One-on-One with Mark Sayers on the ‘Reappearing Church’

By amazon Tuesday, September 3, 2019 Comment Edit

“The move of God becomes a movement.”

Ed: Why do you think the church needs the message of this book right now?

Mark: In every age, the church needs renewing. There is a process of renewal and decline which we can see at play throughout history. It begins as God in his grace moves. Those open to his leading and humble enough to follow, respond.

The move of God becomes a movement.

However, over time, abiding is replaced by striving, we try and keep the movement going, turning it into a machine which runs on human power rather than divine favor. Eventually the machine becomes ineffective, existing as a rusting monument to a past move.

This pattern of renewal and decline occurs at a new pace in our day. Our globalized, technologically-boosted world has not just compressed space, but also time. News cycles that once ran over a week now last 24 hours—information speeds across the world in millisecond.

This dynamic means that the slow cycle of spiritual renewal, maintenance, and decline, which in the past played out over generations, now occurs at hyper speed.

The tools of our time enable us to reach across both distances and difficulties. Yet the sword cuts both ways, enabling us to boost the mythology of our own human power, offering us the ability to expand our platform, reach, and influence beyond God given boundaries.

Those used by God in the past were far more aware of their inadequacies; their limitations were in clearer view, and thus the raw material of renewal – humility – was more easily discovered and mined by God.

Yet humility and a realization of our hopelessness without God is a scarcer resource today. This means today that not only can the rot set in quicker, but in our age of the image, it can be missed because we can apply a sun-drenched ...