Renewal that Lasts - Christianity Today

The more we talk about revitalizing the church, the more questions we seem to raise. Some of the most central ones are these: Is renewal totally in God’s hands, or do we have a part to play? How does God renew the church? And is “renewal fade-out” inevitable?

Renewal, like the church itself, is a mystery. But the study of Scripture and church history does tell us much about how renewal has come-and stayed-in the past. We begin to see that renewal has more than one dimension. Here are five:

Personal Renewal

This is our usual definition. Many of us have experienced individual renewal at some point in our Christian lives. Our spiritual life was deepened; God became closer and more personally real. Personal renewal may be a dramatic, decisive experience or simply a deepening that gives us greater peace and joy.

A few years ago, a friend reported that more or less on her own she had come into a new peace with God and a richer sense of his presence. She calls this her “rise”; that’s the best way she can describe it.

Whatever else renewal is, it surely must be personal. We are human persons made to experience God in all his fullness. Nothing can substitute for this. First through the New Birth, then through the deepening work of the Holy Spirit, God wants every son and daughter to know the joy of deep, fulfilling communion with himself. This is, in fact, the heart of the Christian faith.

But there are broader dimensions to renewal. Renewing individual believers is only part of the story.

Corporate Renewal

God is not satisfied until the whole community of believers takes on a renewed life.

Again, many of us have experienced this at some time in our lives. God’s Spirit moved graciously over the whole church; everyone was touched. This may have been marked by a dramatic spirit of revival sweeping the congregation or simply by a gentle quickening in the life of the believers. Either way, it was the work of the Spirit.

I remember several times when, as a teenager, I experienced the Holy Spirit’s deep stirring on the campus and in the church at Spring Arbor, Michigan. I quote from my diary for Tuesday, January 17, 1956: “In chapel period God broke loose and an altar service lasted until 2:00 P.M., and almost all the Spring Arbor students were saved.” And the next evening: “In the student vesper service God again broke loose while a larger number testified and [one of the students] told of his vision of heaven.” This was a dramatic, seemingly spontaneous revival; people coming onto campus said they could feel the Spirit of God. I was fifteen at the time.

Corporate renewal is not always that dramatic, nor need it be. The point isn’t how we feel but rather the freedom the Spirit has among us. Where renewal becomes corporate, touching the whole body, it reaches a deeper, broader level than when it remains the experience of a few individuals only.

With corporate renewal, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. A renewed congregation is more powerful in God’s hands than a collection of isolated Christians, no matter how deeply revived. Combined the glowing coals of renewal burst into flame.

Conceptual Renewal

But these are not the only two dimensions. Renewal may also come conceptually, as God gives new vision of what the church can and should be.

Conceptual renewal is a new vision for the church’s life and mission. It comes primarily in the area of our thoughts, ideas, and images of the church. Each of us has a set of ideas-a certain “model”-of what the church should be. Our models are a combination of our experience and our study of Scripture. Conceptual renewal comes when our models are challenged, and we are forced to rethink what the church is really all about.

I began to experience this kind of renewal in seminary and while pastoring briefly in Detroit. The process came into focus especially when my family and I went to Brazil as missionaries. Studying, thinking, praying, and reflecting on more than twenty-five years in the church, I came to a new understanding. I found a new model: the organic community pictured so forcefully in the New Testament. For me, this was conceptual renewal-my “conversion” to a more biblical understanding of the church.

The model was not really new, of course; it was as old as Scripture. But it was new to me.

It is important to see that God works in our minds as well as our hearts. Conceptual renewal can be just as much the work of the Spirit as a powerful revival. God wants the eyes of our understanding to be enlightened, so that we may comprehend the breadth of what he is doing in and through the church (Eph. 1:17-18).

Many people have experienced conceptual renewal but not yet personal renewal. They have a new vision of what the church can become, but they haven’t experienced it. This easily leads to frustration. The key is not to give up on the vision but to become part of a community of believers that is open to the work of the Spirit in all its dimensions. In this context one’s vision is clarified and sharpened even while one’s heart is warmed. New avenues of ministry open up.

We need conceptual and theological renewal in the church as surely as we need personal and corporate renewal. Jesus warned the Pharisees that they were voiding the Word of God by their traditions, that new wine needs new wineskins. The same principles hold today. We need an understanding of the church that is based on Scripture first, on practical reason and experience second, and only thirdly on tradition. What promotes revival, renewal, and faithful kingdom witness in the church should be kept; what does not should be scrapped.

It is easy to miss the importance of this aspect of renewal, and yet it is often crucial to the work of the Spirit. We can be imprisoned by our concepts as surely as we are imprisoned by our habits. In fact, concepts are habits-habitual ways of understanding and viewing things. God’s Spirit may be hindered by wrong ideas as well as by cold hearts.

Church history shows that conceptual renewal has often been at the heart of revival movements. By God’s Spirit, people have been led to a deeper understanding-a new model or vision, a new paradigm-of what the gospel is or what the church should be. Luther’s rediscovery of justification by faith was as much a new concept in his day as a new experience. When John Wesley said, “Christianity is a social religion” and began organizing cell groups, he was teaching a new concept of the church as community. Yet both Luther and Wesley were simply rediscovering what Scripture teaches. This was part of God’s renewing work.

I believe God is at work today, weaning us away from old, static views of the church to new, dynamic views of the committed, intimate covenant community. Every age needs to reinterpret the biblical understanding of the church for its time and unique needs if renewal is going to go as far as God intends.

