Revival or Awakening?

If you hang around established churches long enough, particularly in the Midwest and the South, you'll eventually hear the word "revival." Revival has a long and revered history among the Protestant expressions of the Christian movement in North America. Normally, when a church has a "revival," it means that the congregation hosts a series of evening services with a guest speaker, typically known as an "evangelist." Through revival meetings, most congregations seek to stir up renewed faith and enthusiasm in those who are a part of the church fellowship, to rekindle faith in those who have drifted away, and to elicit new commitments to faith in Jesus. Frequently people in churches will say, "Let's have a revival," in order to continue momentum in a church that's growing, or to jump-start a church that's declining.

I have both hosted and led revival meetings off and on for thirty years. Many have been good, Jesus-centered events. In most cases they have served as a renewal of faith for people already associated with existing congregations. In the last three decades I have found that when many church fellowships say, "We want a revival," what they really mean is, "We want it to be the way it used to be at this church." They have a memory of glory days gone by in the church's history, and they long to return to that era. So, "revival" entails reviving something from the past.

Such longing for the road already travelled has a place in the faith journey, I suppose. Both the testimony of the Christian Bible and my own experience of a journey with Jesus, though, point more to a God who makes all things new. The cross and the resurrection of Jesus are not about restoring a past glory; they are about building on what God has done in order to spring forward in faith into what God is doing and is yet to do. If, as the Jesus movement faces a new century, "revival" means recapturing past glory, then what the movement really needs is awakening to a bright new day in which to offer Christ.

It's like the difference between trying to paddle upstream to re-experience a place along the river we've already encountered, and paddling downstream to experiences and places that are yet to be. Those are my random thoughts this weekend. What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.