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Episode: CNLP 693 | Al Gordon on Revival and Pre-Revival in the Church, The Anatomy of a Revival, and Rethinking the Things That The Church Got Wrong

Author: Art of Leadership Network
Duration: 01:06:03

Episode Shownotes

Al Gordon, founder of Saint.Church in London, talks about revival and pre-revival in the church, the anatomy of revival, and rethinking the things the church got wrong. Plus, he shares why architecture can be the place where church and culture intersect. 🔗 Show Notes 📩 On The Rise Newsletter 🗣️

Preaching Cheat Sheet 🧠 The Art of Leadership Academy 🎥 Watch on YouTube Follow @careynieuwhof Follow @theartofleadershipnetwork This episode is sponsored by: SUBSPLASH Subsplash puts today’s most innovative church technology into your hands—so you can focus on ministry. Go to subsplash.com/carey to schedule a quick, no-obligation demo and get $500 off when you sign up. GLOO+ Gloo+ is an all-in-one membership community where church leaders can access everything they need—from communication tools, to ministry resources, and more. Head over to plus.gloo.us/Carey and use code CAREYSAVE20 for 20% off your subscription. Brought to you by The Art of Leadership Network

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
The Art of Leadership Network. I'd say kind of three things are taking place. Number one, the overwhelming sense of the nearness of the presence of Jesus. that you can't deny that Jesus is there.

00:00:15 Speaker_00
Number two, the kind of acceleration of people getting right with Jesus. That's people inside the church and outside the church. It's conversions and it's commitments, recommitments, people coming back to Jesus.

00:00:30 Speaker_00
So it's like Jesus is in the room, the people of God get back in the room, and the people who are called by God to be in the room are in the room. So conversion, purification, consecration, the church moving.

00:00:40 Speaker_00
And the third and almost most important thing that's often neglected.

00:00:48 Speaker_02
Welcome to the Keri Newhoff Leadership Podcast. It's Keri here, and I hope our time together helps you thrive in life and leadership. Man, today we are gonna talk all things revival.

00:00:59 Speaker_02
You're gonna hear this coming out a few times on the podcast in the next couple of months, but I'm talking to Al Gordon, and we're talking about revival and pre-revival in the church.

00:01:10 Speaker_02
the anatomy of a revival, like what actually works, and rethinking the things that the church got wrong. I think you're gonna love this. And today's episode is brought to you by our partners at Subsplash and Glue.

00:01:23 Speaker_02
Subsplash puts today's most innovative church technology into your hands. Go to subsplash.com slash carry to schedule a quick no-obligation demo and get $500 off when you sign up.

00:01:35 Speaker_02
And Glue Plus is an all-in-one membership community where church leaders can access everything they need, from communication tools to ministry resources and more.

00:01:43 Speaker_02
Head over to plus.glue.us slash carry and use the code carrysafe20 for 20% off your subscription. Well, Al Gordon leads SAINT, a fast-growing and thriving church on a mission to bring hope to the heart of East London.

00:01:59 Speaker_02
Al has the vision to build cathedrals of creativity across the globe. And I'll tell you, his church really is beautiful. He's got a new school of creativity. They partner with artists and well, they're in pre-revival as he would say right now.

00:02:15 Speaker_02
Hey, I really hope you enjoy this episode. And if you do, I'd love to hear about it. Leave a rating and review wherever you're listening or share it with a friend. I really value your time.

00:02:26 Speaker_02
I know this is a free podcast, but you pay with your time and we try to make every minute valuable of this podcast.

00:02:32 Speaker_02
Speaking of partners, hey, have you ever asked yourself, how do we move beyond simply getting people in the door and foster real lasting connections that lead to deeper engagement and a sense of belonging? If so, you're not alone.

00:02:46 Speaker_02
A lot of thriving churches have found that the answer to this question lies in embracing innovative tools and creating their very own digital space to build growing, fully engaged, communities.

00:02:56 Speaker_02
Subsplash is the platform made to help maximize your church's engagement. With mobile apps, messaging, websites, streaming, groups, giving and more, Subsplash puts today's most innovative church technology into your hands so you can focus on ministry.

00:03:13 Speaker_02
Join more than 20,000 clients who partner with Subsplash to engage their communities and help their people grow. Go to subsplash.com slash carry to schedule a quick no-obligation demo and get $500 off when you sign up.

00:03:27 Speaker_02
Well, leaders, I know you're all busier than ever and you're juggling a ton of tools and platforms and there's always something new to manage.

00:03:34 Speaker_02
So I'm excited to have my friend Brad Hill here from Glue today to tell you about one of the most awesome new things available to make your job easier and more impactful. Brad, what are you working on?

