The Renewal Pattern

From Holy Discontent to Corporate Revival

THE SECULARIST LIFE SCRIPT IS FRAGILE

The secularist life script, in which humans attempt to live without having to confront the great questions of life, creates insulation against faith. However, this insulation is not as secure as it may seem. For example, during the global financial crisis of 2008, the global banking system came terrifyingly close to a catastrophic worldwide great depression, which would have fundamentally changed the kind of lives we now live. If a major war broke out between great powers such as Russia, China, India, the US, and NATO forces—a threat that many experts agree is increasing—our world and our lives would be radically altered.

If we endured a global flu pandemic, like the one in the early part of the twentieth century that killed millions of people across the world, how we view and process our personal potentials and possibilities would be deeply shaken. Imagine if North Korea launched a devastating cyberattack that disabled most or large parts of the world’s internet for months or years. Think about how different your life would be. Consider how you would have to readjust your life and how you access community and relationships.

In Australia, after the attacks on 9/11, church attendance went up for a short period. This was in a country across the other side of the world from the attacks. Why? Because the Western secularist bubble of radical individualism and hyperconsumerism was pierced. Briefly, the mythology that it is possible to live a life without God or greater meaning for many people was rattled.

Your lifestyle, your freedom, your approach to faith and meaning are shaped by large-scale factors. Factors out of our control, which we assume to be stable and secure, but which in reality can change suddenly.

However, before proceeding, we need to examine what exactly we mean by renewal and revival.

RENEWAL: DEFINITIONS AND CONFUSIONS

The terms renewal, revival, and awakening invoke a variety of emotional responses among Christians. For some, these terms evoke a sense of excitement, corresponding with a pang of hunger to see God move powerfully in our time. For others, such words belong in the dusty annals of church history, appreciated but distant from our secular moment, where decline rather than renewal seems the norm.

Others will hear these terms with a sense of apprehension, their minds filled with images of hype-driven worship services, endlessly repeated choruses, and the exhaustion of never-ending church activity. So it’s vital to establish the way in which these terms will be used in this book.

Church history often uses the terms renewal, revival, and awakening interchangeably. Revival is used to describe what happened during the eighteenth century in Britain, whereas in the United States, the term awakening is often used. Both labels are used to describe the same move of God that occurred in different places. So, in this plan, I am going to use these terms in the following ways:

Renewal:

A) The refreshment, release, and advancement that individuals, groups, churches, and cultures experience when they are realigned with God’s presence.

B) The resumption of our God-given purpose to partner with God fully, participating in His plan to flood the world with His presence.

Revival:

When renewal occurs on a large scale, bringing significant advancement, growth, and kingdom fruit to a city, people group, movement, region, or nations. Revival is renewal gone viral.

THE PROCESS OF RENEWAL IS BUILT INTO THE WORLD

Renewal is built into the fabric of our world. Since the fall, God has been in the renewal business. We intuitively sense this. Everybody understands that something is wrong in the world and desires a better future. We hope that our lives and our cultures are better tomorrow than they are today. We naturally try and move toward renewal.

                          ~We either yearn for renewal or lament its absence.~

Yet without God, our flesh-driven renewal programs, both personal and corporate, will bring more harm than good. When it comes to renewal, we face four options:

HUMAN-DRIVEN RENEWAL: To renew in our own human strength.

STAGNATION: To attempt to press pause, ignoring renewal, while trying to avoid decline.

DECLINE: To resist renewal, thus sliding into decline.

GOD-CENTERED RENEWAL: To align with God’s plan to renew us and the world.

RENEWAL IS GOD’S TOOL TO MOVE HISTORY TOWARD HIS ENDS

God is intent on partnering with humans in His plan to redeem the world. As we will discover, God is profoundly relational. He created you to spread His presence into the world. When we rejected this call upon us, He gave His Son, Jesus, on the cross so that we would again pick up this mandate.

RENEWAL FLOWS THROUGH SYSTEMS

Renewal is God’s way of cleansing and reviving the systems in which we exist and operate. Often we approach our challenges by imagining a future vision of what renewal looks like, and then we take off toward that goal. When we just have a vision-based approach to renewal, the ends can justify the means. In God’s way of renewal, our systems in their entirety, both personal and corporate, must be renewed for us to be moved forward.