Nik Ripken in The Insanity of God (an interesting read by the way) tells this story of being interviewed by a mission board in the USA:
“The committee members were clearly impressed with Ruth [his wife] from the start. She told her story of being called to serve God overseas as a thirdgrader, how her sixth-grade writing project had helped confirm a specific calling to Africa, and how her summer experience in Zambia during college had given her a realistic picture of third-world living and erased any doubts that she might have had about her career plans.
When they asked me the same question about when I had received my call, I looked around the meeting room and simply said, “I read Matthew 28.”
They thought that maybe I had misunderstood the question. They patiently explained that a special calling was required before someone could go out into the world and do this kind of work. I was not trying to be clever or disrespectful, but I responded, “No, you don’t understand. I read Matthew 28 where Jesus told his followers, ‘GO!’ So I’m here trying to go.”
That prompted a thirty-minute explanation about the distinction between the call to salvation and the call to ministry. What was required, I was told, was then a call to take the gospel out into the world, and perhaps even a fourth call to a specific place in the world. Then they asked me what I thought about what they had said.
I was young and naïve enough to think that when they asked me that, they really wanted my opinion. So I gave them my opinion. “Well, it appears to me,” I told them, “that you all have created a ‘call’ to missions that allows people to be disobedient to what Jesus has already commanded all of us to do.”
That wasn’t the best thing to say. When no one seemed to want to respond to my statement, I looked over at my wife, and I saw that she was quietly crying. I suddenly thought, “Oh no, I may have just cheated Ruth out of ever getting to fulfill her calling to Africa–because I didn’t know the denominational code words.”
Somehow the committee voted to approve our appointment anyway. I was thrilled about that, but I simply couldn’t understand the distinction that they were making between these different calls.
And, honestly, I still don’t understand that.
When I share with churches today, I often suggest that people read Matthew 28. When I read that chapter, I notice that Jesus never says if or whether you go; He simply talks about where you go! God may have to give instructions about the location—the where. But there is nothing to negotiate about the command to go—God has already made our primary task perfectly clear. When I tried to explain that to the appointment committee in 1983, I just about ended our appointment process on the spot.
As I read I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The West (church and society) needs revival
Arthur Wallis in Rain from Heaven states,
“Though this book emphasises the spiritual rather than the social effects of revival, it is not out of place here to mention that its effect on social reform has been profound. Lecky, the historian, stated that it was the Methodist Revival which saved England from the bloody revolution that overtook France, Writing of the period prior to the American Civil War, Timothy L. Smith, in his Revivalism and Social Reform, shows how the curbing of drunkenness, vice and other social ills, as well as the abolition of slavery, were direct results of the revivals that came from the frontier to dominate the urban religious scene.”
When I observe the decay and confusion in much of Western society and church I cannot help but reflect that they need revival.
Evan Roberts and the 1904 Welsh Revival
This extract is from A Diary of Revival by Ken Adams.
It is fascinating to see the sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit being experienced and understood in the life of a young man (less than thirty years of age when this happened). There appears to be a great deal of learning taking place, humility in what was experienced and a genuine openness to grow in God.
“While a number of people discussed the issue of women taking part publicly in the revival meetings, most welcomed the difference and appreciated the exuberance, enthusiasm and singing of these girls. As most were young, rumours abounded about Evan Roberts’ relationship with them, yet they remained rumours. There is still no evidence of scandal, and a look at the itinerary of the evangelist who was daily in the public eye gave little opportunity either. The girls would always stay in separate lodgings when on mission. Yet rumours of his engagement to Annie Davies still sold papers and made interesting reading.
Evan Roberts’ ground-breaking style and method made him a model for other leaders in the years following the revival. He created a mould that wouldn’t be discarded rapidly, but imitated and used by fledgling Pentecostal leaders in the coming years. Evan wasn’t the last breath of the nineteenth century; he was in many ways the first breath of the twentieth century. The path he cleared through years of traditional religious undergrowth soon became a well-beaten track in the history of the new Pentecostal movement’s style and teaching. Evan himself became an ideal example for many of the leaders seeking to be open to the Spirit. He was seen by them as a pioneer in understanding the immanence and direct revelation of the Holy Spirit and, in the spiritual consciousness of thousands, as an icon to be imitated.
