Revival, Renewal, and Mission
How cycles of decline lead to spiritual renewal and missional innovation.
Welcome to the Missional Labs journal - we write for forward-looking church and ministry leaders interested in mission, culture, and the future. This comes out of our innovation work with churches and ministries.
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Tyler Prieb
Missional Labs
Early Signs of Vitality
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the historical relationship between revival and mission, particularly in disrupted cultural moments, and wanted to capture the thinking in a quick essay.
As we observe the slow decline in our church structures (and in religiosity overall, though they definitely aren’t the same), we find ourselves in a new grey zone, a “liquid” landscape with all kinds of new anxieties and uncertainty about how to practice faith in the ruins. There are also very few safe institutions left to find cover.
But, we collectively sense that the post-structural wilderness carries with it a certain potency and vitality for spiritual life, creating the conditions for revival, rebuilding, renewal, and innovation.
The recent Asbury Outpouring is the latest example of a legitimate catalytic spiritual moment, and there are emerging flickers of spiritual revival which we pray for.
In the meantime, we simultaneously see the early stages of new networks, projects, church plants, and mission efforts, especially in the places deepest in structural decline. The decay of our institutions seems to create a new freedom for structural innovation, which, when paired with spiritual awakening, creates the early forms of new mission movements.
I think we’re still on the downward part of the curve, but there is good reason to be optimistic about the next decade. In the long run, what comes after revival?
So, I wanted to capture a quick working hypothesis - Spiritual revival is the leading indicator of new forms of mission.
Patterns In History
Looking backwards, this seems obvious and cyclical - decline leads to hunger, which leads to prayer, and God moves to renew his people over time, which leads to fresh energy and imagination for missional engagement. Many have written on the ongoing conditions for revival and spiritual awakening (I'm a big fan of Lovelace).
As a very cursory overview of the pattern, I think of:
The Early Church. The outpouring of the spirit at pentecost, and the disruption of the Temple structure led to dynamic mission to the cities of the greek world for the next century, in the form of apostolic ministry, missionary bands, and church planting.
The Monastics. The Constantinian compromise plus the decline of the Roman Empire led to spiritual renewal through retreat to the deserts for the sake of holiness - which became the beginnings of the monastic vocation and monastic structure, which played a major role in mission over the next centuries.
The Moravians. The revival and spiritual awakening led by Zinzendorf on his small farm, in the midst of a refugee crisis, led to an emerging sense of global consciousness as the new world emerged, and a spiritual responsibility to go to the nations, at whatever cost - even being sold into slavery for the sake of mission.
Missionary Societies. Victorian England in the midst of the early industrial revolution was shaken by the Great Awakening, which led to the renewal of a calling to "use means" to enact God's Kingdom, which led to the emergence of new voluntary societies, like the Clapham Sect and the various missionary societies - which were the foundation of modern charities and missions organizations.
Post-War America. The disruptions and re-building of the world order after two world wars led to spiritual renewal and fervor in the United States, which led to the student volunteer movement, and the emergence in a very short time of many of the major institutions of the Protestant missions movement, from Campus Crusade to Intervarsity and Navigators and YWAM and many more.
Gen Z? This is our current frontier, as we are a decade into massive culture shock, from iphones to politics to Covid and social justice issues. If we are ripe for a spiritual awakening, then it makes sense that there are going to be new forms of mission emerging in the next decade, as young leaders pursue new mission-oriented vocations, in new networked forms.
Parallel Social Theories of Change
We can read this through a historical-cultural lens, and also through a spiritual lens, but we also need to see the sociology at play.
One particular framework I've been thinking on lately is what's called the "Two Loops" theory (HT to Eugene Kim). Sociologists have been exploring the macro-patterns of paradigm shifts and institutional disruptions for a long time (which flows downstream into the business literature on disruptive innovation, etc).
I think this is a helpful framework for the Church. Here's a picture of the "Two Loops" theory that I like, as a mental map:
We can all locate ourselves on this map. In any sector, you have a few actors at work:
The dominant system. This is the collection of institutions, networks, norms, pathways, and entrenched systems that keep things working "the way that they are." They've reached an equilibrium, and have a certain anxiety about decline and decay, because the marginal opportunities for new growth have disappeared. This is a "Christendom" picture. In this picture, you have "stabilizers" working to right the ship, but they will ultimately manage the decline of the system over the coming decades. Eventually, the outcome is a "composting" of the meaningful resources of the system.
