SHOULD THE SYSTEM BE SAVED?

A story of a patched-up old wineskin leaking all over the place!

In 1993, at the very beginning of “Souffle Nouveau Ministry”, when we were all euphoric at seeing what God was doing in our midst, from the freedom that seemed to reign in our midst to the wind of “foolishness” that drove us to give everything for the Kingdom of God, I received a vision.

I could see Jesus standing at the top of a hill, his arms laden with provisions of all kinds, ready to bless those who came near. At the bottom of the hill, masses of people were busy gathering bitter herbs in wicker baskets. From time to time, they looked towards Jesus with envy, but for all that, none of them stopped collecting to approach Christ. Standing beside him, I could feel my Savior’s dismay…

I’ll spare you the various messages this vision has inspired in my long career as a preacher, about stepping out in faith, turning one’s back on the past and so on. This morning, my wife and I were discussing the fact that the world seems to be going downhill spiritually, and that many people are calling for prayer in evangelical circles to counter this trend and come to the rescue of our Judeo-Christian values. But aren’t these things foretold long ago, in the Bible? That’s what I said in a post I made about the olympics opening ceremony

It was during this conversation that the memory of this vision came back to me like a boomerang thrown too long ago, and which I had forgotten.

Rejecting God’s plan because it’s not “comfortable”.

“From that time Jesus began to make known to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes, be put to death, and rise again on the third day. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying: God forbid, Lord!
This will not happen to you”.

In these calls to prayer, many are announcing a great revival to come, and I do indeed believe that this awakening is here, on our doorstep. But sadly, many will fail to recognize it when it comes, for it will have neither the shape, nor the container, nor the fragrance of those we have thought of as “revival” up to now.

In 1999-2000, on Reunion Island, where we were missionaries, we experienced what we called a revival. Over 200 baptisms in 18 months, lives transformed, healings, deliverances and so on. But in the midst of this magnificent momentum, we hit a wall. We took it head-on, and it hurt, really hurt… the church, me, my family. We took a sabbatical in 2001.

I was devastated, I had always believed that in this work we were different, that this couldn’t happen. God had spoken to us, we didn’t do things like everyone else, we were better, more spiritual, less religious… at least, that’s what I’d believed. But I was wrong… we’d just done what everyone else had been doing for 20 centuries. I left there full of bitterness.

But what is a revival ?

I’ve found many different definitions on the Internet. I’ll give you two here: “The Revival of a Church is a movement of conversions to God. For a man to turn to his Father in the manner of the prodigal son and resolve to change his life is an admirable thing, a miracle of the Spirit. For twenty, thirty, forty people to make that decision and enter into life, that’s a Reawakening.” I confess I don’t really agree with this definition; I prefer this one, also found on the internet: Revival begins when believers are deeply dissatisfied with the spiritual life of the Church in general and their own in particular. They realize that God’s Word promises something better. They pray because they’re thirsty for new life to spread, starting with themselves.”

This seems to me to be more in line with Jesus’ words in Revelation 3:20: “Be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock”. Conversions and miracles are the fruit of a revival, not a revival in itself. Revival is first and foremost a matter of repentance. Individual and collective awareness of the state of torpor in which the Body of Christ finds itself, and of the reasons that lead to this state.

Bitter herbs in a basket.

One of the reasons is the shape the church has taken in the course of its history over 20 centuries! I talk about this in a previous article on “What we called church”.

Today, it’s clear that many Christians have deserted meetings, despite Paul’s injunction not to stop meeting together. While researching for this article, I came across some rather interesting figures.

The frequency and intensity of religious practice in France varies according to the religion declared: only 8% of Catholics attend a place of worship regularly (at least once a month), compared with just over 20% of other Christians (Protestants and Evangelicals combined) and Muslims. Finally, 34% of Jews have a regular religious practice. (Source Insee – 2019)

If these figures are to be believed – and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be – 80% of Christians who call themselves evangelical Protestants are no longer regular attenders at their local church. Does this make them backward-looking? I doubt it.

Those I met in 30 years of ministry rarely were. They simply couldn’t stand the proven dichotomy between what they understood about the Gospel and what they were experiencing in their churches. Many saw their hearts gradually fill with bitterness, resentment, anger and rejection. How many, when they expressed their doubts, were rebuffed? I know: I did it myself when I was a pastor. How many times did I tell someone who complained about the lack of love in the church that all he had to do was bring more love himself! I’m ashamed today to have answered that so arrogantly in the face of such a legitimate observation.

A brother, whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, told me that he had never been so judged, condemned and therefore bruised as during his years in the church. As a pastor, I’m forced to admit that it was the same for me.


 Even back then, a pastor to whom I had shared my thoughts on the subject when I was in Bible school had replied: “You have far too many expectations; the church is just people like everyone else”! It’s true, sadly, yet it shouldn’t be. Aren’t we supposed to be different? Being like everyone else and accepting it is a principle that has too often turned our meetings into “baskets of bitter herbs”.

Should we save the system?

JI was reading this morning (05/08/2024) an article on the RFI (Radio France International) website announcing that in Rwanda the government had closed nearly 4,000 places of worship in the space of a few weeks, mainly evangelical churches, but also mosques.

Mosques, why not? … but Christian assemblies, oh no! My God, do something… please!

At the time, I felt angry at such persecution, but very quickly I said to myself: “Well, now we can start waking up!

In fact, do we really need to pray hard for our old wineskins to be saved? What use are they if just to serve as goodwill for the ministry’s “pros”?

When the pressure becomes too great and they finally burst, the new wine can spill out, into the squares and markets, and the “jar” church can finally become local! This is what happened in Acts 8: “Saul approved of Stephen’s execution. On that day, a great persecution broke out against the Church in Jerusalem, and everyone, except the apostles, scattered to the various regions of Judea and Samaria”.

It took the execution of Stephen and the persecution that followed, long after Pentecost, for the church to finally agree to obey Jesus’ injunction: “to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

The explosion of the old wineskins, more than persecution from the world, could become God’s kick-off to the greatest revival of all time.

The Church could finally focus on something other than preserving its “Judeo-Christian values”, which won’t save anyone anyway, and get on with advancing the Kingdom of God.

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