00:03:45 Speaker_01
Hey, Kerry. Absolutely. You know, that sense of overwhelm that you talk about is exactly the problem that we hear all the time from pastors. And we've designed a lot now in the Glue platform specifically for that problem.

00:04:00 Speaker_01
We're calling it Glue Plus, and it's an all-in-one membership community. You would think in terms of joining Glue Plus. And by doing that, you get access to everything you need in one place.

00:04:11 Speaker_01
communication tools, ministry resources, even technologies to improve your outreach. And so it kind of takes care of this problem of bouncing between tools and different platforms to get everything that you need, including for your whole staff.

00:04:26 Speaker_01
So it brings it all together. What we're trying to do here is make your work more effective, save you time. And by the way, there's tools here for your whole staff, kids, XP, finance, admin, everybody on the team gets to benefit.

00:04:39 Speaker_01
And there's discounts in here, Kerry, that normally help pay for the membership within the very first month.

00:04:44 Speaker_02
Well, you can head on over to plus.glue.us slash carry. Let me spell that out. P-L-U-S dot G-L-O-O dot U-S slash carry and be sure to use the code carry save 20 and you'll get 20% off your subscription. And now to my conversation with Al Gordon.

00:05:05 Speaker_02
Al, it's just great to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

00:05:08 Speaker_00
What a treat, Kerry. Thank you so much for having me. I feel so honoured, such a joy to be with you and to your listeners as well. Just hope this is, just a joy to be with you and hope this is a good time.

00:05:20 Speaker_02
Well, it's a great time. I was thinking about this. We're hundreds of, well, almost 700 episodes into this podcast. I think it's the only one so far. Here's what's unique, where I just got back and you have to leave in about an hour to take a flight.

00:05:34 Speaker_02
So we've been sandwiched into this little window of time between Toronto and the UK. Man, I would love to know, because this is such a big question in America in a lot of circles, a growing number of circles. What are you learning?

00:05:50 Speaker_02
about revival as you see renewal at St. your church. What are you seeing?

00:05:58 Speaker_00
Wow, that's a great, I mean it is a great question. It's an exciting time in the church around the world. The water is rising, and there's a great image that we often come back to of the tide.

00:06:09 Speaker_00
If you stand down on the shore when the tide is just changing, you can't often see it, but you begin to see signs that the direction of the current is moving differently, and the sea is changing. We talk about sea change moments.

00:06:21 Speaker_00
I think in the church in the West, we are at a sea change moment, and I think we need to define terms when we talk about revival quite carefully. general terms we talk about.

00:06:32 Speaker_00
One is, Jonathan Edwards talks about the acceleration of the—paraphrasing—the acceleration of the normal Christian life.

00:06:40 Speaker_00
And that's a good acceleration kind of metaphor that revival is about actually God moving with greater intensity in a period of time. And there are certain moments when God breaks into human history

00:06:51 Speaker_00
and there are signs and wonders or a sense of people coming to faith or the renewal of the church. And then I think there's the broader sense of the kind of awakening of the people of God in a generation that looks like over decades

00:07:08 Speaker_00
the the rising of the tide sometimes a wave crashes in and you're like wow your feet are wet sometimes the tide comes in gradually and you're like oh the boats are floating we want both we need both and i think we're beginning to see both in different places around the world um and you know it is a moment where we have to take note you know we have to be like why is that the men of isaaca who said well would they understood the times

00:07:30 Speaker_00
It's what you guys do brilliantly on this podcast. I'm so grateful for you and your guests. But the conversations around how do we respond to what God seems to be doing in the moment. And one thing I can tell you is we need more of Jesus.

00:07:43 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah. So I'm glad you started with a definition of terms because, you know, you were at Asbury. We'll get to that. We'll talk about it. But leading into that and coming out of it, I've heard a lot of people online talk about revival.

00:08:01 Speaker_02
And some of that, I never wanna grieve the Holy Spirit. I mean, if it is of God, it is of God. Let it move, let it flow, and we need more of it.

00:08:08 Speaker_02
But there can almost be, and I wanna be careful how I phrase this, but I think people will understand what I'm trying to say. There's a little bit of bandwagonism, maybe, like, ooh, maybe I can have a revival at my church, too.

00:08:21 Speaker_02
Maybe, you know, this is revival. We had five new people, is that revival? Like, what are the characteristics of an actual, authentic, inevitable revival.

00:08:33 Speaker_00
Well, I think that's a really good point. You know, people talk about—I remember hearing one church, it was like, we have a revival every autumn, we plan it, it's like a conference. Yes, I've seen that. Revival tonight at 7. Yeah, that's kind of cool.

00:08:48 Speaker_00
I'm not down on that. I think, you know, whatever's fun. But I think what we're talking about here is a sovereign move of God. Usually, I mean, again, you can study this in history, but usually preempted by two factors.

