Paradigm Shifts & Revival, pt.1
Paul writes: At the risk of sounding pretentious and presumptuous, I believe that genuine Revival that leads to nationwide spiritual awakening requires a paradigm shift among the leaders and pastors of Christian churches. One paradigm shift I would like to discuss in this blog is the paradigm shift from an exclusively church growth approach and discipline, to a paradigm that expects God to come and personally transform the city.
The God Who Personally Revives
I’m not quite sure what to call this paradigm, but I’m convinced that God wants to personally heal nations and cities and regions and towns, transforming the people therein. The idea that God has wound up the universe like a great clock, ticking away on its own, before Jesus eventually returns physically or bodily to do anything in person is an unbiblical paradigm that lends itself to a deistic worldview of Christianity that is primarily rationalistic, intellectual, and materialistic — a worldview far from that of the Bible’s. The biblical example and message is God desires to personally be in the midst of His people and His world as Saviour, Healer, Redeemer, and Reviver, showing forth His glory and power to all His creation. The problem is many Christians and churches have relegated this desire [on God’s part] and expectation [on our part] to an eschatological era that’s not for today.
Watchmen Who Summon The Lord
George Otis, Jr said, “Scripture makes it really clear that God is not only willing to be invited to come and transform our communities — He instructs us to summon Him for this purpose.” This instruction is clear in passages like Isaiah 62:6-8 where God declares the appointment of watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem. Watchmen have a spiritual, prophetic, and intercessory task — they are commanded to summon the Lord day and night without giving themselves rest, for the Lord Himself to establish and make Jerusalem a praise of the earth.
Jesus also emphasizes this theme and instruction in Luke 18:1-8, in the parable of the persistent widow. A clear conclusion from the parable is that Jesus is looking for a certain expression of faith when He comes, with this faith being continuous, day-and-night prayer; a faith expressed by a praying people that never give up and have not lost heart; and a faith that summons the Lord to swiftly grant justice to His elect.
Some Implications To Consider
As a growing movement of Christians and church leaders across the world think through the realities of this concept, below are my attempts at the ideas and implications of this paradigm that could potentially change so much of what we do. I know that as I continue to grow in this paradigm, it naturally causes my approach to leadership and ministry to evolve and develop. It also affects the way I relate to other leaders and pastors in the Body of Christ. But ultimately, the goal is to bring about such an outrageous transformation of our communities and cities outworked by the presence and power of God.
God invites and mandates watchmen (Isa. 68:6) and the elect (Lk. 18:7) with the task of summoning His presence until He comes and makes Jerusalem (and for that matter Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and every other city and region and town in Australia) a praise in the earth, as His just purposes are fulfilled and established. Again, this is emphasizing the fact that God personally wants to come and do the work of transformation in a city (or nation). The critical idea in this paradigm is that God, the Spirit, is personally present in the earth accomplishing His work, and, yes, alongside His empowered church; but the main point is the tangible presence of God as He Himself establishes His purposes.
Therefore, this directly Divine work is more than just church growth, although church growth is included in this work. Church growth can occur in churches within a city, and yet the city remains unreached, unhealed, un-revived, un-transformed. So, this paradigm is not necessarily a church growth paradigm, but something more.
This paradigm gives the watchmen and the elect the permission to “pester” and “bother” and be “intolerably annoying” to God by incessantly crying out for Him to accomplish something so outstandingly outrageous that the whole earth hears about it and gives Him praise for it.
This paradigm is the paradigm of a King who leaves His throne to be among His people with healing and radical transformation in His wings. What this is not is the paradigm of a doctor being asked to a house-call to attend to an illness or treat a disease. This is a not a paradigm of a handyman on a house-call coming to fix a list of maintenance requests. This is the paradigm of a Lover-King who comes to His beloved and makes her His own, to live with her and change her life forever. And both the Lover-King and the beloved (the city or nation calling out to Jesus) have an “appetite” — a longing, a desire — for one another that can only be satisfied by presence.
Who are these watchmen and these elect? Of course, it’s the Body of Christ. But allow me to be a bit more specific: I would like to suggest that pastors have unwisely delegated the role of summoning the Lord, our Lover, to the intercessors in their churches. This should not be the case. I am grateful for intercessors among the congregation of my local church and across the Body of Christ, but the practice of the Early Church was that the ministry of prayer was crucial to the work of church leadership (Ac. 6:4). So, I am suggesting that these watchmen include pastors and church leaders, and that this is essential to the role of pastors as leaders who pastor not only their congregations but also the community and city they are in.