3 Necessary Ingredients For Revival
Pastor Jonathan Shuttlesworth
What is revival?
I’ll explain it like this…
In March of 2011 our ministry hit its first breakthrough. I was preaching in the small town of Dillsburg, PA. On Sunday morning our first service had 180 people in attendance. Sunday night it went up to 200 people. By midweek, we had a crowd of 300, and by the time Friday rolled around we had upwards of 520 people. Keep in mind, in 2011 our social media presence and reach was limited. This was before the age of livestream, Twitter, or Instagram. The meetings went on for three weeks. It was supernatural. Something broke in the spirit and people began to pour into the church. I provide you this illustration of revival not to brag, but so you have an understanding of what I’m talking about when I speak of revival.
Since 2011, I’ve held many revival meetings. I’ve come to understand the three ingredients needed for revival to occur. I want to take you through each one so that you can recognize what it takes to facilitate revival and identify when it’s taking place.
Ingredient #1: The Right Pastor
This may sound counterintuitive (because it is), but there are many preachers who don’t like being in church. It’s more common than you might think and they’re pretty easy to spot. Needless to say, this is an example of the wrong pastor to help facilitate revival.
As a pastor, you need to be able to recognize when the breath of God is blowing through your ministry and run with it. Stop looking for a specific supernatural manifestation. It will only frustrate you. God moves the way He wants to move, and it has nothing to do with some theatrical illustration of revival you’ve created in your mind.
The Bible says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” (1 Tim. 5:18). If you’re going to invite an evangelist to preach, allow them to minister the way God leads them. Common sense wouldn’t allow most pastors to invite Benny Hinn, but ask him not lay hands on people. Similarly, most would understand you shouldn’t ask Jesse Duplantis to preach but refrain from speaking on the 100-fold return. In the same vein, when you invite anyone to speak at your church, don’t limit them.
When Jesse Duplantis came to Revival Today Church to preach on a Sunday, he asked me what I would like him to do. My response: “Whatever you’d like to do, however you’d like to do it.” I wouldn’t have asked him to come if I didn’t trust him.
Don’t put rules on ministers because of abuses you’ve experienced at the hands of other ministers. That’s your fault. Never put rules on genuine men of God.
I’ve been in meetings where once we reached a little over 100 salvations in a church of 200, the pastor wanted to stop the meetings because they, “weren’t set up to follow up with this many people.” You don’t think God knows what you’re set up to do? God is a God of overflow. He makes your cup run over (Psalms 23:5). He overflows the banks of the river (Joshua 3:15).
You can’t be a control freak and expect to flow in revival. You can either be the type of pastor who looks for a mop to clean up the mess when supernatural overflow occurs, or you can be the pastor who lifts your hands in praise and gratitude to God for His blessings.
Revival and overflow are intrinsically linked. Too many people, too many cars, people sitting in the lobby or on the floor; these are all consequences of revival. At Revival Today, I made sure my staff knows to never take their foot off the gas because we’re out of space.
In the ministry you’ll have one of two problems and you get to choose which one you’ll have. You can either:
Have too many people and not enough space; or
Not enough people and more than enough space
I choose overflow. The problem I have as a pastor is the one I intentionally chose. To be honest, it isn’t even my problem, it’s God’s problem as head of the church. Problem number two occurs when rituals and religion get in the way of what God wants for His bride, the church.
Ingredient #2: The Right Church Staff/Leadership
A pastor who doesn’t like being in church will often breed a staff who are ready to bolt from the building like it’s last period. A lazy, whinny church staff will kill revival.
I’ve seen children’s ministers constantly complain about how tired they are after a few nights of 3 hour meetings. If daycare staff can work nine hour days and a full-time youth minister is complaining after a week of revival meetings as if it’s hell week for the Navy Seals, perhaps it’s time to explore another profession.
If you’re a worship leader who finds yourself in the church lobby guzzling water bottles for 45 minutes after a 28-minute set like you just did an hour and a half set at Madison Square Garden, it may be time to consider a different line of work.
Church staff should be eager to come to church and excited to see the power of God flow.
As a traveling minister, it’s not devils and demonic strongholds that you’ll have to fight, it’s church structures that prohibit the move of God. It’s stupid leadership decisions and people on staff at churches that don’t belong in ministry. It’s not rare to come across poor leadership in the ministry, but the right church staff is crucial to revival.
Ingredient #3: The Right Evangelist
If you’ve ever been in meetings with Pastor Rodney or my uncle Ted, they can sometimes be abrasive with the crowd early on. That’s not out of a natural desire for control. Many times there are things in the spirit that need to be broken before revival can take place. Sometimes it’s a weakness in divine healing or a weakness in faith. Other times it’s the structures within a church that involve a pastor being stifled by members of the board. These types of issues have to be discerned in the spirit and addressed before the meetings can explode.
As an evangelist, you can’t always do what you’re told. You won’t always speak for the same amount of time as the pastor usually does or operate within the same routine. If you’re not willing to address things in the spirit and break the mold, you’re nothing more than a guest speaker. A different voice saying the same things as the pastor.
I’ve experienced pastors who will hand me the mic at 7:40, ask me to preach, give a strong call for souls, lay hands on the sick, baptize the youth in the Holy Ghost, and be finished by 8:30. I could do half of one of those things in that amount of time. You can’t have a revival meeting in two hours. Revival is a lengthy process. There’s praise, worship, preaching, time spent at the altar, laying on of hands etc. Don’t allow a pastor to place their Sunday morning service expectations on you as an evangelist invited to spark a revival.
When the necessary ingredients for revival unify, it’s explosive. If you only get two out of the three, you won’t experience the same results. I hope this helped you understand revival and what it takes to achieve it. There’s been a lot of hot takes on revival lately, and you’ll continue to hear more about it, because America is in revival. Unfortunately, many people doing the talking don’t know what they’re talking about. After reading this, you don’t have to be one of them.