The emerging system. As systems decline and decay, more people move out into "the wilderness." These are prophets, pioneers, and the "weird" people, who are often dismissed by the system. Their work looks fruitless, as it exists on the margins, and is often "underground." It's often lonely and challenging. But, in the wilderness and in new emergent communities, disproportionate vitality, creativity, and innovation happens. We've seen this through history, as creativity always emerges from dense enclaves of creatives, on the edges of cultural institutions (think about the East Village in the 60's and 70's, for example).
New pioneer networks. Isolated pioneers begin to connect and coalesce around like-minded issue networks, ecosystems, and communities of practice, where they can share ideas and exist in an alternate community. The primary work here is to build new, dense networks around innovators and pioneers, and help them grow into robust communities of practice. This happens in science, in business, and in the arts. (This is essentially what we’re doing at Missional Labs. I think of other groups like Praxis, Searock, KDI, the MLC, and many more doing similar work).
Building the bridge. Eventually, the dominant system has to figure out what to do - it can manage decline, or it can begin to build a bridge, moving its assets and resources and embedded wisdom to the new system. The existence of this bridge is not a given, and it can even be hostile (in high-stakes business mergers, for example). It takes trustworthy leaders on both sides to meaningfully build this bridge, because so much is at stake. This bridge often looks like "innovation capital," as mature organizations try to invest in their own R&D, invest in new projects, develop new leaders, etc. Building new models of patronage, and strengthening the fabric between old and new is critical to the outcomes.
Revival-Renewal-Mission Cycles
So translating it back to the Church, here's the pattern and takeaway, as I see it:
Institutional Decline > Spiritual Decay > Spiritual Revival > Missional Energy > Structural Innovation.
Institutional and cultural crises create the social context for renewal. These are the "disruptions" that challenge our institutions and norms, and create new liminal, liquid social contexts, that leave people feeling spiritually and practically disoriented.
Spiritual decay and decline set an imagination for awakening. We hear language like "holy discontent," or spiritual embers, old wells, dry bones, etc, all speaking to the idea of a longing for vitality and vibrancy. Tactics and strategies for growth fail. Prayer and hunger is the only option left.
Revival activates the spiritual dimension of renewal. Spiritual awakening, through repentance, the recovery of the Biblical story, and the work of the Holy Spirit, leads to a new vitality, energy, and purity to Christians in a cultural context.
Mission is the vocational dimension of renewal. Revival leads to a re-orientation and recovery of the Christian imagination for life in the world. We gain a renewed energy and vitality for creatively bringing our spirituality and faith to bear on our public lives in various ways. We have a hunger to push the boundaries and do a new thing.
Innovation is the structural dimension of renewal. This inevitably leads to the creation of new forms, as tools and technology and social structures change, and people now have the imagination and internal resources to make sacrifices, to pioneer, and to start again to reach new people. The energy and insights of renewal get codified into new forms, which become the resourcing institutions of the next generation.
So, revivals happen when the shedding of structural baggage and the hunger and desperation of a new generation reaches a fever pitch, centered in prayer and repentance. With that, we can anticipate the upcoming activation of latent missional energy.
This is where we also need radical openness to new wineskins - because the structures and forms hat we’ve had in the past won’t be the structures of mission in the future. Too much has changed.
So for those who are invested in mission, encounter, cultural engagement, and innovation - our highest priorities should be to embrace disorientation, pray and work for revival, and fan the flames of emerging missional leaders, and help them build what the Spirit puts in their heart.
Implications
I think there are a few implications for leadership in our moment:
Figure out how you want to relate to institutional decline. If you want to be a reformer, or a stabilizer, or a disruptor, or a deconstructionist, then great, but do it well. Locate yourself on the curve and figure out your calling.
Seek out spiritual renewal. This is a map, not a strategy. We need spiritual renewal to break in from the outside - all we bring is holy discontent, hunger, repentance, and longing. We need God’s spirit to move. Spiritual potency is the beating heart of all mission and cultural renewal work.
Find the pioneers. This is the moment for new imagination. Who are the people trying new things? They are sensing out the future in various ways and need help doing the deep work of imagination and vocation.
Build emerging networks. Our most important missional priorities right now at the macro level should be to build new networks around emerging leaders and pioneers. This isn't marketing and faux "movements" - it should be deep webs of committed relationships. The future will come from these.
Build transition bridges. We need leaders, especially those in positions of power in our churches, foundations, seminaries, and institutions, to watch the landscape closely, and think in terms of how to investing spiritual and practical resources into emerging pioneers, through leadership programs, apprenticeships, accelerators, innovation projects, and more. This is how we steward revival and new vitality, and channel it into long term institution building.
I think the next 10 years will be very potent, and this is at least partially the roadmap for what we'll see happen.
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