Revival or revising revival

A thought occurred to me this morning. In our tribe or idiom, we are familiar with the language of revival. It is out of the American holiness movement and frontier big tent revivals that the Church of the Nazarene began.

Revival stirs the mind and points us in our thinking to specifics. We tend to think of revival as a time in which we recommit ourselves to the Lord through a week (or now more commonly a weekend) of evening gatherings of singing and hearing a visiting evangelist. It is common to overhear parishioners in churches across the fruited plain say, "What this church needs is revival." Revival--an emotional experience and outlet to pour out one's life in spiritual rededication and renewal.

Due to the passage of time, a growing and maturing of the church, and changes in culture and society, revivals are not as effective as they have been in eras past. No longer are church pews filled with expectant ears to hear a word from the Lord. Revivals today do not seem to carry the evangelistic fervor they once did back in the "glory days." So, revivalism has seemed to take on a different purpose than it once did for the local church. They now seem to be geared towards spiritual deepening for the congregation. Still, in the retooling of revival to accommodate the changing trends (and point to the marginalizing of the church's influence over culture), revivalism turned inward. Still, across the country if you listened to the hearts of parishioners you would probably hear a message beating in their hearts, "What this church needs is revival."

Because of the shift/change/retooling of revivalism, I wonder if our understanding of revival needs updating, along with the language used in naming it. Could it be that revivalism was a tool of a particular era that was effective for a time and space? It fit in the framework of church and society like a piece of a particular puzzle of Americana circa the Progressive Era. It is a certain snapshot of life within the closing frontier culture of the evangelical church in America. Is revivalism a product of its sitz em leben? Or is it reproducible today--a tool for the church that just gets reshaped? Yet this latter questions begs another question: if a tool is changed into something other than what it was, is it still the same tool it was before? Obviously, no.

Does this mean that revivalism is dead? Good question. I do not intend to say that the church no longer needs reviving. I would say that a lot of churches have a pretty weak spiritual pulse and are close to dying on the vine. In my understanding right now (as I learn more and sometimes unlearn more I change my view/opinion) the local church does not need another revival, per se. The language of revivalism does not help us today because of our preconceived ideas and notions that lies behind the word revival clutter our thinking and keep us constrained to a certain way of thinking.

I like wordsmithing. I don't think that I am very good at it yet, but I enjoy the process of hammering out thoughts and meanings. A word for me that serves as a good image which connects on some levels with revival but also points beyond it into a deeper realm is awakening. Now, this term has been employed for centuries: "the Great Awakening," "the Second Great Awakening." Some are even talking about a fourth Great Awakening that is taking place.

I believe awakening is a word picture that points us to coming out of our spiritual slumber, coming out of our entangled way of viewing/doing life in a particular me-centered way, coming out of our notions that spirituality and things of the church are products and resources for me to consume to become "super saint." Our churches need an awakening. I need an awakening. An awakening from a sepia-colored monotonous existence into a vivid and vibrant, exploding technicolor world that sees, interprets, understands, and lives into a radically different and beautiful reality and world. A world that sees all of who we are as Christ followers, all of what we are as Christ followers, and all we that we live out as Christ followers is based on the foundation, framework and interior/exterior design that we point others to this awe-inspiring mysterious world called the kingdom of God.

Awakening to God's gracious and loving reign in our lives and the world shapes us into entirely different people than revival does. Awakening to God's rule and authority in our lives is different than focusing on what I get or don't get from an experience. Now, awakening is full of experience--it is dis-orienting, it is re-orienting, it is exciting, it is challenging, to name a few adjectives. But awakening, in the way that I am understanding it, accomplishes what revivalism set out to do in the beginning (invite people into a life-changing relationship with God) and its more recent reshaping (viz, renewal of the heart). But awakening repositions us and puts us on a trajectory that keeps the Christ life of both person and church community in line with partnering with God the Father in the redemption of the world by Jesus Christ the Son through the Holy Spirit, who invites us into the very life of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Awakening to common union and awakening to purpose--"As you are going, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

What say you? Does this image help? Am I off in left field? Do you see any blind or weak spots that I am not seeing?