When the Storm Cannot Organize
A reflection for the church in New England
The book of Judges ends with a haunting line. A spiritual diagnosis.
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Now certainly in the time of judges there were beautiful stories of God’s goodness and work. The book of Ruth took place “in the time of the judges.” And yet there was a fundamental problem with Israel in this era. And it was this - “there was no king…everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” The fundamental problem with Israel in this season was that there was no organizing center, no shared direction, no unifying principle, no common submission shaping the life of the people. And so the nation lived in cycles. Spiritual momentum would rise in one place, then fade. A judge would appear, deliverance would come, and then the people would drift again.
The problem in Israel was not a lack of spiritual activity. It was a lack of spiritual coherence, a lack of spiritual alignment. And as a result of the lack of coherence - Israel spent significant time under the oppression and domination of its neighbors.
In meteorology, a storm becomes powerful when it organizes. At first, in any given weather system, there may be plenty of potential - humidity in the air waiting to condense and release energy. There may even be isolated thunderstorms, rain bands, shifting winds - but until the storm organizes, everything remains scattered and diffuse. Each storm cell rises and falls on its own. Nothing sustains. But once a center forms, the winds begin to align. The storms cluster instead of dispersing. A feedback loop develops. Momentum builds, and the system becomes self-sustaining.
Several weeks ago, I was praying about the church in New England. The church in New England has been on my heart for years. And I, like many others, feel a burden and a calling to seek God for renewal and revival in our time, for a next Great Awakening that will shake and shape the culture around us and cause millions to turn to God and join the Kingdom. And as I was praying I sensed the still small voice of the Spirit say this: “The storm needs to organize. Pray for the storm to organize.”
At first I had no idea what this meant. But then as I looked it up and began to study meteorology of storms, I realized that organization is the word used to describe what happens when isolated weather patterns link up and align and become something much larger.
In many ways, the church in New England resembles an unorganized storm. There are faithful congregations scattered across the region. There are prayer meetings, special efforts and initiatives, seasons of the Spirit moving, seasons when individual churches are growing significantly, and leaders all the while carrying deep burdens for God’s presence. The spiritual energy is real. But this energy often rises and falls in isolated packets. It rarely becomes regional momentum.
Part of the reason is the subtle fragmentation that runs through the wider church. Small differences in theological emphasis become dividing lines. Differences in worship style create invisible walls. Personality clashes between leaders quietly shape the limits of collaboration. Political alignments harden into spiritual fault lines. Even when there is genuine love for Jesus, these currents pull the church into separate orbits.
And then there is the tyranny of the urgent. Pastors and leaders are busy keeping the machinery of the local church running. I know. I’m one of them. We pastors are managing programs, preparing sermons, caring for crises, organizing volunteers, balancing budgets, herding the people. These are real responsibilities. But they consume nearly all available time and energy. The result is that most of our churches are absorbed in building their own congregations, maintaining their own rhythms, and solving their own problems.
Meanwhile, the wider church remains scattered.
Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God. But in practice, many of us are seeking first the survival, growth, or stability of our own local expression of the church. We are busy building our churches, while the larger movement of the Kingdom across the region remains underdeveloped and undernourished.
This is how a storm fails to organize. Not because there is no energy, but because the energy never gathers around a shared center. The enemy does not need to extinguish every prayer meeting or close every church. It is often enough to keep the people of God slightly divided, slightly distracted, slightly misaligned—each group faithful in its own lane, but without a common direction. In that state, the church remains spiritually active but regionally ineffective. Like Israel in Judges, everyone does what is right in their own eyes, and the cycles continue. And we stay under the boot of the Midianites. We never actually see Jesus reclaim a region or fill it with a zone of his manifest presence. And yet I am reminded that those who have gone before us, and have been used of God in revival, were not content with a prospering church in a dying region. Recently I came across this quote from John Chapman about Jonathan Edwards of Northampton:
For 3 days Edwards had not eaten a mouthful of food; for 3 nights he had not closed his eyes in sleep. Over and over again he was heard to pray, “O Lord, give me New England! Give me New England!’ When he arose from his knees and made his way into the pulpit that Sunday, he looked as if he had been gazing straight into the face of God. Even before he began to speak, tremendous conviction fell upon his audience.”
