country that we would see what you’re speaking: revival.
Chris:
But here’s why it doesn’t happen. Number one, the people who are Christians aren’t particularly interested in talking to anybody because they don’t have a love relationship with the Lord or the person they’re trying to get to come to.
Church goes, yeah, when you figure it out for your life and you stop doing all the things you’re doing, then, then all come.
So they’re looking at the end. It all pivots on the Christian.
In fact, I always say that revival is the answer for evangelism because people have asked us is Revival 250 an evangelistic crusade?
It isn’t.
You want to bring a non-Christian, bring a non-Christian.
But this is a message to the church.
So think about this.
Every Sunday across America, pastors stand up.
They say, you got to invite your friends. You got to tell your friends about Jesus. You tell your family members, bring them, bring em, bring them.
Well, if you’re a dead Christian sitting there and you don’t have this vibrant relationship with the Lord, you’re like, I don’t know anybody.
I’m you know I’m not.
But if you become a revived Christian now, your pastor doesn’t even have to tell you because you’re now going to go to those people say, man, life has got so great.
I’m so close to the Lord right now.
They’re going to see the difference God has made in your life.
And now evangelism happens without your pastor having to beat you with the Bible.
Brian
Well, to some extent, if you’ve got that evangelistic spirit within you, you don’t have to say anything.
People are drawn naturally to God through you.
Chris:
It was it Mother Teresa said, in all things witness of Christ and if necessary, use words.
Francis is also credited with saying that.
Brian:
How did you mean, listen, you’ve written 26 books. You’ve been on stages speaking around the country to so many big, diverse audiences.
How did you get turned towards faith as your key message?
Chris:
Well, I started out as a pastor. I was a pastor for 14 years, and then I went into speaking and writing full time in 2002.
And so for the last 20 something years, I’ve traveled all over the world, 2500 speeches, two books, 14 languages they’ve been translated.
And I hit basically every single thing.
So in some ways, I think God used to be there, doing that kind of thing.
But the other thing was I had my own personal, you know, ups and downs, and you hit rock bottom when you’re walking closer to the Lord, it doesn’t necessarily mean everything goes well.
Right.
And so you hit this thing.
And I think probably the thing that drove me most was my Aunt Norma.
So my mom had sisters and brothers, and my Aunt Norma made the best potato salad in the world.
And all of her sisters would say, I need the recipe.
She gave them the recipe.
My mom would come home to Rochelle, you know, aunts and uncles, my uncle’s wives, all of them.
And they would get on the phone.
They go, I just made that potato salad. That is not the recipe.
And they’re like, I know, right? It does not taste like.
And so this would be.
Well, when my Aunt Norma finally died, I think she was the first of all the sisters to die.
My cousins.
Oh.
The girls copied the real recipe and sent it to all their aunts and said mom was holding out on.
And so as a public speaker, even though everybody knew that I was a Christian, they knew my background.
And I certainly spoke from a world of your faith.
I didn’t, you know, I didn’t go to Microsoft and say, John 3:16 says this, but most people knew.
But I always felt like I was leaving out the key ingredient of the recipe.
Here’s how to have a successful marriage.
You know, love and serve and not or not.
But the real answer is Jesus.
You know, my wife and I, we get up every morning, and the alarm goes off at six.
We immediately go out, I go out, I make her a cup of coffee.
We meet on the couch.
She reads a chapter from the Bible.
I read this daily prayer for for.
It’s like a page, prayer for couples.
And then, we usually read a section out of a book.
We’re doing a David Jeremiah devotional.
Now, then we pray together, and then we listen to this little five minute devotional.
So the first 35 minutes of our day is together centered around faith.
And they’ve done research and found that the more you pray together, the less likely you are to get divorced.
Jesus created men and women.
He created the institution of marriage.
And so when you center on that, that becomes the bedrock.
Now, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do all the things that secular, you know, counselors would tell you to do.
But I think that that’s really the key is when faith gets brought into your business, you’re like, well, I can’t bring faith into my business.
Why?
Your employees will like you more.
They’ll stay longer, which is less turnover, less training money you’re going to spend.
Your customers are going to like the atmosphere more.
You’re going to be blessed by the Lord as you bless the Lord with how he grows your business.
So when you bring God into any particular area of our nation, it makes it better.
Like politics.
If the Bible says do not lie, it’s one of the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
If all of our politicians became Christians and decided I’m going to follow the Bible, I will not lie anymore.
How would that transform?
Brian:
It’s a totally different conversation.
I’m not sure we have enough time.
Chris:
It’s quite simple.
Like if all of a sudden people just wouldn’t lie to us anymore.
Right.
Brian:
It boggles the mind to think about what’s possible.
And so Revival 250 is about showing people what’s possible.
Chris:
It’s to create an atmosphere in that room with our speakers and the worship time, the prayer time, all those kinds of things.
It’s to give an atmosphere where all of the speakers are directing our hearts towards God and challenging people to turn their hearts back towards God.
So there’s two overarching principles of the revival that we always say.
Number one, we want it to look like heaven.
This is not an old white guys conference.
Even though I’m an old white guy.
We have everything that we have.
We have black preachers and Latino preachers and Asian preachers.
And we have a Native American preacher who used to preach at Promise Keepers all the time.
And men and women and young and old, because we want it to look like heaven, because heaven is going to be filled with a whole lot of different kinds of people.
And the second one is we say we want it to be for everybody, from the Presbyterians to the Pentecostals.
Okay.
We can, we don’t have to argue about speaking in tongues or healing.
