Revival

Our devotions speaker spoke on revival this morning–a subject dear to my heart. One of the things he did was to read some articles on the Welsh revival (1904-05) and a similar one I had never heard of in Korea (around 1907).

The Welsh revival is one of my favorite stories, just because of the dramatic change that occurred there in such a short time. In 2 months, over 70,000 people were converted. Factories shut down and major sports events were cancelled so people could attend church services until 2:00 in the morning. The horses in the coal mines had to be retrained because they didn’t understand commands sans cursing.

One of my (many) dreams is to write historical novels that tackle these kinds of revivals. I’d like to write an epic centering around John Alexander Dowie. For the Welsh revival, a teen romance might be a more gripping story, since 90% of the leaders of the revival were under the age of 22. Probably some kind of long-term saga would be best to cover the Pentecostal movements that swept through the United States around that same time.

The thing that always frustrates me about these things, though, is how little time they last. I mean, we’re not talking about a few services where you stay late and come home feeling good. We’re talking about events where whole nations shut down in tears over their sin and literally *everybody* gets saved. This isn’t a candle, or a bonfire, this is a whole forest fire. But a forest fire lasts for a long time, and takes a lot of time to put out. So many of the great revivals didn’t fade out or burn out–they snuffed out.

John Alexander Dowie had a stroke and sort of lost his mind, and spent all his money trying to create little utopias all over the country. Evan Roberts, who sort of spearheaded the Welsh revival was very sensitive about being thought of as the one who was “doing it,” and went to great lengths to keep himself out of the picture. Somebody told him that he was being a distraction, so he cancelled all the meetings. No more revival.

Speaking from my own experience, it’s been pretty much the same. We have a little revival time, and then, after a point, it gets shut down. Everybody goes back to normal, where “normal” is the same life as before the revival. Or worse, we keep on having the estatic services, but that’s all they really are: estatic services–religious freneticism.

In the late 90’s there were two major spiritual movements on the U.S. Eastern seaboard. One in Toronto and one in Florida. Good stuff, but ultimately unsustainable as a way of life. yet they keep on going. I think the church in Toronto has had services every day since some time in 1995. I say “unsustainable,” but obviously, they’ve been sustaining it. In this case, it seems like “normal” means constant services that are going to *revolutionize your life*. I’ve been to the constant services. I was in a ministry school that had meetings every single day of the week, but one. After a year or two, *I* was ready to snuff it out.

I guess what I’m saying is that revival is *good*, but it isn’t *it*. David Ruis has a song that I love called “There Must Be More.” I love the song, but after not getting enough revival, and then getting too much, I’ve decided that it’s not just something more that I need, it’s something *else*. Not else than God, but else than our events. Absolutely I want God to rush in and manifest himself on people’s hearts. Absolutely I want it to go on and on and on. But I can’t administrate revival. I don’t know that I can even administrate really good services that make room for Him to come. There’s nothing that I can do that has to do with true revival. I’m starting to think that “praying for revival” isn’t even a good idea, because I want to be focused on what happens after the viving time.

The *else* that I’m looking for, I think, is a true Christian lifestyle. I think that lifestyle would be a bit more complex than a bunch of really excited Christians. I think it would have a place for solid-purposed *work* and engagement with the secular world. Consider this: The Welsh revival burned out in around a year. John Calvin wrote some books on Christian life and ministry that, like them or love them, affected huge parts of society to the core for a matter of 2-300 years.

I’m all about revival. But what I really want is something a little more thorough.