Logo

 

Banner Image:   Baptist-Times-banner-2000x370-
Template Mode:   Baptist Times
Icon
    Post     Tweet


A revival I can pray for!


With churches experiencing increases in online attendances during the pandemic, there has been talk of a new move of the Spirit. I'm not convinced, writes Michael Shaw - but here's the revival I'd like to see


Awakening

Like many others who are more Anabaptist in their theology, I will not mourn Christendom. Nor do I hark back to a "Golden Age", which I am not sure ever actually existed. I have struggled to pray for revival, a return to something that may never have been there in the first place. 

When I was in my 20s I was part of a church involved in the Toronto blessing movement. It was a time when all our church leaders fasted for revival, and I was no different: I was working in a temp job at the time (post-University) and I would use my lunch hour to go to a park bench and plead for revival. Yet for all the movements of the Spirit that went through many Charismatic churches, the church has not grown, and revival has not come.

Many people have seen their church (online) attendance boosted during the Covid-19 pandemic and started to feel that a new move of the Spirit is possible. The word revival is on many lips again. But this often happens during a public health crisis, and when normal returns those figures drop off just as quickly.


“How many of the same sort of confessions, too, have we seen in times of cholera, and fever, and pestilence! Then our churches have been crammed with hearers, who, because so many funerals have passed their doors, or so many have died in the street, could not refrain from going up to God’s house to confess their sins. And under that visitation, when one, two, and three have been lying dead in the house, or next door, how many have thought they would really turn to God!

"But, alas! when the pestilence had done its work, conviction ceased; and when the bell had tolled the last time for a death caused by cholera, then their hearts ceased to beat with penitence, and their tears did flow no more.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 18th Jan 1857


The problem I have often asked is, what do we want to revive? This is even more pertinent during discussions around Black Lives Matter, because of the church-sanctioned slavery, segregation in America, Apartheid in South Africa, and the murder of native people in various missions context from South America to Australia. Do we want to revive that church? And yes, at the same time I accept that the role of the church in abolitionary movements, from Wilberforce to Stop the Traffik, has been a force for good, but we cannot escape the fact the church has often straddled this debate.

In the same vein do we want a return to a Christendom ideal that included the Crusades and the inquisition, the burning of heretics whether Catholic, Protestant or Anabaptist? Of course not! 

A few days ago Catholic acquaintance of mine, who, like me, is involved with Christian Climate Action, was asked is climate action “a new movement of the holy spirit in the church, along the lines of the monastic movements etc. Is it a new charism?”

My response was yes, but any new movement would include a combination of environmental care, social justice and a movement of the church from the centre into the margins. The church in the inner city, among the poorest, the marginalised and the ignored is dying. A new movement of the Spirit (charism) will move us into these places. It will mean living intentionally and incarnationally among the poor (including in the UK), in the community but in sustainable communities who resist the consumption-based society will live in. No longer driving past churches but walking to local churches, using local shops rather than supermarkets, creating green spaces in concrete jungles and providing free, healthy food in community allotments and orchards.

This is a revival I can pray for! 

Image | Jon Kenney | Creationswap

 

Michael Shaw is minister of Devonport Community Baptist Church in Plymouth

 
 



Do you have a view? Share your thoughts via our letters' page

 



 
Baptist Times, 02/07/2020
    Post     Tweet
Hark! How all the welkin rings
A reflection on our rich, muddled history of carol singing, by Andrew Gant
Advent peace
A reflection on the peace offered by Christ - and how we may cultivate it in our hearts amid the busyness of the season. By Simon Mattholie
'More than confessions... useful lessons'
Jon Magee has been a Baptist minister for 41 years. His new book Confessions of a Baptist minister reflects lessons learned in those years - and the call of God that underpins them
'A plan made from all the pent-up views of everyone I talk to'
Baptist church member David Nelson had hoped to travel to Israel, but with few flights available, he embarked on an alternative - cycling from Yorkshire to Downing Street to deliver a message to the Prime Minister about Israel/Palestine
Should we have new blasphemy laws?
The suggestion was recently raised in Parliament. Adrian Gray explains why Baptists should express their clear opposition to any proposal to re-introduce blasphemy onto the statute book
The Future of Arms: blockbuster films or the new reality of war?
New technologies are changing the way war is fought. A new project from the Joint Public Issues Team aims to equip our churches to engage in discussion and advocacy about the ethics they raise as we seek to fulfill the Christian vocation to be peacemakers
     The Baptist Times 
    Posted: 18/12/2024
    Posted: 11/12/2024
    Posted: 28/11/2024
    Posted: 18/11/2024
    Posted: 14/10/2024
    Posted: 02/10/2024
    Posted: 22/07/2024
    Posted: 07/05/2024
    Posted: 12/02/2024
    Posted: 22/12/2023
    Posted: 16/12/2023
     
    Text Size:  
    Small (Default)
    Medium
    Large
    Contrast:  
    Normal
    High Contrast