We don’t have to argue about, you know, how old you should be when you get baptized.
Infant or adult?
Adult or 12 years old, you know, whatever.
We want to focus on Jesus that day, and you can do your tradition.
You can do your tradition.
But today we do the one thing we all need to agree on.
Brian:
Focus on the things that bind us..
And then if this is successful, I say yes.
I mean, it’s been ordained to be successful.
What does the next step look like towards where America and faith go?
If revival is the start, where do you go from there?
Chris:
Well, I think it’ll be up to the people who experience that day.
And it’s one of the things I love about the way we’ve done this.
I’ve been coming down here for a year, week, a month, and we’ve put together coalitions of pastors, ministry leaders and business people.
Now, when these people have all experienced the same things and when they’re all experiencing similar things in their relationship to the Lord.
So there’s a vertical and there’s the horizontal.
Now they begin to do things.
You are one of the best things I ever did, I was a youth minister in northern New Jersey.
I was in a very wealthy town, Whitney Houston lived in our town, and she would walk down the street.
Nobody bothered her because, you know, you’re sitting there, some guy who lives there, sitting there, and he goes, oh, there’s Whitney Houston, that big superstar.
Well, I’m the CEO of Exxon.
So anyway, like, they just were, they just weren’t impressed.
Right.
And so that’s the community.
I have kids in my youth group that made more money than me.
And I went to a Billy Graham school of evangelism, I think in Buffalo.
And I sat down next to this really good looking, probably 40 year old black guy wearing a suit like nobody ever wears a suit.
Like my friend Tyrone.
We became fast friends.
He was from an inner city church in Irvington, New Jersey, which is the bad part of Newark.
And he had 200 people in his church, one white person.
We had 200 people in our church, one black person.
And he and I started going to lunch together once a month, and we said, let’s get our churches together.
Now, very wealthy, white, very poor, black.
You would think, how could they ever get these two churches together?
Jesus got us together.
So they came out to our church.
They brought their choir, we provided the food, they sang.
Then we went into their church, you know, a couple of months later and we did, you know, we brought our choir, they provided the food.
And after I left that ministry position, I moved back to Seattle to start churches.
I got a phone call about three years later from a guy in our church.
He said, you know, the worst thing about you leaving was.
I said, what’s that?
And he goes, we totally dropped the ball on that relationship with the church and in the city.
The church that had it all was getting so much out of becoming friends with people who were nothing like them.
You know, in a material sense. But the common bond was their faith in Christ.
Brian:
Some of the happiest people I know are religious people who own nothing. Whose trusts and surrenders to him on a daily basis because it is a daily endeavor. Which is why it’s so interesting to me where revival goes.
Chris:
I’ll tell you this, you’re making a very interesting point. And you guys can cut this out if you want to, but it plays right into it. And that is, do you know the the demographic that has the highest suicide rate? White affluent males. Do you know what demographic has the least suicide rate? Poor black and Latino women.
Now you go. Why would that be? You would say, well, they’re poor and they’re never going to have a big job.They don’t have a house in the suburbs. They must be despondent. No, it’s the affluent white guys.
Because here’s what we’ve been told our entire life: go to college, get a good job, get a, you know, make a lot of money, get a beautiful wife, have beautiful kids, get a beautiful house, get a white picket fence.
Oh, you got all that? Now get a vacation home, get a boat, get a car. And then they do it all Solomon again.
They do it all. They go, they go. I’m not fulfilled.
Brian:
The restless hearts.
Chris:
Yes.Restless hearts.
Then you have the poor black and Latino women who they don’t ever think to themselves, I’m going to be the CEO of, you know, AT&T or I’m going to go become a defense attorney or whatever.
I mean, they do, some do, but the culture doesn’t drive them up like maybe up. A suburban culture says, go get a college education. And so what they place their hope in is God and their friends. Now they have this network.
And all you have to do is drive down the street with a, you know, million dollar house, pull up, knock on the door, ask the guy, how many close friends do you have randomly who could pick somebody? And he’d go, I don’t know, I’d watch football with this guy.
Brian:
Well, see, I was just in Costa Rica on a mission trip with 6:8 Ministries and learned to walk in some of the poorest neighborhoods, clearly the poorest neighborhoods I had ever seen.
How happy people were to be with their family. It was just such a blow between the eyes. Because in this country we spend so much time trying to get ahead, you know, trying to create life instead of living life.
Chris:
And that’s why you are actually multicultural. I mean, part of it is poverty, but part of it is multicultural, multi-generational families all living under the same roof. Grandma, mom, kids all under the same roof.
And here it’s like, I can’t wait till I’m 18 and I’m out of here. And then your dad or mom gets sick and it’s like, we found a really great nursing home.
Brian:
Chris. America.I’m sorry. Revival250.com. May 3rd, VyStar Arena.
And the opportunity is distinct in this country right now.
Chris:
I really think that it is. I know there’s other groups that are putting on revivals, but I don’t think anybody has had the vision of what we’re doing. You know, we’re live streaming through the Parade.com app. 26 million people partner, the National Day of Prayer, 19,000 home watch parties.
We really want this to be based in Jacksonville and make an impact, but we also want to make an impact around the globe.
Brian:
I hope you’ll come back afterwards, and I will share the story and talk about next steps for people.
Chris:
I always tell our steering committee my goal is May 4th for us to look at each other and go, wow, look what God did.
Brian
It’s fantastic. Chris Widener, appreciate your joining us here on FaithWorks. And we’ll be back with more.
