In the “JCC Vision” for the seven years from 2023, the elders have set out an aim: “to engage the whole Church in mission” and unpacked that, practically, by painting a picture of a wheel held together and resourced by a hub – JCC – supporting new and growing Jubilee community fellowships.

 

Whatever type of wheel you may have in mind one thing is clear: wheels all need motive power. The church seems prone to slipping into periods of motive powerlessness when the the rim of the wheel becomes bent, the spokes become loose or distorted and the hub rusts. There’s power available but it isn’t getting to where it’s needed and the whole wheel needs revival.

 

Colin Whittaker’s book, “Great Revivals” has reminded me of what’s involved when God responds to the heart cries of his people, not only in praying for the lost, but also in recognising their own need of spiritual revival. The overwhelming impact of the book, I found, is to provide immense encouragement through the reporting of historical revivals. However, praying for revival is also clearly costly and playing our part in it no less so. As Terry Virgo writes: “Few books on revival are as accessible and rewarding as this and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you. I pray that your own desires and longings for revival might be freshly stirred by rubbing shoulders with great heroes and giants of the past as you read their stories and the amazing outpourings of the Spirit that they experienced.”

 

In his 1959 sermons on the Ulster Revival, the Rev Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones argued that the UK had so lost its way spiritually that only revival could turn the nation around. It amazed Terry Virgo to realise that the Dr “preached before the 60’s … before all the moral devastation that has taken place in this nation in the [period] that has followed. If we needed revival in 1959 how desperately we need it now.

 

By a church member