Monday, September 24, 2007
Report from conference on the 150th Anniversary of the Fulton Street Revival in New York City
Report from Peter Armstrong. Peter is worship director at Bellevue CRC and a student at Fuller Seminary NW in Seattle. He is currently studying at Calvin Theological Seminary and interning at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. He filed this report Friday.
This evening I had the great pleasure of attending the opening session of the 150th Anniversary of the Fulton Street Revival, held at the Hilton in Midtown. The Fulton Street Revival was started on September 23, 1857 by Jeremiah Lamphier. In response to Manhattan’s great spiritual and social need, Lamphier organized a noontime prayer meeting. After a poor first meeting (6 people came, 20 minutes late) the Spirit blew across Manhattan. In the months to follow, between 80,000 and 100,000 people (out of a population of 800,000) committed their lives to Jesus Christ. 80,000 were baptized and joined churches because of what became known as the Third Great Awakening. This movement spawned tremendous missions in the major cities of the United States—Chicago, Philadelphia and Brooklyn (yes, it was a separate city at that point) and around the world. The conference has been organized by many denominations and parachurch organizations in order to study revival and pray for revival in New York City.
After a fine dinner of chicken and cheesecake, we were led in worship by a very gifted group of musicians and worship leaders. I deeply appreciated the multicultural makeup of the band, which represented the multiculturalism of the conference. The mix of hymns and modern worship brought the room to life, even after a long week of work and full stomachs. I thanked God for the power of worshiping God with 1100 brothers and sisters in the Lord.
The conference is being sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in America and a number of parachurch and Christian organizations (such as American Bible Society, Bethel Seminary, and more). The plenary speaker tonight was Presbyterian/Reformed pastor Tim Keller, founder of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. Is the mainline going Pentecostal? It sure seemed like it this evening! And frankly, I love it. I love to see people stretched beyond their comfort zones and called by God into a new thing. Of course, this is defining ‘Pentecostal’ very narrowly. I am reminded of John Witvliet’s distinguishing and defining features of the Spirit at a conference last weekend: at times, in worship, the Spirit moves in surprising ways. But we are wise to remember that the Spirit also works through our worship planning meetings, sermon manuscripts and church calendar. The Holy Spirit of surprise was on full display tonight, at least to these eyes.
Following this spirited time of worship and prayer in groups of two, Tim Keller was introduced. My friend Drew Angus described Keller’s strengths: “He understands the gospel. He understands culture. He understands mission.” Indeed, Keller is a deeply gifted pastor, missiologist and communicator. He was introduced as the pastor of the most successful urban church plant in North America. Like a fool and a rookie blogger, I forgot a pen. But here are my thoughts from Dr. Keller’s message.
Dr. Keller spoke about 1) What is Revival? and 2) What is the role of the city in revival? Having been a student of revivals for 35 years, Keller had much to share. He professed a deep interest in both the First and Second Great Awakenings, but especially Fulton Street because of his love for NYC. He said that he has often gone to the corner where the old Dutch church stood, where Lamphier held these first prayer meetings in order to pray on that hallowed ground. He held a succinct definition of revival, stating that it has three characteristics: the gospel of grace is recovered, imagination is involved and prayer is central. He explored the first of these topics by reminding us how often we get the gospel wrong. Part of our sinfulness as humans is that we constantly try to change the gospel into some form of works-righteousness; no part of Christianity is immune from this tendency. Mainline liberals say that God loves us because we do social justice; evangelicals say that God loves us because we have the right doctrine; charismatics say that God loves us because of the purity of the way we worship and that we have “confessed every known sin.” All of us, he said, get it wrong! The gospel of grace is inside us, but it has to take deep root. I greatly enjoy Keller’s discussion of grace. He seems to speak out of this experience in his own life of struggling to live more deeply into the grace that Christ promises.
He went on to say that no revival is the same because imagination and creativity is deeply involved. He cited the Second Great Awakening’s use of tent revival meetings as evidence of this. The elements that revivals have in common is their sense of the gospel and their dedication to prayer. As one who is married to a very creative person and who enjoys creative outlets himself, I was pleasantly surprised by Keller’s third element: creativity alongside grace. He reminded us that God has given us this creativity in order to find new ways to communicate the gospel to a changing culture.
These three elements of revival—recovery of the gospel, imagination and prayer—have three results. One, committed church folk who have been in the pews and been tithing their whole lives realize that they have never been converted to Jesus Christ and His mission. They decide to convert because of these revivals. Second, nominals, less-involved, “sleepy” church people are awakened and they convert. Third, people outside the church see the amazing community and the momentum of the church and they too decide to follow Jesus and His mission.
The second half of Keller’s talk was brief, but it centered on the power of cities to change cultures. A quick glance at the power of the media and the influence that NYC has in everything from music to fashion to food proves this. He asked us to imagine revival happening across the country without it happening in NYC. Few of us could do it. Keller stated that revival—both spiritually and socially—is not going to happen in North America until it happens in the cities. I share Keller’s conviction on this point. And we must love our cities enough to critique them. For instance, New Yorkers, he said, can be prideful and arrogant. He implied that the Christian leaders of NYC must create a definition of a Christian New Yorker: one who loves the city but is humble.
The fervent time of worship and this engaging plenary talk left me with much to reflect on in these days. I look forward to hearing your comments or e-mails on ministry in the city, what revival would look like today, and neo-pentecostal worship.
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