Episode 209: On Pursuing Revival While Avoiding Revivalism
How can you pursue revival in your church while avoiding revivalism? Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman start this episode of Pastors Talk by defining the difference between revivalism and revival. They discuss the importance of not neglecting church disciplines during times of great revival. They also walk through six marks of revivalism and how they can be problematic for the church.
- What is the Difference Between Revival and Revivalism in the Church?
- How to Not Relax the Bonds of Discipline in Times of Revival
- Six Marks of Revivalism
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
And this is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
You just introduced yourself twice. What’s with that?
Mark Dever:
Very funny, Dr. Doolittle.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches.
Mark Dever:
I thought Pastors Talk was done for the season. Isn’t this a little late in the sort of Pastors Talk year to be sending out another one?
Jonathan Leeman:
We have this one and maybe one more.
Mark Dever:
An extra bonus?
Jonathan Leeman:
An extra bonus. Well, this is the bonus and then there’s going to be another bonus.
Mark Dever:
All right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Like a double encore.
Mark Dever:
What are we going to talk about today?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, we just published a journal called Pursuing Revival While Avoiding Revivalism.
What is the Difference Between Revival and Revivalism in the Church?
Mark Dever:
What’s the difference between revival and revivalism?
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s what I’m asking you. That’s my question for you.
Mark Dever:
Ian Murray, in his classic book by that title 30 years ago, said revival is a work of the spirit of God where extraordinary blessings come through ordinary means. Revivalism is the attempt by man to reproduce those extraordinary blessings of God through extraordinary means. I think that’s a good distinction.
Jonathan Leeman:
What do you mean, by extraordinary means?
Mark Dever:
Things that are not told us to do in scripture.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, ordinary means are…
Mark Dever:
The things we’re told to do. Preach, pray.
Jonathan Leeman:
Extraordinary means are those extra devices that we come up with.
Mark Dever:
The anxious bench.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
The invitation system.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
Pressured, you know.
Jonathan Leeman:
Nobody’s done an anxious bench since the 19th century that I’m aware of, Mark. Why would you feel the impulse in 2022 to talk about those extraordinary needs?
Mark Dever:
I think whenever you turn the lights down, keep singing the song, keep the music going, ask people to put up their hands, then stand, then come forward, then climb in the baptistry. I think you’re doing basically just another version of the anxious bench of Charles Finney.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, typically you don’t tell Alex and Sam and I what to do journals on, but you had a hankering for this one, and you encouraged us to do it and you encouraged us to do it by the SBC. What gives?
Mark Dever:
Well, because this is basically all I’ve been saying for the last 30 years.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s true. But why now? Why were you like, I think it was in April, you’re like, “Guys, we’ve got to do this by the SBC.” And you said it like that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I think brothers who 10 years ago, I’d hoped the reformed soteriology and reformed ecclesiology would be stable, clearer, growing, and fruitful has instead faded and I think the pressure of spontaneous baptisms has brought about and, you know, the decreased understanding of things that once were well known among Christians about what would be in a healthy church.
You know, I said recently that a lot of Baptist churches today reminded me of the walls around York, England. You know, they don’t go all the way around it anymore. The walls were meant to protect it originally, but now they’re just there in parts and they’re more picturesque than protective.
And I observed with single site and single service commitments gone, Sunday gone, congregationalism gone, membership debased by either complete unconcern or a combination of child baptisms and now spontaneous instant baptisms, making membership increasingly meaningless. The absence of discipline eviscerates whatever is left of meaningful membership.
The misunderstanding of the gatherings being primarily evangelistic and on and on we could go, Jonathan. I mean, sung worship is primarily performed rather than congregational, with little time for prayer in the main gatherings at most churches, and little time for scripture reading in the main gathering at most churches. I think there’s little left that makes many of our churches in any historical or biblical sense, Baptist.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, that struck me when you were talking about it. You were very interested in, in some ways, locating the conversation in those specific Baptist sorts of things. There’s this… I ended up writing an article following that thread, one called, “How Movements Can Undermine Churches and Hurt Their Own Cause.”
