[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], May 2021]
At the beginning of Lockdown there was huge excitement about viewing figures and online engagement with church, and very quickly the word ‘revival’ was being used. A year later it hasn’t happened, but what do we actually mean by ‘revival’ and what is our part to play in it?
If we go back a year ago, to the beginning of the pandemic, there was some excitement in church circles because we discovered on-line church and our viewing figures were just going through the roof. We were getting so many more people accessing our online services than we would ever do in physical church.
There was talk in many Christian circles about ‘revival’; this Holy Grail, I guess, of Christian mission, that a society that is largely un-religious and secular would turn back to church and turn back to Christ.
But there’s danger in this understanding of revival because it panders to the idea that if, as Christians, we pray hard enough and we wait, then people will come flooding back to church. In fact, they won’t be coming back to church because they were never at church in the first place.
Actually, a year later, a year on in the pandemic, revival hasn’t happened, people haven’t come flooding back to church, and we’re not even sure what we’re going to have when we return to a physical Sunday service. Revival hasn’t happened and it won’t happen in the way that we hope it will.
If we look at the definition of the word revive it means to bring back to life or bring back to consciousness, to take something that was dead and give it life, to take someone who’s asleep and to wake them up. I think that applies far more to the UK church, to followers of Jesus, than it does to society around us. We need to wake up to the task that lies before us, the task that God has given us. We need to be revived!
It reminds me of the prophet Ezekiel from the Old Testament; one of God’s voices to the nation of Israel. In the vision, Ezekiel is shown by God a valley, a valley filled with dry bones, human remains with no life in them at all. Ezekiel is told to pray over these bones, to prophecy over them that they will have life. As Ezekiel does this, he sees these bones join back together; they have flesh and tendons and skin. Then God tells Ezekiel to prophecy breath into them. God breathes life into these dead bodies and they become a living might army. Now, that is revival. God was saying that this valley, this army of dry bones was the nation of Israel.
I believe that God wants to do what he did to those dry bones to us as his people, the body of Christ, followers of Jesus. We need to be revived, we need to regain consciousness, we need to wake up. Paul, one of the most prolific writers in the New Testament and arguably the most important leader of his time, wrote these words to the Christians in the church at Ephesus. He said, “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you”.
We need to wake up, we need to realise that we need to work really, really hard to turn things around. Yes, prayer is important but prayer if not accompanied by work, if unaccompanied being willing to step out of our comfort zones – well, it’s not going to do anything. God is not going to bring people flooding to the church if we’re not willing to step out of it.
The past year, as a nation, we have woken up to racial injustice, we have woken up to environmental issues but my concern is, that in the past year the Christian church is more asleep than ever.
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[1] YouTube link: Is Revival Coming?
Bible references: Ezekiel 37 v1-14, Ephesians 5 v14
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
