An Historic Take on the Importance of What We’re All Shooting For/ Charles Park (New York)
From Dave: My friend
Charles Park, whom many of you heard as the kickoff speaker at this year’s
Culture Center Summit, recently e-mailed me with how he’s been thinking about
the importance of the task we all have taken on. Charles is as good as anyone I’ve met in
thinking about things from the big picture, so I thought you might enjoy his
insights as much as I did. His remarks
assume a working knowledge of what we’ve called “Stage 4 Faith,” something you
can learn more about—if it’s new to you—by clicking on the tab of that name,
above or watching the video below. I’d love your thoughts on Charles’
perspective.
There is a pattern to revivals both in the Bible and in church history. First, you get a people group in trouble: oppressed or in barbaric, chaotic state. Think of Israel in captivity in Egypt, or Europe in Dark Ages overrun by the Barbarians, or some Third World country plagued with alcoholism and criminal chaos. If you’re familiar with the stage theory, that’d be stage 1. Then, God’s message comes in through the church, and people start to clean up their act, work ethic comes in, God’s blessings flow, and the country prospers: the Promised Land or a chaotic developing country becomes developed. That’d be stage 2. Then, over several generations, people become apostate. Israel starts worshiping other gods. Developed countries go secular humanist. That could be labeled stage 3.
What the church usually does at this point is to lament and point fingers, warning of God’s judgment to come. But, here’s an interesting thought. If the church is only able to preach a stage 2 message, the nation that has gone to stage 3 will never listen, because their identity is shaped by the rejection of stage 2. Even logic won’t work any more, because our identity and culture shapes our logic. If this goes on for hundreds of years, what option does God have? If the church won’t preach a message that the world can listen to, then the only option God has is to move the world back to stage 1 so that some may be saved. Think of The Flood. Babylon. The Black Plague. What’s next?
It's sort of an exalted view of the role of the church, but I believe the Bible has a high view of the church's role in history. The challenging question that arises from this reflection is this. The church has historically lamented people going apostate, but can the church do better than just point fingers?
Can we preach a stage 4 message that will lead to a stage 4 revival? Not Religious Inc. is trying to craft a movement of churches to develop a stage 4 revival in the Western world that has gone stage 3. If every revival has followed the trajectory described before, then this cause is critical.