Mark Dever:
Well, and I just want to say to any of our Bible Church non-denominational Methodist, Pentecostal, or Presbyterian friends, or Anglican friends listening, when I say Baptist, I just mean biblical. So I mean, if Baptist sounds like a different brand that you don’t subscribe to, then just absurd the much more obnoxious word biblical in there, and that’s what I mean about each one of those.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because many of those churches are Baptistic, per se. But what struck me, Geoff Chang wrote a fantastic article about Charles Spurgeon.
Mark Dever:
But just like on baptism, you know, I’m concerned about lowering baptismal ages. And any Baptist Christian, whether or not their church is called Baptist, could join us in that conversation. But I think also our Anglican and Presbyterian friends could join us in understanding about lowering communion ages, you know, age of first communion.
It’s the same thing. At whatever point you understand there needs to be a sentient, personally credible profession of faith. Whether you associate that with baptism or the Lord’s Supper.
Jonathan Leeman:
What the Presbyterians would call communing membership.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s the area of concern that you and I both have that we would share with any biblical Christian.
How to Not Relax the Bonds of Discipline in Times of Revival
Jonathan Leeman:
Geoff Chang wrote his article on Spurgeon in this, “What Can We Learn From Charles Spurgeon, the New York Revival of 1858” And he had this choice little quote from Spurgeon, from his sermon, “The Great Revival,” which I borrowed from my own as well.
But listen to this, “I must say once more that if God should send us great revivals of religion, it will be our duty not to relax the bonds of discipline. Some churches, when they increase very largely, are apt to take people into their number by wholesale without due and proper examination.
We ought to be just as strict in the proxisms of a revival as in the cooler times of gradual increase. And if the Lord sent His Spirit like a hurricane, it is ours to deal with the sails, lest the hurricane should wreck us by driving us upon some fell rock that may do us serious injury.
Take care ye that are officers in the church. When ye see the people stirred up, ye exercise still a holy caution, lest the church become lowered,” and this is critical, “lowered in its standard of piety by the admission of persons not truly saved.”
Mark Dever:
Well, okay, when Spurgeon is saying that in the middle of the 19th century, that was a very lively debate. I want… Baptist then as it is now almost two centuries later. We have another article in this issue by Caleb Morrell about Elder Knapp, K-N-A-P-P. And Knapp was a strong proponent of spontaneous baptism. And with spontaneous baptism comes usually –
Jonathan Leeman:
And lowering the age of baptism.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And with that usually comes spontaneous church membership.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right.
Mark Dever:
And so exactly what Spurgeon is interacting with are people like Knapp who had learned from Finney. And he would say, to be fair to who I think is our brother Knapp, he looks at the book of Acts and he sees no delay between professional faith and baptism. And then he presses that.
Jonathan Leeman:
You said you’ve been talking about this 30 years. Fair to say you’ve been talking about this 30 years in one way or another. 9Marks of a healthy church. One way or another. Because A, you care about nominal Christianity and B, you care about the witness of the church. True? Explain?
Mark Dever:
True.
Jonathan Leeman:
Unpack those two things and why this conversation is crucial for nominal Christianity and the witness of the church.
Mark Dever:
Because what we do by these kinds of methods is we easily create things that can externally and immediately look like the day of Pentecost. But if you just wait for five weeks, let alone five years, you see it bears no resemblance to the day of Pentecost. There was nothing much at all that happened in our case.
Jonathan Leeman:
Interesting article from Sinclair Ferguson, who wrote on the biblical nature of this. He says at one point, and he’s talking about Pentecost, he says, “Revival is the unstopping of the pent-up energies and the spirit of God breaking down dams which had been erected against his convicting and converting ministry in whole communities as happened at Pentecost and the wakenings which have followed.”
Should You Pray for Revival?
So he sees a place for revival as these sort of aftershocks of Pentecost like an earthquake, right? And so he encourages us to pray for it. Do you encourage people to pray for revival?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, sure. I don’t really care if that word is used, but I definitely want people to pray for conversions, for the widespread preaching of the gospel. Jesus says, when you see the harvest full, you pray for the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers. I definitely pray for that.
One of the things that I think brought this issue to my mind was our brother Ben Lacey, who’s a pastor on staff here now. Lord willing, when a lot of you are listening to this, he’s going to be a pastor in Fort Worth, Texas.
Jonathan Leeman:
Soon to be.
