The spark...

There is a crucial moment in the life of any small group of people, including churches, when time, history, people, and events, align to move that orgnaization from its smaller place to one larger. It's not unlike those old cartoons where a small snowball tips the crest of a hill and gets larger, every avalanche begins with a snowflake. In the same way there is also a moment when years of an organization wandering, struggling, and drifting tip it finally towards irreversible decline.

A term describing this is "critical mass" borrowed from physics and referring (please understand that I am not a physicist) to the amount of elements required to create change, usuable energy, or an explosion. In every church that is now stable or growing there was a point where it was small but the right people, right events, and right inspiration moved it from its tenuous spot and on to growth.

This idea of "critical mass" is also important in the history of mass movements of people. A Hitler could use the discontent and chaos of his time to create the all encompassing darkness of Nazi Germany and the preaching of even one man, blessed by the Holy Spirit, can bring fresh winds of faith and life to the Church. Every revival in this country was a moment when the people of God, events, and leaders impacted each other to create a time of deepened fervor and faith.

And in the Christian understanding it is the Holy Spirit, the wind that blows without our knowing where He comes from or where He goes, whose presence marks the manifestation of genuine revival over and above just emotional manipulation. Sadly much of what we call "revival" in our culture is just skilled showmanship applied to the parochial setting. Any good preacher can make people cry just like any good movie. But when revival comes the culture is changed because people act differently. In this country if revival comes again we'll probably notice it not by the people falling out all over the place but rather by the millions who expose their dark sins and refuse to buy into the myths of our consumer culture and the relativistic morality that underlies it.

The hard thing, of course, is that times often have to get very tough before God can get our attention and we have to be faced with threat or famine or chaos or war or some other terrible thing before the layers of indifference are peeled away from us and we fall on our knees in humble prayer.

But if we do...