Public Witness

Revival doesn't stay in the building. Sustained long enough, it renews the systems, structures, and cultures of a society. The awakenings changed more than the church. They changed the culture around it.

Acts 17 gives us a window into that dynamic.

Paul is waiting in Athens, and he can't sit still. He wanders the city and sees idols everywhere. His spirit is provoked within him. So he reasons in the synagogue, and he reasons in the marketplace every day with whoever happens to be there. Eventually he is brought to the Areopagus, Mars Hill, and asked to give an account of his teaching. Athens is the ultimate university town. These are the thought leaders of the ancient world. Paul doesn't flinch. He quotes their poets and proclaims Jesus and the resurrection.

Now consider where we live. Charles Taylor calls ours a secular age, one in which religion has been quietly moved out of public space and into private space. N.T. Wright describes it as a split-level building. Downstairs is public truth, and God is generally unwelcome there. Upstairs is private truth. Believe whatever you like, and so will I, as long as nobody brings it downstairs.

Paul sees no such building. He takes the most public space in Athens and proclaims Jesus there.

Now, Athens wasn't an awakening. A handful believed. But watch what the Spirit does wherever he moves. At Pentecost, the gospel erupts into the streets of Jerusalem. In Acts 3, a healing at the temple gate fills Solomon's Portico with a crowd. In Acts 4, Peter and John stand before the very rulers who condemned Jesus, filled with the Spirit, and say they cannot stop speaking. When the Spirit moves, the gospel goes public.

Seventeen centuries later, George Whitefield rode up and down the colonies, and crowds in the tens of thousands came out to hear him. Ben Franklin, no evangelical, stood in one of them, worked out how far Whitefield's voice carried, and emptied his pockets into the offering. Before the Awakening, thirteen colonies. After it, the first shared public experience across all of them.

That's what revival does. A boldness returns to the church. A conviction that truth is one, and can't be shut out of public life just because it has to do with God. Secularism has exorcised God from the world and left us with an immanent frame, closed off from transcendence. But when the Lord begins to move, he pierces the bubble.

So notice how the early church prayed under threat. They didn't ask for the pressure to lift. They asked for boldness. And the place where they were gathered shook.

Let's pray that way. For open doors in workplaces, classrooms, city halls, and coffee shops. And for courage when they open: to speak winsomely, thoughtfully, humbly, and boldly.

Lord, grant your servants boldness. And let's see what you do.

Rev. Chris Bannon
Area Coordinator North, Revive New England