Structural Renewal

A fourth dimension of renewal has to do with forms and structures. It is the dimension of renewal concerned with the way we, as believers, live out our lives together. It is the question of the best wineskins for the new wine.

Renewal often dies prematurely for lack of effective structures. The new wine flows through the cracks of our old forms and is soon lost. Renewal becomes a fond memory, not a new way of life.

Structural renewal is simply finding the best forms, in our day and age, for living out the new life in Christ. History is full of examples of structural renewal becoming a key to extending renewal beyond the passing moment. Early Christians discovered the usefulness of homes for church gatherings, and through history the rediscovery of the “house church” has often been a part of renewal movements. Wesley created the class meeting, the band, the Methodist society, and a team of “lay” preachers as “wineskins” to carry the wine of renewal. It worked! Many other examples could be cited, including the contemporary rediscovery of small groups, one-on-one discipling, and other nontraditional forms of church life and witness.

It seems to be a principle that traditions and structures outlive their usefulness and become more a hindrance than a help. Nothing in Scripture, for instance, says churches must have a Sunday school, a midweek service, or leadership primarily in the hands of one or two persons. Nor is there any biblical reason for most activities to happen in a church building rather than in homes. Many other examples could be cited. The point is that any traditional form, structure, or practice that helps us be alive and faithful should be kept and improved; any that insulate us from the fresh fire of the Spirit should be modified or retired.

True enough: We cannot bring renewal by changing forms. But we can stifle it by putting forms above life. Renewal is less likely to come and more likely to die in a tradition-bound group where everything happens in the church building and there is little freedom to innovate. Renewal is more likely when believers begin to share their faith together in homes, when traditional forms are periodically reevaluated, and when the structural vitality and flexibility of the early church are rediscovered.

Missiological Renewal

A church needing renewal is focused inward. A renewed church focuses outward to needy persons. It is moved to carry on the very works Christ did, for the sake of his kingdom.

Sometimes renewal actually begins here, with a new sense of mission. Some people catch a vision for a new ministry in the church, the neighborhood, or the world. “Here is a need we can meet,” they say. Faith takes hold; resources are brought together. In finding those in need, a church often finds itself and the renewing work of the Spirit.

Jesus told us to seek first the righteousness and justice of his kingdom (Matt. 6:33), to pray that his kingdom may come on earth (Matt. 6:10). The church, Emil Brunner said, exists by mission as fire exists by burning. Genuine renewal will issue in missiological renewal. A renewed, creative sense of mission is as much a part of renewal as is personal or corporate renewal. A church has not really been renewed until it has found its unique mission for God’s kingdom in the here and now.

No Certain Sequence

We see, then, that there are many sides to renewal: personal, corporate, conceptual, structural, and missiological. We can say several things about them:

1. Renewal may begin in any one or more of these five ways. While we most commonly think of renewal as personal and corporate, history shows that renewal has often begun initially at one of the other points. We should watch for and welcome the renewing work of the Holy Spirit wherever and however it comes.

2. Renewal must become personal and corporate to be genuine. A new vision for the church, new structures, or a renewed sense of mission won’t carry us very far unless hearts are warmed and changed. Similarly, warmed hearts will not fully renew the church unless the church becomes a renewed community. In Paul’s words, it is the whole body that must “be built up” and “reach unity in the faith” as it “grows and builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:12-16). Renewal is not really renewal in the full, biblical sense until it is both personal and corporate.

3. Renewal must become conceptual and structural to be long-lasting. Too often renewal has failed precisely here. More than once I have seen the Spirit move upon a congregation until nearly every person was changed-but the renewal aborted because believers did not understand what was happening and lacked appropriate structures to nurture the new life. In short order it was stifled by institutional business as usual.

The great renewals in history that shaped the face of society, such as the Wesleyan Revival, reached the conceptual and structural levels. They were based on a recovered biblical vision of the church, and they found appropriate structures to sustain the new life of the Spirit. There probably have been hundreds of revivals in the history of the church, but only a handful were carried through to the conceptual and structural levels.

4. Renewal must reach the missiological level to be fully dynamic. A church is not really renewed until it discovers its mission in the world. God’s goal, after all, is not just to renew the church but to reconcile the world. As agents of reconciliation, we are to find our own crucial role in the overall plan of God “to bring all things . . . together under one head, even Christ” (Eph. 1:10).

Practical Implications

What can we do to bring genuine, Spirit-fired renewal?

We can be totally open to the Spirit and the Word-not only in our hearts but in our minds and acts as well. That openness is born from an understanding of the church and God’s kingdom plan for it. Careful Bible study can help, especially if carried out in home groups where we have opportunity to learn, share, and pray together. Particularly useful portions of Scripture for this kind of study include Ephesians, Acts, 1 Corinthians, the Gospels, Hebrews, and Isaiah. More broadly, it is useful to trace God’s acts in forming a people in the Old Testament, leading to Jesus Christ and the birth of the church in the New.

One way or another, every Christian should be part of a small committed cell group where he or she can grow and develop, learning new openness to others and to the work of the Spirit. We pastors must make the forming and nurturing of such groups a high priority.

These practices, supplementing the accepted, necessary disciplines of prayer, worship, and personal Bible study, can be used of God to bring renewal to our lives and to the church-renewal in all its dimensions.

Howard A. Snyder is pastoral coordinator of Irving Park Free Methodist Church, Chicago, Illinois.