During and after the revival, newspaper stories about Evan Roberts and his methods, which had been reported in detail, became documented cameos and blueprints for thousands of other meetings throughout the principality of Wales, and wider afield. Even though these services were never visited by the revivalist himself, his methodology was copied nationally. Physically absent, yet spiritually and emotionally present through the press coverage, Evan’s message and personality stamped itself on a nation within a few months.
His methodology wasn’t just a pleasant contrast to what preceded it; it was painfully controversial, especially his claims regarding the guidance of the Spirit. This guidance was something he relied on, not just for worship services, but for direction as to where to visit next on mission or even whether to see someone who had come to speak to him. Professor John Young Evans, who met him at his home on Monday 27 March 1905, noted his preoccupation with this.
More than once in the course of the afternoon when he was being consulted on matters of apparently little moment, he hesitated before replying, while his lips were slightly but perceptibly convulsed. The Spirit’s guidance had now become a matter from day to day and so far as his mission movements were concerned, he would henceforth require the first suggestion from the Spirit … The increase of emphasis he now lays on the Spirit’s guidance even in temporal affairs easily lent itself to satire and caricature.
One writer commenting on this aspect of his personality notes: ‘Everything that comes from his subconscious is regarded by Roberts as the guidance of the Spirit while everything that comes from reason or from the good advice of his friends is human counsel’.”
This may be an overstatement, yet it does contain some truth. As the revival progressed, Evan realised that subjective feeling by itself didn’t always indicate the Spirit’s guidance. In the meantime it did cause some controversy, as with the residents of Cardiff when Evan Roberts said that the Holy Spirit was saying ‘No’ to a visit there. The controversy filled the newspapers.
Even more controversial and strange to the Church of the time were Roberts’ claims to supernaturally given knowledge about people and events in the meetings that he led. An account of his revisit to Blaenannerch in March 1905 provides an interesting example. He enters a packed congregation and declares that:
there was someone at that moment denying the divine inspiration of the Bible. God wanted that person to confess. Prayers were offered by the sisters, then the evangelist again asked the man to confess. The missioner was evidently in overpowering agony, but no one spoke, the silence in the chapel being unbroken except for Mr Roberts’ groans. ‘God’s order is that that man must honestly say he doesn’t believe’, was his cry. After a minute’s pause, he said God had revealed that the man was standing. Dozens were standing, but nobody confessed. The scene was most pathetic (that is full of pathos), many in the front of the chapel sobbing bitterly during their prayers. ‘God give me the name of the man’, prayed the missioner and shortly afterwards he said, ‘I know his name and age, won’t he confess?’ After a struggle with anxiety Mr Roberts said, ’The man’s name is ___, 23 years of age - Oh, Lord, Oh! After ‘Diolch iddo’ had been sung he said that the man need not confess now because he had changed his views.
Later on, he went on to warn those who were sceptical that God might divulge their names also and finished by saying there was somebody present who needed to make restitution to the church threefold because he had committed sacrilege.
There had been a number of other incidents similar to this previously; for instance, at Cwmafon in February 1905, where he said that there was a lost soul in the congregation and that God had prohibited him from praying for that soul. It was ‘too late, too late’.4 Similar incidents were to follow in the Liverpool mission. As previously noted, again as the revival progressed, Evan Roberts began to realise that subjective feeling in and of itself doesn’t always guarantee that the Spirit is involved, and even warned people about over-reliance on feeling alone.
Feeling is not the foundation of religion, faith is. And when feeling disappears do not think that God has We lose so many battles by resting on the heights and depths of feeling. It is faith in God that is really important … The Holy Spirit doesn’t tell us what to wear. etc. If He did that He would make you into less than man … Do not put your reason to one side. Then you will not be out of control.”
“The answer to the question, ‘What is the ultimate secret of the universe?’ is this man Jesus.” Lesslie Newbigin
Tis quote is taken from A Diary of Revival by Kevin Adams. It is a record of the 1904 Welsh awakening.
“Before the 1904 revival in Wales there were among the growing number of believers who felt that action must be taken to remedy the spiritual state of the nation. Dean Howell sums up the concern of many, in an article which appeared in the 1902 December issue of Y Cyfaill Eglwysig.
