Last Wednesday, a group of 30 people gathered at Victus Café on Bridge Street for a workshop on church renewal and the call to prayer.
The evening was run in partnership with the Catch Network, whose mission is to equip neighbourhood-oriented missional communities and church-plants to thrive and make real change in their local settings, and our own Kākano Local Mission Incubator – who seeks to equip, encourage and empower pioneering leaders throughout the top of the South.
Reverends Scottie Reeve and Alison Robinson, from the Wellington diocese, shared their wisdom and passion with the group.
Scottie talked about the history of Christian renewals and what we might learn from them as we long for revitalisation and renewal in our own diocese and in Aotearoa at large.
He shared this quote by historian and scientist Robert Fogel:
Renewals are the results, not of depressions, wars, or epidemics, but of critical disjunctions in our self-understanding. They are not brief outbursts of mass emotionalism by one group or another but profound cultural transformations affecting all peoples and extending over a generation or more. Awakenings begin in periods of cultural distortion and grave personal stress, when we lose faith in the legitimacy of our norms, the viability of our institutions, and the authority of our leaders in church and state.
Scottie highlighted four markers in society we should be watching for as common pre-cursors to other renewal movements – like the Welsh Renewal, Azusa Street Renewal, and the Rātana Renewal – and he wondered if we were on the cusp of something here in New Zealand.
Firstly, Scottie noted what Reverend George Morgan said in 1905 during the Welsh Revival.
You may ask, "How has this come about? Where did this all begin?” Let us cease trying to trace it to any one man or convention. Whence has it come? ... a praying remnant have been agonising before God about the state of the beloved land, and it is through that the answer that fire has come. … It is a divine visitation in which God is saying to us: "See what I can do without the things you are depending on; see what I can do in answer to a praying people; see what I can do through the simplest who are ready to fall in line and depend wholly and absolutely upon me.”
Renewal involves the gathering of wildly passionate people who are agonising for the revival of our communities via the Good News of Jesus – who like hot coals keep each other smouldering until something larger catches on fire.
And secondly, there is a common theme in other revivals where people rediscovered their love for Jesus, and to began to radiate that passion in their lives and language.
“We need to return to our first love. We need to lay down our idols and make him the centre again.”
So if you’d like to take the next step towards becoming a passionate person of prayer and mission, perhaps the Kākano Local Mission Incubator in 2024 could be the right place for you. Email me to find out more. And for articles and podcasts from the Catch Network, check out their website.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
Last Wednesday, a group of 30 people gathered at Victus Café on Bridge Street for a workshop on church renewal and the call to prayer.
The evening was run in partnership with the Catch Network, whose mission is to equip neighbourhood-oriented missional communities and church-plants to thrive and make real change in their local settings, and our own Kākano Local Mission Incubator – who seeks to equip, encourage and empower pioneering leaders throughout the top of the South.
Reverends Scottie Reeve and Alison Robinson, from the Wellington diocese, shared their wisdom and passion with the group.
Scottie talked about the history of Christian renewals and what we might learn from them as we long for revitalisation and renewal in our own diocese and in Aotearoa at large.
He shared this quote by historian and scientist Robert Fogel:
Renewals are the results, not of depressions, wars, or epidemics, but of critical disjunctions in our self-understanding. They are not brief outbursts of mass emotionalism by one group or another but profound cultural transformations affecting all peoples and extending over a generation or more. Awakenings begin in periods of cultural distortion and grave personal stress, when we lose faith in the legitimacy of our norms, the viability of our institutions, and the authority of our leaders in church and state.
Scottie highlighted four markers in society we should be watching for as common pre-cursors to other renewal movements – like the Welsh Renewal, Azusa Street Renewal, and the Rātana Renewal – and he wondered if we were on the cusp of something here in New Zealand.
Firstly, Scottie noted what Reverend George Morgan said in 1905 during the Welsh Revival.
You may ask, "How has this come about? Where did this all begin?” Let us cease trying to trace it to any one man or convention. Whence has it come? ... a praying remnant have been agonising before God about the state of the beloved land, and it is through that the answer that fire has come. … It is a divine visitation in which God is saying to us: "See what I can do without the things you are depending on; see what I can do in answer to a praying people; see what I can do through the simplest who are ready to fall in line and depend wholly and absolutely upon me.”
Renewal involves the gathering of wildly passionate people who are agonising for the revival of our communities via the Good News of Jesus – who like hot coals keep each other smouldering until something larger catches on fire.
And secondly, there is a common theme in other revivals where people rediscovered their love for Jesus, and to began to radiate that passion in their lives and language.
“We need to return to our first love. We need to lay down our idols and make him the centre again.”
So if you’d like to take the next step towards becoming a passionate person of prayer and mission, perhaps the Kākano Local Mission Incubator in 2024 could be the right place for you. Email me to find out more. And for articles and podcasts from the Catch Network, check out their website.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
