Opinion:- Rev Dr Malcolm Falloon
Is it just me, or is there a growing sense of prayer and expectation among the New Zealand churches to see the revival of God’s people? A number of us have recently participated in Gather25, a global call for prayer, repentance, and mission. Others have attended Open Heaven and The Send. As we look to forward to what God might do among us we can also take encouragement by looking back to what he has already done in the past.
This is particularly relevant at this time of year, for Ash Wednesday marks the 195th anniversary of the beginning of the Māori Conversion – New Zealand’s original and largest revival. Beginning on Ash Wednesday 1830, and then for a period of twenty years, over 90% of Māori (some 70,000 people) came to profess Christianity.
On that Wednesday evening, 24 February 1830, the CMS missionary, Richard Davis, led the scheduled weekly service for the one hundred or so Māori living at the Paihia mission station in the Bay of Islands. After taking the prayers, Davis concluded the service as usual with a sermon. What was not usual was the degree of attention given him by his congregation. So much so that when he had finished speaking he invited as many as were “particulalry desirous for the salvation of their souls” to gather at his home for further conversation. Thirty men and boys took up his invitation, and a similar number of women and girls gathering with Davis’s eldest daughter, Mary Ann.
It was a night that transformed a mission and established a church. Davis wrote in his journal, “I had the pleasure of spending such an evening as scarely falls to the lot of mortals.” The spiritual awakening that started that night continued over the coming days, and very soon the interest of a few became more general.
Before long before the revival had spread to the other two mission stations, despite the chaos of war breaking out in the wider community. Soon the Gospel was spreading far beyond the reach of the small band of missionaries. Looking back on events in 1867, the missionary William Williams wrote that a “tender sapling” had taken root in New Zealand soil that summer’s evening, yet it was one that had matured to become one of the “trees of the forest.”
There are three lessons for today’s church looking for revival:
Firstly, we need to remain persistent in word and prayer. These are what the early missionaries termed the ordinary means of grace. They had laboured for fifteen years with little encouragement before revival became. Yet throughout that time, they remained expectant that the Gospel would bear much fruit in God’s providential timing. We too need to remain expectant and not loose heart, but devote ourselves to God’s word and prayer.
Secondly, lasting revival will centre on repentance and the forgiveness of sin in Christ’s name. It was their experience of answered prayer for a new heart within that led early Māori converts to publicly profession their faith in baptism. True repentance is a very different experience to the hype and spectacle often expected by our modern world. It is different because true repentance turns our focus away from ourselves and towards the holiness of God and his presence among his people by his Holy Spirit.
Thirdly, revival and mission go hand-in-hand. The early converts had a great compassion for the lost, for they knew that, without Christ, all people stood under God’s eternal judgement. Their motivation was obedience to the command of Christ, but even more so to the compassion of Christ towards sinners. We too need to pray for that same compassion to send us out in mission and obedience to the Great Commission of Christ.
Rev Dr Malcolm Falloon is a board member of The New Zealand Christian Network.
