Revival is a universal repetitive need for mankind. It applies to just about everything that touches us. Time and talent must be devoted to renewing this or that factor, usually several factors at the same time, related to human life. Something will inevitably happen that corrodes, diminishes, fails, declines, rots – to destroy good things in the contexts of our lives. Even scholars must renew themselves with fresh learning to amend self and outgrown concepts. Nations and commerce need renewal. The matter is especially obvious when the founder of a business retires. He is often called back to restore a fading mission. Autos need to be renewed or they rust and function poorly. Houses and other buildings need renovation. Marriages and families need revival of work relationships, ideals and corporate life. There are many words for renewal, words reflecting one refinement or the other, words commonly used as synonyms. Progress rests in renewal.
Nations need recovery. History is strewn with the stories of nations that did not renew themselves. Samuel called Israel to renewal at Gilgal. The stories alternated for Judah, from theistic democracy to secularism, to social depravity until all was lost in decline to captivity. Ten tribes pulled away after Solomon’s reign and never emerged from decline that ended in captivity preceding that of Judah. In the dynamics of the return to renewal decades after defeat and turn to slavery, a Judah remnant lost the revival permitting children to be enslaved, increase in family breakdown, and slide into secularism. Prophets in every generation warned of the need to renew primary ideals.
The Church, almost from her founding in the Book of Acts, began to alternate between decline and renewal. On some occasions it was accomplished through individuals and on others by congregations. The Apostle John illustrated the point in the stories of seven churches at the beginning of The Revelation. The centuries of the Church have been marked by ups and downs. Renewal was found in the councils and creeds to help gain clarity and direction. Constantine thought to engender faith by marching an army into a river for baptism. Matters fell out of order, and the church became dictatorial, even pagan in some practices. Monasticism worked at renewing the church to an apostolic model. Men went to abbeys and women to nunneries. But these too, in time, needed revival. The revivalists required revival. All Christendom was challenged in the Lutheran Reformation, a form of renewal. Protestantism was a move for revival. It wasn’t long until the reformers needed renewal. The future begs the church for constant renewal. It indicates a form of survival. It will always be so in nature’s context.
Revivalists have called for repentance to recovery. Not until a sufficient number of Christians recognize that the church will always need revival, will the church become as effective and consistent in ministry as Jesus and devout persons mean for it to be. Vital is the belief that restoration becomes a continuing effort, so renewal/revival is to be a constant effort. Achieving it, the church ought to be busy preparing to dilute, or even avoid, any future impending decline so to press upward to higher ground. Renewal indicates not only a former flourishing condition, but improvement in progression. There ought to be at least one special day or two in each church calendar in which the members invest themselves in evaluation to purpose. What may be done better in this ministry, in that, in how we perceive ourselves, in increase in one direction and decrease in another? Some churches actually do just that. They advance. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020