Are we content with an ever disorganized storm? That never becomes a hurricane? That never carries the power to take a region? And if we are not content with this, what do we do about it?
The New England Revival Covenant
This is where something like the New England Revival Covenant becomes more than an initiative. It becomes a shared circulation pattern for the church across the region. It’s not a King, but it is a shared center.
At its heart, the covenant is very simple. It does not ask churches to merge. It does not ask leaders to surrender their theological distinctives, their styles, or their structures. It does not attempt to erase differences. Instead, it offers a few shared rhythms—daily, weekly, monthly, and annually—that allow the church to begin moving in the same direction.
Daily, believers give themselves to a simple rhythm of prayer for God’s presence and for the renewal of the region. Weekly, churches enter a shared day of fasting and prayer that interrupts the tyranny of the urgent and reminds us that the Kingdom does not advance by busyness alone. Monthly, believers gather across congregational lines to pray together, softening the divisions that style, theology, and personality often harden. Annually, the region enters focused seasons of extraordinary prayer, allowing the spiritual energy of the church to cluster and intensify rather than dissipate.
Each rhythm is simple. None of them feel dramatic. But together, they create alignment over time.
The daily rhythm counters distraction.
The weekly rhythm counters isolation.
The monthly rhythm counters division.
The annual rhythm counters spiritual inertia.
These rhythms do not erase differences. But they place something deeper at the center. They create a shared gravitational pull around the presence of God and the coming of His Kingdom. Over time, the winds begin to align. The storm begins to organize.
A fellow New England pastor reminded me the other week that at the center of a hurricane or a Nor’easter is actually nothing. It is empty space…but around it is a strong, tightly organized eye wall. This is what can happen if we would commit to something like the New England Revival Covenant. It belongs to nobody, no church, no organization, no denomination, no network…only to Jesus. But around it could form a strong circle of friends in covenant to seek the Lord for Kingdom breakthrough in a region. Something sturdy enough around which a storm can organize.
A call to those who are tired, busy, or discouraged
To the pastor who feels like there are already too many demands, too many programs, too many people to care for—this is not another program to manage. It is not another initiative to add to your calendar. It is a way of re-centering your church on the one thing Jesus told us to seek first. The covenant is not about doing more. It is about aligning what you are already doing with a wider movement of prayer across the region, so your labor is not isolated but carried along by a shared current.
To the prayer leader who feels discouraged, who has tried to rally people and watched the turnout stay small, who wonders if the hunger in your heart is shared by anyone else—you are not alone. There are others across New England carrying the same longing. The covenant is meant to connect those small, flickering fires into something stronger. What feels like a lonely burden becomes a shared one.
To the believer who carries a quiet hope for revival, but sometimes feels like that hope is a smoldering wick or a bruised reed - this is an invitation, not to hype or striving, but to simple, steady agreement. Revival rarely begins with dramatic crowds. It often begins with a few people who decide to keep showing up in prayer, together, over time.
The question is not whether you can carry the whole movement.
The question is whether you are willing to align your small part with a shared center.
Storms do not organize because one cloud works harder than the others. They organize because the winds begin to move in the same direction around the same center.
The invitation is simple:
Join the daily prayer.
Enter the weekly fast.
Show up to the monthly gathering.
Lean into the annual seasons of seeking God.
And if the church in New England begins to align - quietly, steadily, prayer by prayer - momentum will come. The winds will shift. The scattered cells will begin to cluster. And what has long felt like isolated pockets of hunger may yet become a movement that reshapes the region.
A week or so after I began praying for the “storm to organize” we all saw a picture of what could happen. This was not a spiritual storm but a natural storm. The Nor’easter Bomb Cyclone, henceforth and forever known as the “Storm of ‘26” organized over New England, dropping in some places nearly 3.5 feet of snow in a span of hours. If you look at satellite imagery, you see a tightly organized storm that covered the region and beyond and shaped and reshaped the landscape and will for generations to come be in the history books. I believe this storm is a sign to encourage us. He is able to do in the spiritual realm what he just did in the natural. The time has come for the storm to organize.
The time has come for God to do in the spiritual realm what he just did in the natural realm. Let’s be part of this storm. Let’s get organized.