Revival: An Intergenerational Relay Race
Before a Jesus movement comes a John the Baptist movement.
Before the Lord visits, he sends agents ahead to prepare us. John was one of these. And Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, told us to expect him: God would send his messenger before his coming, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to ready a people for the Lord. One task in particular marked this servant out. He would "turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers" (Malachi 4:6).
We are contending for a Jesus visitation. Ultimately the great one, when he comes in glory to judge the living and the dead and make all things new. But in the meantime we pray for a preview, a foretaste. We call it revival. We call it awakening.
But if we pay attention to Malachi, the preview has a herald. Before the move of the Spirit comes a turning of the generations toward one another.
Why does this matter so much? What does intergenerational love have to do with renewal or awakening? Let me share some reflections. We live in an age of generational silo. Each decade tends to keeps to its own. Crossing generations is in many ways akin to crossing cultures. But generations were actually made to give gifts to each other, we were made to be interdependent. When each generation understands and embraces the role God handed them, and blesses and releases the role he handed the others, something ignites. A kind of holy chemistry. Stay in our siloes, and the reaction never takes place. Notice also that Malachi frames the turning as what averts a curse. Missing the opportunity of this holy intergenerational chemistry exposes us and the land to a curse. As my grandfather would say, “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
At the Consecrate 2026 conference we experienced a taste of the holy chemistry of the generations turning toward each other in love and blessing. The room held a surprising and unusually wide and even spread of folks from every decade of life, twenties through eighties. Dr. David Thomas called the young to the center and asked the elders to come and bless them. This was beautiful, and expected. But then he did the unexpected. He asked the young to bless the old.
Something released. It activated the younger ones into their actual calling in a move of revival: leadership. Because revivals are so often carried by the young, not the middles, not the elders. And so the assignment for those of us in the middle is not to lead the awakening ourselves. It is to believe in the young, to behold their gifting, to call it out, and to give them real room to run. And it also did something powerful in the old. And I put myself in that category. To be blessed and honored and prayed for by those in their twenties deeply and profoundly touched my heart. I still don’t have words for it, honestly.
I realized, I do not want to reach the end of my ministry and realize I missed the main assignment. Paul told Timothy: entrust what you have received to faithful people who can teach others. We are running a relay. Which means it is possible for one generation to run their leg well and still lose the race if we fail to pass the baton.
We need one another to win the race. The young cannot lead well uncoached. My generation cannot coach unless we are covered and blessed by the generation above us. It takes every generation working together for a revival to become transformational and lasting, not a season that fades. If we embrace the Lord’s heart and this intergenerational interdependence what touches one generation will be passed to the next, and potentially even grow, like a snowball rolling downhill.
And if we don’t? Whatever the Spirit does in our time is far more likely to stay siloed in one age bracket, and to die there. And that would be a tragedy.
Rev. Greg Johnson
Director, Revive New England