Kindred Sessions #1: Reformation Precedes Revival

RevDOC #1

Reformation Precedes Revival

If you know me (KB), you know I’m not the queen of keeping it short and sweet… but I will try my best.

You know how, on game shows, they’ll occasionally throw some dude into one of those “money wind tunnel” things, and the objective is to grab as much cash as possible as it swirls around you and undoubtedly gives you a million paper cuts? Apparently, those things have a name and they are called money booths -- according to Wikipedia -- or cash booths, or money machines, or cash cubes. I had no idea. “The more you know,” right?

Anyway… that’s the best way I can describe what the last few months have been like in terms of God’s revelation. His voice has always been present in the world -- his words accessible, his hand moving; but COVID-19 has been an accelerator, a proverbial wind tunnel, sending countless revelations within reach at warp speed. The instant you catch one, there are a hundred more waiting to be caught. I wish I had a million more hands to grasp the wisdom he’s giving. 

If I had to choose one thing, it’s this: reformation precedes revival. 

Right when the pandemic hit the U.S., I got the strong sense that God wants to reform his church in order to revive it. So often, American evangelical churches pray for “revival,” a phenomenon typified by widespread faith in God and repentance of sin, that has occurred in church history multiple times, and forget that there is an equally important work that precedes it: reformation. “The action or process of reforming an institution or practice.” One well-known pastor in the U.S. says the book of Hebrews was written to a church that desperately needed to reform before it could revive. These Christians were, to modernize the concept, “stuck.” They were tired, or perhaps discouraged, clinging too closely to ancillary or elementary aspects of the faith… and they needed to move into maturity.

Reformation -- the process of structural change, of weeding out sin and corruption -- clears the way for revival. Is that not what we see happening, especially on a large scale? As tumultuous and contentious a time as this is, especially in the U.S., we’re seeing cultural sin revealed. We’re seeing injustice and structural oppression (which God says he hates, BTW) “cranked up to 11,” and publicly confronted. 

As difficult as this time is corporately, I can’t ignore the hope that lies in it. I see the hand of God moving, I do. I think now, the questions I’m asking myself are, how is God reforming me so he can revive me? How is the local church being changed, how does it NEED to change, so it can thrive and the glory of God be seen? 

This is the work. And, if you’re reading this, I believe you’re asking yourself the same questions. 

Perhaps you’re wondering what the term “Rev Docs” refers to. Makes sense -- as far as we know, we just made it up. 

Me (Kristine Brown), and my friends Liz and Mike Mumford, are in the process of planting a church. This process also resembles a money booth (or cash booth, or money machine, or cash cube), with considerations, and ideas, and convictions, and roadblocks, and breakthroughs, all converging and coming at us at warp speed. 

This blog, Rev Docs -- shorthand for ‘Revelation Documents’ --  is our way of trying to process our time in the revelatory money booth, sharing what we’ve grasped and giving it to you. 

I can’t explain how grateful I am that we’re here; and that you’re here. Let’s see what happens. 

-KB