What is Wales’ greatest need? Some point to the need of political reform A better O. educated ministry? A better health service and social services, all things which are important. But are any of these the main need of Wales at this time? In my estimation there is a greater need than all these, something that will reach into the soul of a nation, something that will create a greater effect than all of them, something more lasting in its fruit and all-encompassing in its blessing spiritual and temporal. Spiritual revival, not reformation but revival. And I don’t mean local missions either; rather I’m speaking about the need for a high tide of the Spirit flooding over the whole country that will touch all classes with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This surely is Wales’ greatest need at this time.
There has never before been so much preaching, but what of the effects? … From all directions there are complaints that the ministry has lost its power and its convicting edge … The preaching is scholarly, interesting and educational but there is little anointing and convicting in it. Consciences are not pricked as in days gone by, and old phrases of long ago - such as conviction, conversion, repentance, adoption, dying to sin, self-loathing, etc - have become alien and meaningless, while the old experiences that came out of these phrases have become fossilised and without life.
And the result? Family worship is quickly disappearing The Sunday school is only just holding its own. Congregations in many places are lessening. Keeping the Sabbath has become a matter of debate and the prayer meeting is nearly extinct … The authority of the Bible and the foundational truths of Christianity are being judged in the court of reason and criticism … Unshakable belief in the unseen, the miraculous and the supernatural is questioned openly. Temperance is not as prosperous as it used to be, with the curse of drink rearing its head in town and countryside … The desire for pleasure has totally captivated the age …
But what is the answer? There is no argument about this. If there is such a thing as truth between the covers of the word of God - here it is. The Spirit of God is the only source of spiritual life. There is no way to produce or revive this life other than by the instrumentality of the Spirit.“ “Not by might and not by power but by my Spirit,” says the Lord of Hosts’ … It is man’s fault and not God’s will that there isn’t the same unction and authority in the preaching of the gospel in this generation …
Reader! Will you do your part in this blessed work? Will you give yourself fully to this cause? Morning, midday and night? Will you do your best jointly to work with others so that you can create circles of intercession? Great is your privilege - great too is your responsibility. ‘Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down …’”
Take note, if this was to be my last message to my fellow countrymen throughout the length and breadth of Wales before I am taken to the judgment it would remain thus the greatest need of my dear nation and country at this time is spiritual revival through a specific outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Jubilee, let me see the break of day.
Dean Howell died one month later, he never saw the 1904 revival … but he prayed earnestly for it.
Chapter 1 of Introducing the False Promise of Discipleship by Bill Hull and Brandon Cook starts provocatively:
“Imagine if Jesus had spent all of his time planning a big banquet. He gets baptized in the Jordan River and then retreats back up to Galilee, puts a deposit down on a huge venue, and prepares to put on a killer party. No need for deejays to get the party started. The man makes a world-class wine.
Then the big night comes, and Jesus waits: eager, excited, his foot tapping nervously on the floor. But by 8 p.m., only a few people have shown up. He makes do. At least the sparse crowd enjoyed the wine (what on earth was that vintage?). The next week, Jesus tries the whole thing again, hoping for a better turnout. This time he brings in a band. But once again, the numbers are low.
Not one to give up, he tries it again, adding dry ice and a fog ma- chine (the ancient equivalent, anyway). He continues to attempt a bigger and better party.
Kind of a crazy scenario, right? But when you think about it, for the last 50 years, the American church has been doing the same thing, with fewer and fewer people showing up for the par- ty. Even when attracting people has worked to bring people to a local church, we haven’t consistently created Christlike disciples and disciple makers. The harder we try, the further behind we get. The cultural landscape is shifting so rapidly and substantially that the strategies are outdated before we even get out of the gate. Trying to build church programs and having a slick show may still “work” in some parts of the United States, but increasingly, the impact of the attractional model is more like, “Turn out the lights; the party’s over.”
Bottom line: The church as we’ve known it is dying. What will be resurrected in its place?”
I read this passage and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So many years of wasted effort, so many lives sacrificed serving false gods. It’s time to really, truly, make disciples.
The false Promise of Discipleship is available for free download here: https://thebonhoefferproject.com/ebook-tfpd