00:09:02 Speaker_00
One is the great need of the culture, and the other is the great hunger of the church. And when the two collide, they are like infusions takes place and God chooses. You can't force God's hand, but there are moments when God intervenes.

00:09:16 Speaker_00
We've seen that through the history of the church, whether it's the great awakenings, Azusa Street, when, you know, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray.

00:09:26 Speaker_00
repent, turn from their wicked ways, then I'll move, I'll come and I'll heal the land. And we've seen that throughout the history of the church. The history of the church is the history of revival.

00:09:35 Speaker_00
From the Easter weekend, from the day of Pentecost, all the way through the book of Acts, all the way through the story of the early church, it has been a church marked by sovereign moves of God that often unmerited

00:09:47 Speaker_00
You can't trace them, it's not a formula. But what it looked like, I'd say kind of three things are taking place. Number one, the overwhelming sense of the nearness of the presence of Jesus. that you can't deny that Jesus is there.

00:10:04 Speaker_00
Number two, the kind of acceleration of people getting right with Jesus. That's people inside the church and outside the church. It's conversions and it's commitments, recommitments, people coming back to Jesus.

00:10:19 Speaker_00
So it's like Jesus is in the room, the people of God get back in the room, and the people who are called by God to be in the room are in the room. So conversion, purification, consecration, the church moving.

00:10:29 Speaker_00
And the third and almost most important thing that's often neglected is the fruit, which is often years later. You'll know if it's the Lord because years later, there will be, you know, there'll be people's lives still changed.

00:10:45 Speaker_00
There'll be people who become Christians. You know, I'm never really interested in what God is doing. I mean, of course, I'm interested in what God is doing today in the moment. the fruit of it is like 20 years time, are those marriages stronger?

00:10:59 Speaker_00
People come to know Jesus still, you know, the transformation of society, justice. Are we more loving? Are we more kind to each other? Are churches transformed for the long term? So, you know, you really look for those three things.

00:11:11 Speaker_00
They're signs that God is really moving. And, you know, the revival is not the the kind of normal operating system of the church.

00:11:22 Speaker_00
It is an acceleration for specific seasons in response to extraordinary need and great hunger that renews and refreshes the church so that the church can go and do the thing that she's meant to do, which is to bring Jesus to the culture.

00:11:35 Speaker_00
I don't know if that's helpful. What do you feel?

00:11:36 Speaker_02
That's extremely helpful. No, I'm going to ask you one more question on it before I get to it, because I think, okay, let's talk about a scenario where the church is growing, all right? All of a sudden it's growing. And I'm not talking 3% a year.

00:11:50 Speaker_02
We're talking 10%, 20%, 30%. People are being baptized. Lives are being changed. People are moving into small groups.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
What makes church growth, and I'm not suggesting this is manipulative or anything, but what is the difference between a period of growth in the church versus what historically we might call revival?

00:12:15 Speaker_00
Right.

00:12:16 Speaker_02
Yeah, I think there is a difference. Yeah, I think so too, but I don't know what it is, so that's why I'm asking the question.

00:12:25 Speaker_00
There's lots of ways to answer the question. It's a really good question. I think not all growth is revival, and not all revival leads to growth. Let me explain that a little bit.

00:12:39 Speaker_00
I think revival, when God moves in great power, in his sovereignty, it's always because God really, really wants to reach people who don't know him. That doesn't always lead to growth. Churches can quench moves of the Spirit.

00:12:56 Speaker_00
At the same time, there's natural growth and good growth on the vine that's not down to sovereign moves of God.

00:13:06 Speaker_00
You look at this in the life of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, you see quite often he's like, hey, the harvest is plentiful, the work's a few, I'm sending you guys out into the fields. Go. I'm going to pray and I'm going to send you out.

00:13:18 Speaker_00
And there's work to do. There's good natural growth. The early church, I'm sure you'll notice, the average growth year on year in the early church was around 7%.

00:13:25 Speaker_00
So actually, revival in the first few centuries of church was a slow, long obedience in the same direction in the presence of God. However, I think what is worth paying attention to

00:13:39 Speaker_00
is the marking out and making space in the culture of our hearts for the inbreaking of the kingdom of God in a fresh way. And that's an urgency that is never out of fashion.

00:13:50 Speaker_00
Every church leader should be making room for the reality of Jesus to break into their lives personally, corporately, and societally. So to answer the question, I think revival and growth don't always go hand in hand. They're not formulaic or causal.

00:14:05 Speaker_00
You can have revival with no growth, you can have growth without revival. But the most powerful times in church history have been when there's been revival that's led to growth. And you know, I don't know how deep you want to go in this.

00:14:15 Speaker_00
I probably think there are stages if you look historically at this.

00:14:19 Speaker_03
Yeah, let's go there.

