What True Revival Must Look Like to be True Revival

There is much concern in the Church today regarding the need for true revival. There are books, conferences and sermons spoken on the topic. Time for some straight talk.

I have distilled these pronouncements, this is precisely what true revival must look like to be genuine:

• People return to church who used to but don’t any more
• We must sing at least 2 old hymns every Sunday to be spiritual
• The people must listen in rapt attention as the pastor reads his sermon to them (It should contain a joke or two)
• People must give 10% of their net income after taxes to be members
• It must look and feel like it did 50 years ago when I was a kid growing up. That was revival.

If you know much about me you know I am kidding.

Here’s the problem with people trying to tell God how to bring the next revival they will accept:

1. God Laughs
2. They (Church Leadership) get frustrated

It is the epitome of arrogance to try to define what revival might look like in the next wave. Oh, I believe Revival is come, has come and will come. I just don’t think it will look anything like what the church at large thinks it will. For that reason when the visitation of God comes they will miss it complexly, try to explain it away, wait too long, and lose their congregation to Churches that embrace revival as it flows thru and close to become a disco when the new buyers buy that old building.

I have been reading with some interest and amusement this blog linked above on the topic of revival. I don’t mean to pick on this nice man but his take on what revival might or should look like is a human framed reference point God is far from.

We have had revival break out in various places around the world and even in America. I have seen and experienced them. They were never conventional. They changed me. Some died after several years. That’s what happens in revivals, they take us from Glory to Glory according to the scriptures and we begin to see Jesus. They never stay the same. You can’t put God in a box and tell him to stay there.

When we have had these true revivals in the past many people in evangelical traditional religion have rejected, questioned, poo pooed, visited and pronounced judgment, or ignored them and hoped these revivals would go away. When they did these critics remained in their deadness and said, "see, that didn't last". Never mind that it changed in a small way the face of Christianity that 100 years of tradition never could have.

The net result is Jesus showed up and they didn’t see him. Exactly as happend to the Jews in the first century. Eventually what God was doing changed and he began a new thing. These evangelical traditionalists continue to try reviving revival in the mode of what happened 150 years ago in Wales.
When God says, "Behold I do a new thing, if it's new to God it's new to you".

What about what happened in the 80’s with the laughter outbreak (discounted as ungodly), Pensacola (lots of repentance but too emotional), Toronto (too much weirdness) or with the prayer movement (too inward) has always been critisized. Every revival has its persecutors and critics. Luther did. The early reformists were burned at the stake. Every move of God has been missed by the established church, critisized by church leaders, and not recognized until well after it had run it's course. Look at Azusa Street. Only in the last 20 years is it become accepted. They just missed Jesus showing up.

It still goes on today because it doesn’t fit the man crafted idea of revival. What in the world makes us think we can tell God how to do anything?

Until man repents of keeping God in a box, revival can’t come. We as Christians must be prepared to say, “God, whatever you want to do or change in this Church you called me to, I’m ready to go”. Further we must be willing to say, “I will not touch or criticize your anointed. If you are doing a new thing, I will reach for you in it and see if I can find you there”.

This means nearly every sacred cow in the church must be subject to becoming hamburger. It’s big talk to say that, it's another thing to do it. God can only move as he wants to if we are prepared to kill off the revered bovines wandering around in our theologies.

Every single thing sacred in every Church Service must be subject to change. It’s all man-made anyway. Only that which is activated by the Spirit of God is real. The rest is all temporal. Worse, the idea that PEOPLE might object if we did or didn’t do this or that is so bogus spiritually that it needs to be called what it is, BAD RELIGION.

Arrogance is telling God what to do and being offended if he doesn’t do it your way. I have lived most of my life as a born again spirit filled Christian. I have instructed God several times on how to do thus and so in my life. He has always been quite amused. He never does it the way I tell Him to. He always does it right however. In fact, in the areas I defined how He was supposed to do it, if He had been foolish enough to do it my way it would have been a disaster. I have learned not to tell Him how to do things. I have learned to trust Him.

Why do we think it’s any different in our Churches? We somehow don’t think it arrogance to tell God how we believe Church should look to be "real" Church or to tell him how revival should look to be "real" revival. God is still amused. We frame our reference paridigm by being traditional, according to our denomination, Biblical, or classical. The problem is, all of these are interpretations and manmade. I know of Churches in Tennessee where to them being Biblical is not having any musical instruments in the Church. They have Bible verses to prove this. Or a church I’m very familiar with where the women NEVER cut their hair. They point to 1 Corinth 11.

Biblical?

Dumb!

Man Made!!

What if the next revival to break out was Rap Music? All the service, sermon, and sacrament was to the beat of a rap given by a guy dressed in black and an earring? What if Eminem and Fifty Cent got saved and became the next mass evangelists. What if thousands of rap fans came to Jesus at rap concerts and expect to be rapped to about Jesus in our Churches because that’s how they came to Jesus. What will the Church do with them? Start a Saturday evening service for rappers because the dying generation of old people can’t accept the rap revival in regular services? We would lose these people because they were marginalized. People who are new believers passionate for God, turned on, fired up, ready to act, full of energy, and then marginalized. Oh, God would find them a place, then as conventional Churches died they would try to have a Rap Service for those who wanted it. It would be watered down, anemic and empty. The fire went out on the altar.

So, the true new revival generated believers are abandoned because of tradition. God is not mocked. He will judge a Church that doesn't tend his sheep. Even if they love rap music.

Right now, according to John Armstrong, 8000 people per day are deciding to quit going to Church. That’s 56,000 per week. That’s nearly 10% of the population of the USA who no longer go to Church. I don’t know of the veracity of this statistic but I do know that the number is high. Why? Something no longer connects.

What ameliorates this somewhat is some people actually get saved and begin going to Church.

I narrowed this down into bite sized pieces. In the geography of the Fox Valley where I have received the Vision of what God wants to do, there are about 180,000 current residents. That means that 50 people within 15 miles of where I live decided to stop going to Church Today. This last week 400 stopped going to Church in the Fox Valley areas I live in. I’m confident that with all the churches together, we didn’t add 400 people. They just quit. The church in the Fox Valley I attend has about 500 attendees. That means that one person this last week in our Church decided not to come back to church this again and stay home permanently on Sunday. That means we lose about 4 people per month. That means that to keep just even we must add 4. This explains a great deal. By the way, that's about the statistics. Treading water.

Something is wrong and must be fixed. The fix isn’t in the hands of man, The fix is in the hand of God. But we must be ready and willing to go with him where he goes. You lead I’ll follow we sing, but we may be holding our fingers crossed behind our backs.

What we really mean is, Lord, you lead and if it doesn’t violate our image or traditions too much and if our people accept it I’ll follow. God smiles a wry smile and says, "If I have to let you all die and come to heaven to destroy what you have worked for so I can rebuild it as I wanted to, I will do it". God is not mocked.

I submit it would be better if we let him lead and we follow.

Oh, and I am not predicting a rap revival. It's just a way of testing your ability to think a little outside the box you placed God in. I have heard real rap music worship and thought it was OK. If that’s where he wanted us to go, I’m ok with it.

Let's let God arise and his Enemies be Scattered.