The Church Is Full and the Land Is Still Dark

Nigeria has about 100 million Christians, according to Professor Gary S. Maxey. Pentecostals alone now number many times what they did at independence in 1960. New auditoriums open every month. Social media carries sermons into every phone. By any count of heads, the church is winning.

Yet the same land holds corruption, fraud, violence and a loss of public trust in church leaders. A retired Presbyterian prelate wrote to Professor Maxey that he had never seen a nation with so many churches and so little righteousness. A professor of religion told him the church is multiplying everywhere with no marked change in the lives of the people.

Both men are describing a gap. Growth has come, and change has not.

Growth is not the same as revival

Professor Maxey makes a plain point. If a bigger crowd proved revival, we would have to say the Mormons are in revival, since they are growing fast too. Nobody believes this. Numbers measure attendance. They say nothing about repentance.

His own definition is worth keeping close. Biblical revival is a spontaneous awakening by the Holy Spirit among professing Christians. A deepening sense of need and an earnest prayer for mercy come first. Repentance, restitution and reconciliation follow. A deeper walk with God, holy living, evangelism and missions come after. Read the definition again and notice what is missing. It has no mention of crowds, volume, miracles or buildings.

A warning from Uganda

Uganda in the 1920s looked healthy. A third of the people professed Christ. The whole Bible was translated. Evangelists had gone out by the hundreds. Nearly every chief and every member of the governing council was a Christian.

Under the surface, the church had grown dry. Old rituals had crept back. Popular sins were no longer rebuked, even among members. Worship had become formal. Missionary historians say the church was ripe for revival, and revival came. It began among people who admitted they were empty, and it ran for roughly fifty years across East Africa.

Revival did not come to Uganda because the church was failing in numbers. It came because a few believers named their spiritual poverty out loud.

The danger of feeling well

God does not pour out revival on people who think they are doing fine. Professor Maxey says this more than once, and he says it because a full church is the easiest place to feel fine. Every Sunday seems to prove God is pleased. The offering is high, the choir is sharp, the pastor is celebrated. Nobody weeps.

The Nigerian church has known real awakenings. Professor Maxey names three. Garrick Braide's movement in the Niger Delta between 1909 and 1918 saw baptized Christians multiply thirteen times. The prophetic healing revival of the 1930s reached hundreds of thousands in the southwest. The Civil War Revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s began among students and refugee youth in Scripture Union camps. Hundreds of thousands came to the Lord, and hundreds of new churches were planted.

That last revival faded by the mid-1970s. More than forty years have passed, and he writes that Nigeria has not seen anything like it since.

What this asks of us

The question for a Christian reader is personal before it is national. A country is revived one conscience at a time. Do you carry a sense of need, or a sense of comfort? Is there a sin you have stopped mentioning to God because you have grown used to it? Is your church counting how many came, or how many changed?

The psalmist asked, "Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?" (Psalm 85:6). He placed rejoicing at the end of the sentence. The asking comes first.

Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.