Mark Dever:
Lord willing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes. I’m just saying if this comes out next week, it’s not going to. That’s all I’m saying.
Mark Dever:
But I said soon.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. Okay.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. He had watched an Easter service at a prominent Southern Baptist church online. He made me watch it and he was really troubled by it. And he writes about it in his article here. Men who faithfully preach the gospel say things that undermine the gospel they just preached.
And I think that’s true and I think that’s typical in too many of our churches. I don’t know many people who are saying this and so I’m just, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be alive, but I want to keep being this little irritating fly at the picnic.
Marks of Revivalism
Jonathan Leeman:
In his article, “Six Marks of Revivalism,” Andrew Balich provides six marks of revivalism. I’m going to say each one and you tell me where you see something like that going on or any comments you have on it. Number one, reverse engineering. What does that mean?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, it just means that –
Jonathan Leeman:
Where would a pastor be tempted to do it?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. If I see that over at Alberto’s church, they have received great blessing through this women’s Bible study ministry, then I’m going to assume, ah, if I want that same blessing, I will have that same kind of women’s Bible study at my church and therefore we will see that same kind of blessing.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you reverse engineer the process.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s right. I’m putting my hope not in the Lord, but in a particular method.
Celebrity Cults of Personality
Jonathan Leeman:
Number two, celebrity cults of personality.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. If someone spoke at a large conference and their message went well and it was celebrated and it got a lot of notice online, then I’m going to think, oh, if I can have them in to do something soon. Or if I can create a platform like that for myself or for someone else, then those ministries will be particularly used by God. It’ll be particularly fruitful.
Jonathan Leeman:
Did we see any of that at the SBC?
Mark Dever:
I think less than we used to see. I think the SBC 10 and 20 years ago was more a show for mega-church pastors, part of it. And the last two couple of years, I think there’ve been a lot more normal pastors involved and I’m pleased about that.
Reliance on High Production Quality
Jonathan Leeman:
The next one, a reliance on high production quality, a reliance on high, what’s wrong with high production quality? That seems like a –
Mark Dever:
Well, I mean, that’s something that we clearly –
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re killing that one for us.
Mark Dever:
No, we clearly are involved in that here. Yeah. I mean, how do I say what I want to say without insulting our brother Alberto who’s sitting right here?
Jonathan Leeman:
Who does a good job with these podcasts. I assume, I just don’t know anything about production quality. So I don’t know if we give you the best in the world or this is terrible, but I assume it’s certainly people express thanks to me for it and I know Alberto works hard on it.
So I just don’t assume that the quality of a camera shot or an audio reproduction or editing of a manuscript has any relationship to the inherent quality of what it’s saying and what it’s communicating. And if you put really good production quality on really poor content, I’m concerned that you can manipulate people for things that are not worthwhile.
Jonathan Leeman:
As Balich says, why the emphasis on excellence? Because if success depends on humans deploying the right means, then everything must be done just right. And I think that’s exactly right. I got a few more. Well, you jump in.
Mark Dever:
Well, I was just going to say practically for pastors, I think one of the places that, one of the things that I think it was Ben again that brought out in his article in the journal is the tendency to give out assurance of salvation too quickly.
And whether that’s this time of year at children’s VBS or whether it is, you know, in the way you’re doing a certain evangelistic program at your church, certainly with spontaneous baptisms or even in the way you share the gospel individually and use 1 John 1:9, you know, at the end of it, “If you confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Have you confessed your sins? Yes. Well then, you know, you’re saying God’s a liar. If you don’t know you’re forgiven. Well, no, hold on. I mean, I could rehearse my sins, a list of them, such as I’m aware of at this moment and do so sincerely yet not be savingly trusting in Christ.
And that kind of nuance, that kind of personal difference is often lost in sort of great movements. And people give out assurance of salvation, I think, too quickly and wrongly and cheaply. And I don’t in any way want to undermine the gracious nature of our salvation. It is by God’s grace and we do not merit it by our repentance.
We don’t merit it by our faith. But yet this salvation that we receive, this conversion that we experience is something that we can know normally through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit and the confirming word of the local church as they see a persevering holiness in our lives.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let me highlight two errors that I think are made in what you’re talking about. Number one, there’s the error of thinking that I as an individual have that job of giving assurance of salvation. And error number two is a church doing it when they’re doing it too quickly, right?
