Church Revitalization: A 100 year old perspective

In the Reports of the Conference we find the same thoughts expressed in different words. Thus in Vol. I., “Carrying the Gospel,” we read under 3A, “The missionary problem of the Church to-day is not primarily a financial problem, but it is how to ensure a vitality equal to the imperial expansion of the missionary programme. The only hope of this is for Christians to avail themselves of the more abundant life through Christ, bestowed in the pathway of obedience to Him.”

Again, “A crucial factor in the evangelisation of the non-Christian world is the state of the Church in Christian lands. Until there is a more general consecration on the part of the members of the Home Church, there can be no hope of such an expansion of the missionary enterprise, as to result in making the knowledge of Jesus Christ readily accessible to every human being.”

Once more: “The most direct and effective way to promote the evangelisation of the world is to influence the workers, and indeed the whole membership of the Church, to yield themselves completely to the sway of Christ as Lord, and to establish and preserve at all costs those habits of spiritual culture which ensure lives of a Christlike witnessing and spiritual power.”

The Introduction to the Report on “The Home Base of Missions” (Vol. VI.), on its very first page speaks of securing, above all else, “such a spiritual atmosphere throughout the Church, that the very temper and spirit of Jesus Christ shall live a new in the hearts of all His followers, and that through them His life may flow forth to the world lying in darkness.”

Andrew Murray, The State of the Church: A Plea for More Prayer, Third Edition (London: J. Nisbet & Co., 1912), 2–4.

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