in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

I just listened to a sermon on Revival by Adrian Warnock, preached at Jubilee church, Enfield last Sunday. It is one of the best messages on revival that I have heard for a long time. He gives two definitions of revival. The first is:

"a powerful intensification of the Holy Spirit’s normal activity" (Stuart Piggin)

What I like about this definition, and the way Adrian develops it, is that it doesn't place revival in some strange and unreachable category so that all we can do is pray and wait passively. As Bill Jackson points out in The Quest for the Radical Middle, (a history of the Vineyard) an unheathy emphasis on the anticipation of a great revival effectively killed evangelistic effort. If God works in a different mode in revival, then what is the point of working hard right now?

Adrian's second definition (his own) is:

“The return of the church to something of the experience of the book of Acts”

This definition complements the first in that it describes the character of what we expect to see. He goes on to consider what actually happened in the book of Acts and to parallel this with periods of revival, especially in the ministry of C. H. Spurgeon.

This message is encouraging, uplifting and a great motivation for serving the King!

You can download it from the Jubilee church sermons page.

• Update: you can now listen to the sermon and read the notes on Adrian's Warnock's blog about revival and prayer.