And I think that it’s the temptation of many dads like me with their children when they, you know, make a sincere profession of faith to say, “You’re a Christian” and offer that assurance of salvation or do it with a friend or do it with a colleague or whatever the case may be and recognizing that it’s actually not my job as an individual to do that.
Frankly, not even as a pastor, just you and me sitting in the office per se, but it’s the church’s job, which we do through baptism and the supper. And then, okay, if we solve that problem, there’s still the follow-up problem of how can a church do it well? How can a church do it responsibly? And that brings to another symptom of or mark of revivalism, which is inadequate views of conversion. Explain that.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, well you can look at the table of contents of our Building Healthy Church series book on Conversion by Michael Lawrence and just read the table of contents and see all the contrasts he brings out like new, not nice.
Jonathan Leeman:
New, not nice.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, and again and again he has these nice little pairs. The word chary was no, chary was maybe not the best one. But anyway, on the whole, they’re really great contrasts.
Jonathan Leeman:
He’s trying to alliterate.
Mark Dever:
I understand. But the point is Jesus’ John 3, new birth or Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15, new creation or 2 Corinthians 5, new creation is a more radical image than merely a decision that we’ve made. And my concern is that when you misunderstand conversion, almost always the result for your church will be a great penumbra of unregenerate church members.
And unregenerate church members are themselves individually confused in a most serious way spiritually. And they bring confusion into the church because now everything needs to be in your local church that they’re a part of needs to be able to fit them and their appetites and their desires. And if they’re not regenerate, they’re not going to lead you in a good way.
Well, they’re so that the unregenerate member that you create by your poor understanding of conversion and poor practice of evangelism have compounding problems for the health of a church. So it’s not merely, “Oh, well at least take it to be there and hear the gospel.”
Well, no, you’re now even if you’re in an elder-ruled Presbyterian kind of system, you’re now creating a weight of people who attend, who appear to support, who give, who maybe speak positively of things in so far as you keep doing things that will include them. But if you do anything that threatens to make it clear that they, even if not them by name, but just that people like them are in fact unregenerate and they feel threatened, then they oppose that increasing clarity of your ministry.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and not only are those falsely assured people the product of bad evangelism, they themselves become anti-evangelistic.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
They’re giving out…
Mark Dever:
Their lives seem to speak falsehood or their lives mislead about what Christianity is. They then share a gospel which may itself not be true in the way they share it with others.
Jonathan Leeman:
Balich offers a fifth one, emotional manipulation. And as I was thinking about that, I was reflecting on how much music and quote unquote worship sets seem to play the role of the anxious bench as it were these days. And so we asked Drew Hodge to write his article on this as a minister of music out in Albuquerque.
He says, “I’m concerned we’re using the worship set to stir up something other than love and good works. Without a right understanding of why we gather and what we should do when we gather, we can be taken by the siren song of revivalism.
If God doesn’t really care what we do when we gather and it’s up to us to design a worship experience, then anything is on the table. We will use whatever means we can to produce our worthwhile ends.” And, and…
Mark Dever:
You know, Jonathan, sometimes when you’re saying something and you say it with a certain, I don’t know, background of music, there’s a way you can begin to get people’s assent. You just draw them in. You know what I mean?
I think the listener is made less defensive. I think the listener is cognitively relaxed. I think there’s a kind of joy that comes into the feeling as you listen, which really isn’t going to bring about any kind of careful listening, but rather an experience that’s an entirely different thing. And I think we have to question, is that good? Or is that bad?
I remember it was so bad at the Southern Baptist Convention this year that I remember commenting when there was an unaccompanied prayer. I said, “Hey, it’s an acapella prayer.” You know, I mean, there was no organ playing or music behind the prayer. And I just felt, Oh, finally they’re going to just let me talk to God. Not trying to hype it up at all. Not trying to get the Holy Spirit in by certain progression of chords.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you remember when I was an intern with you way back in 2000 and we had a big, we had a big debate about noodling?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I remember that debate. I don’t remember you particularly on it. I know you come from a noodling background.
Jonathan Leeman:
Are you saying it’s a sin to noodle?
