Three phases of revival
From a video by ThinkQ
Through his work with Dunamis Movement, a Brazilian-based campus ministry, Teo Hayashi continually sees hearts awakened and thousands of people give their lives to Christ. Teo shares from his experience growing up in the mission field of Brazil and seeing it become a mission-sending nation. He discusses his work in global missions and what he believes are the three phases of true revival.
I was born and raised in Brazil. I am Japanese/Brazilian. My grandparents came as missionaries from Japan to Brazil. After high school I moved to America for college and after graduating the Lord called me back to Brazil with the question, "Are you going after the American dream or the Kingdom dream?"
The Lord asked me to lay the American dream on the altar and go back and said, "I want revival that will culminate into a reformation." So that's why I had go back with the thinking that if you conquer the universities today, you will have the society you want tomorrow. This was something that was key and so we've been working with the future leaders of society.
A quick story. Right before the pandemic, we really felt to just call the nation, young people and other nations to a missional lifestyle. We had three stadiums packed. 185,000 kids in three different stadiums - we started with one and that sold-out immediately and then another sold out in 3 days and so God led us to a third. We also had 2.2 million people on simulcast at the day of the event. The day was about calling the young generation of Brazil to live missionally regardless where you're living, in whatever sphere, whatever campus, in your family, church and so we have been seeing this awakening. And now just the big question, "Where do we take this from now?".
I'm not a specialist in revival but I love revival and have read on revival for quite a bit now. And what I've seen is that for revival to have a long lasting impact there are usually three phases:
First, it begins in the church. In Revelation 2, in the letter to the church of Ephesus, "If you will come back to the first love..." In 1 Peter 4, "For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household." It's the awakening of the saints. It's the church going back to making the main, the main thing,
Once it begins with the church, we say the DNA of the disciple is to make disciples. And so it'll veer off into a harvest phase. And that harvest phase is evangelism, and that harvest phase is discipleship. And once you have a packed out venue, you're looking at another campus or planting another church and if you have to plant churches, need to train leaders. And so you're building up training facilities and of course missions and then you're sending out people. And so, I would say the second phase would be the harvest of the soul.
But the true long lasting revivals actually take whatever happens within the four walls of the church, and they make it spill into the infrastructure of society. So you see that going into the public sector, into Arts, entertainment. You see Kingdom DNA biblical worldview going into education, into the marketplace. And so that is what we would call reformation. And so I would say that true revival has to culminate into social transformation.
I think that we are yet to see in our modern times - for revivals that make it to the third stage. We've seen first stage we've seen, even to a certain degree, second stage, especially in the Global South, but we're yet to see third stage happened within our life-times.
As an Asian/Brazilian, I am a by-product of the missionary movement that came from the Western Church. It was because of British missionaries that the gospel came to my grandfathers. Growing up in Brazil, the American missionary presence there, strengthening the church. However, I would say that now's the time where the people that once were the mission field should understand that now we are the mission-sending nations. When we do that, I hope that American and Western European churches would understand that it's not that your job is done. There's still that longevity of faith in the American and Europe Church that we're praying, please keep that flame alive. Please keep that revival heritage moving on to future generations.
Our biggest test is not when we have scarcity. Our biggest test is when we have abundance. The Lord has blessed North America and Western Europe so much that it's very easy not have the dependence in the Lord that other places in the world have had. I hope that through the hard times that the whole world has gone through in the last three years, that that would spark going back to the roots of revival.
Watch the 12 minute video here.
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From a video by ThinkQ, 03/10/2023