We have been building the altar of the church, laying down the landing pad for the helicopter of the Spirit. And we have said that a strategy for building the regional altar in preparation for a move of God is a shared rhythm of united, extraordinary prayer. But there is other work required to build the altar and it is the work of reconciliation.

On the night before he died, Jesus prayed … “that they may be brought to complete unity”. But that oneness feels far off, doesn’t it? We have been sliced and diced over the centuries - atomized into a thousand pieces. Our experience of church is not the one Jesus saw. When the New Testament speaks to the church in Ephesus, the church in Smyrna it addresses them as one. One Jesus. One church.

When the chips are down, what do we do? Do we binge Netflix? Pour ourselves a drink? Take a nap? Reach for the phone and start scrolling? Text a friend to vent? Bury ourselves in busyness so we don't have to feel it? Lie awake at night and worry? Everyone has a reflex when the pressure comes.

Witnessing the advent of the New Testament Church as it is recorded in the book of Acts, something very basic should strike us. Namely, that the Church is a spiritual organism. She is BORN by the Holy Spirit. She LIVES in and by the Spirit, and it follows that the Church would/will PERISH for want of the Spirit. 

I am all for strategic planning, and I even enjoy it. I teach our interns a tool I picked up in college ministry, the planning cycle: vision, mission, goals, strategies, plans, execution, debrief, coaching. I've led whole leadership teams through it. There is real value in planning. As Eisenhower put it, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

When Jesus arrived at the temple that first Holy Week, He walked into a flurry of religious activity. Animals were being sold, money was being changed, sacrifices were underway — a veritable three-ring circus of religious devotion. And yet Jesus was displeased. So displeased, in fact, that He deliberately fashioned a whip of cords and set about disrupting the whole enterprise.

The Biblical strategy for intergenerational revival involves families. The primary vehicle of intergenerational discipleship is not the youth group or the Sunday sermon. It's the home. The minivan. The dinner table. 

Beyond dealing rightly with our own hearts, what follows next? Moses continues in Deut. 6:7 “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” 

Some years ago, an acquaintance of mine, Jon Tyson, set out to study revival. He took his family on a world tour of past revival sites, visiting site after site - well over a dozen places around the world where God’s spirit had genuinely moved. He was looking for underlying principles. Is there something we can learn about how to pray for revival and how to prepare for it?

Duncan Campbell put it plainly: revival comes when the fire of God falls on the altar of the heart, the home, the church, and the region. These are the concentric circles. And the New England Revival Covenant is, at its core, a strategy for building the altar in each of those domains.

I spent years building the machinery of ministry. Mostly on college campuses. Planting chapters. Evangelism strategies, evangelism stations on the main green, getting and filing contact cards, vision talks, involvement fair outreach funnels. Small groups and manuscript Bible studies. None of it was wrong. It was all good, necessary work. It was the nuts and bolts of ministry. But here is the standing temptation - at least it was mine.

As we are drawn up to share in the life of Jesus, we will find ourselves sharing in the work of Jesus, as we come to share the heart and desire of Jesus; for his people, and for the world.

Before the church became the church, there was a prayer meeting.

Eleven disciples. The women. Mary the mother of Jesus. A hundred and twenty other souls crowded into an upper room in Jerusalem. There was no agenda, no program, no order of service, no certainty about what came next. There was only this: they all joined together constantly in prayer.

"Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"

The question reveals how little the disciples actually understood about what would happen next. Even after forty days of being taught by the resurrected Jesus, the disciples were still thinking in old categories. A national hope. Political and perhaps military restoration. Of ethnic Israel. 

They were not totally wrong. But they were mostly wrong.

Take a deep breath; I’m not here to talk about politics. I’m here to talk about the Bible.

Scripture references left and right over 200 times. Symbolically, the right side represents strength, honor, favor, power, and blessing. Conversely, the left hand often represents weakness and opposition.

That’s what the two disciples told the unnamed man on the Emmaus Road. As Red told Andy in The Shawshank Redemption, “hope is a dangerous thing; hope can drive a man insane.” It is hard to think of a more deflating and debilitating thing than hope when it is spoken of in this way, in the past tense.

It’s in rough shape today. But in the summer of 1780, in the small village of Acton, Maine a revival broke out under the ministry of an itinerant pastor by the name of Tozier Lord. Fifty people came to faith, and a brand new congregation was born.

The other day I sat with a pastor in the Boston area - faithful, thoughtful, grounded in a tradition that hasn’t always emphasized the supernatural. But his context is forcing new questions. In an urban setting, people are walking in off the streets carrying more than visible needs. There are layers of oppression that counseling alone cannot resolve. There are realities that are not merely psychological or social, but spiritual.

Not long ago, I drove with friends to one of the most historic churches in Providence. It stands at the physical center of downtown — white, immaculate, magnificent. Its spire has risen over the city skyline for centuries.

The progression of Holy Week seems to have a way of recalibrating my faith to the realities of what Jesus Christ walked through to pave the way for us to be set free.