Mark Dever:
I’m saying it’s imprudent.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Often. Usually.
Jonathan Leeman:
But we’re addicted to it, I feel like.
Mark Dever:
I think people can prefer it. They just feel it’s the way they themselves would do it. You know, Jonathan, sometimes late at night when you just know the truth about the way things are, you just go ahead.
Jonathan Leeman:
This strange feeling overcame me just to do whatever you ask me to do right now.
Mark Dever:
That’s right.
Inadequate Ecclesiology
Jonathan Leeman:
And finally, number six, inadequate ecclesiology, sort of summing all things up.
Mark Dever:
That’s where you came in. That’s right. Yeah. And that’s why in this issue, we had several articles on what it means for a person to be qualified to be a pastor. Because I think when you relax your grip on the Bible as the governor of what you do in church, one of the first places that’s going to happen is by you’re not thinking correctly, critically about who the pastor is and who should be elders in your church.
Jonathan Leeman:
The last question that I have for you and any other comments you have, why does revivalism and these six things we’ve talked about lead to pastoral burnout? And see Phil Newton’s article for others, but what’s your answer to that question?
Mark Dever:
That’s a great question. Oh, I think there are a lot of interesting paths you could follow in this. First of all, it may attract the wrong kind of person to being a pastor. It may attract the kind of person who’s really good on their own resources at selling things or convincing people.
And when they just have human products to sell at only human costs, they can maybe pull that off maybe for a long time. But when you start talking about the kind of things we’re called to do as Christians and the kind of things we’re called to get involved with, then it’s just a whole different scale of cost and effect.
So I think you can also have a wrong sense of what success is. I think you can have a desire for an immediacy of effect that is often not the case in the Christian life. I think you can have the wrong kind of markers you’re looking around for to see is this going well or not. Yeah. I just think there are a lot of ways it is disorienting.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, and all of that highlights the fact that we are so tempted to and desirous of living by sight and not by faith. Revivalism appeals to that.
Mark Dever:
It’s the immediacy. We are awaiting people by nature as Christians and we always fight against that. We want it all now.
Jonathan Leeman:
It brings, as I talk about in my editor’s note, short-term gains. It looks fruitful. It appeals to our yearning to see the results of our labors. You can watch the numbers explode, yet often that fruit is fake.
And we don’t want you to be fooled, because when pastors are fooled, the people behind the conversion statistics gain false assurance. They walk towards an eternity apart from Christ when calling themselves Christians all the way.
Revival, however, builds for the long term. It walks by faith. It doesn’t expect to see all the fruit of our labors now but trusts that God is doing far more than we expect with every act of ministry.
Mark Dever:
Amen. One of the interesting things in this current edition of the journal is the seven blank pages at the back for your kids to be able to draw in their own impressions of revivalism. You know, what have they seen about revival and revivalism? And there are seven pages provided for your children to draw out examples of things they’ve seen or thought of.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, that’s one of the things we want to do at 9Marks is help you discover yourself, realize yourself, find your inner child, and draw it. And with that friends…
Mark Dever:
I think it seems like it’s about summer.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think so too.
Mark Dever:
It’s like we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel around here.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, listen, this might be the last episode.
Mark Dever:
I think it might be.
Jonathan Leeman:
But it might not be.
Mark Dever:
It might not be. You can keep listening.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, you’ll find out in a week.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, we’ll find out in a few hours.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s true. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Dever:
Hey, you know what?
Jonathan Leeman:
Tell me.
Mark Dever:
I was at the SBC recently and we had a lot of conversations about this podcast. Other people would initiate them. And I had more than one person ask me if Alberto was a real person. And in God’s kindness, Alberto was standing nearby and I got to introduce him to some of these pastors who really appreciate Pastors Talk and say, “Look, you hear my voice and John’s voice all the time, but Alberto is one of the pastors of our church.
And he is also the brother who physically carries the stuff over to my study. He listens to all of these things. He sets everything up. He’s the one who edits them and gets them out so he puts in easily as much work as Jonathan and I do into these.”
Brothers and sisters, if you have appreciated Pastors Talk, why don’t you pray for God to bless Alberto’s ministry? Alberto, anything you want to say?
Mark Dever:
Of course not. All right. We love you, brother. Thankful for you.
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