In a recent article, I picked up on the disappointment expressed by a number of people that they had longed and hoped for a revival to happen as a result of the COVID pandemic. The hoped that the existential threat of plague would move people to trust in God leading to spiritual growth among believers, passionate evangelism and lots of people becoming Christians and joining our churches physically. They expressed disappointment that they didn’t see this and instead saw division in the churches and a situation now where church attendance is still a long way below the 2020 level.
In my article, I suggested that this might be an over gloomy assessment of things. I wanted to press into that a little further here. You see, revival is one of those risky things. It’s a historical phenomena rather than a specifically Biblical term but it is something that has often been the dream and desire among Evangelicals. However, because it is descriptive of moments in history, what we see is that these special times or special moves of God haven’t tended to be uniform and I think the result can be that we readily claim as revival those things that fit our expectations whilst disowning and disregarding those that do not.
What I do think seems to be consistent is that where there is consensus about revival that the following markers were present.
- There was increased spiritual hunger amongst believers and this is primarily what revival tends to be about. This was marked by an increased desire to pray and worship together.
- There was an overflow into the wider community with the church and the Gospel having an impact. This would centre on special grace with conversions but also include a wider influence of common grace.
Now it is worth noting that in that respect, a revival could be extremely localised or affect a wider region. The Great Awakening in the 1800s affects Britian and North America whilst recent events in Asbury were limited to one college campus. A revival can also happen over a long period of time or be compressed into a few weeks, again those two examples offer a contrast. A revival may also be seen to have a long term effect with lasting evidence of conversions and church growth but also, as I think seen in the last Welsh Revival, it is possible for the effects to quickly disappear. It is also worth noting that because of the overflow, there may be a wider group of people who fall under its influence for a time whilst a smaller core evidence longer term fruit.
With that in mind, I want to raise the question, did we miss out on revival that didn’t happen or did we miss the revival that did happen? I wonder if because things happened away from church buildings, just as in the Great Awakening that we might be too quick to dismiss what happened.
As I mentioned previously, during the pandemic, we saw an intensification of spiritual engagement by many believers. This included a desire to find ways to pray, worship and hear God’s Word together but I think was also worked out as believers found ways to show love and care for each other. There was an overflow to this as a lot of people began to engage with Christianity, the church and the Gospel, even attending online services. There are plenty of reports of conversions too.
It’s hard to assess the long term impact as we are still in the aftermath. I and others warned that it would take time for those who had engaged online to engage in person but we have seen some that have already made the transition. There is talk about church attendance being down but I think there was also a lot of pruning of adherents. At the same time, when I ask the question, I increasingly seem to be getting feedback that more and more churches have experienced post COVID growth. Furthermore, I’ve started asking people about personal spiritual growth and am also getting positive feedback.
So, I’m just throwing it out there, Maybe we did see a revival?
Faithroots 