00:14:21 Speaker_00
To borrow my preacher's hat, I think there are probably four or five R's that lead to a journey. I think it starts with repentance. And that is an admission that we haven't got it all right.

00:14:32 Speaker_00
And it's really hard to be led by God and to be used by the Holy Spirit if you're in charge. And so repentance is saying, hey, hands up.

00:14:40 Speaker_00
I'm not God, I'm not in charge, you're in charge, I'm sorry I've led in the wrong way, I'm sorry I've made..." You know, that heart of repentance precedes every single move of God.

00:14:49 Speaker_00
If you look at the upper room in the day of Pentecost, they're on their faces crying out in that place where they're broken people, they know Jesus is alive, they're like, I don't know how we're gonna live now.

00:14:59 Speaker_00
And that heart for repentance that's marked the church on its knees throughout human history, where there's repentance, it's magnetic, to the heart of God. God is close to the lowly. He pursues those who are not proud.

00:15:14 Speaker_00
He gives grace to the humble, right? So repentance is step one. I think for us, a big takeaway in my life has been to keep walking, learning to walk in repentance. You know, I repented when I became a Christian. I mean, I had a lot to repent about.

00:15:26 Speaker_00
I wasn't raised a Christian. My life was a mess.

00:15:29 Speaker_00
And I repent when I mess up, but I've learned to think of repentance not as like a sort of, you know, something you do like when you get a rotten tooth and you race dentist because your tooth is in need of fixing, but rather like brushing your teeth.

00:15:46 Speaker_00
Say, I want to keep right with you. I want to do this as a daily discipline. I want to walk in repentance. So repentance is the first step. Then I think in God's time and in God's way, when and if he wants to, he will bring revival.

00:16:00 Speaker_00
And that can be personal, and it can be corporate, and it can be societal. All of them are valid, and all of them are important. So on your knees behind your closed doors are where revivals are born. And so repentance leads to revival.

00:16:15 Speaker_00
And we can talk more about that. But, you know, Asbury, I think probably marks the latest sort of, I guess the first of an outbreak of something new in the West that we can go on and talk a bit more about.

00:16:26 Speaker_00
But revival is happening all around the world the whole time. It's how God multiplies his church often. Revival then needs to lead to the third R, which is the renewal of the church.

00:16:35 Speaker_00
And that is where you talk about change and growth and revival and growth. Revival just on its own is fun, messy, wonderful, but it's not the end game. The end game is church, the bride of Christ, would be renewed so that God wants his church back.

00:16:52 Speaker_00
You know, the point of repentance and the presence of God filling his temple again is so that we might go out and do things differently. You know, revival needs to renewal. And what does that look like?

00:17:02 Speaker_00
Well, that looks like, you know, a hundred different things depending on the context, but it's just Jesus getting his church back. I could talk about our experience in a moment.

00:17:11 Speaker_00
So renewal is long and painful and needs a lot of stewarding and takes time. that repentance leads to revival, that leads to renewal. And again, all of these things that are led by the Spirit, they're not given, they're not formulae.

00:17:24 Speaker_00
But eventually what tends to then happen is that spills into reformation, where society starts to be reformed. I think we're on the edge of a reformation in the church in our generation.

00:17:34 Speaker_00
I think the world, unprecedented shifts, you'll know this with AI and geopolitical chaos and the shifting of the order. But at the same time, the church is going to have to go through an unprecedented shift.

00:17:49 Speaker_00
Now, look back for the history of the church. When was the last great technological revolution preceding AI? Really, it was the press.

00:17:57 Speaker_00
At the same time, of course, it was accompanied by the last great ecclesiological shift in the church, the Reformation. So reformations and kind of transformation of society and technology tend to go hand in hand.

00:18:11 Speaker_00
It's a note, you know, there'll be a hundred academics who'll shoot me down on that. But I think we're in a season now where God wants his church back.

00:18:18 Speaker_00
I think the message I've got from everyone I speak to right now is, we tasted God do amazing things lately, and now is a chance to prepare the way for the Lord. Like, let's get on our faces, cry out to God, because he loves this generation.

00:18:31 Speaker_00
He's not given up on this generation, and he wants his church back. And it's never been more exciting to be alive.

00:18:38 Speaker_02
And now a quick word from one of our partners. Today's episode is brought to you by Preaching Cheat Sheet. A recent study showed that 46% of pastors say one of their biggest struggles is feeling like attendees don't absorb or use what they preach.

00:18:53 Speaker_02
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00:19:03 Speaker_02
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00:19:15 Speaker_02
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00:19:28 Speaker_02
It's something I still use to this day, even after decades of preaching. I love filling out each of the steps as I write my sermon, and then I sit down to review the message the night before, and I can go in with

00:19:40 Speaker_02
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00:19:53 Speaker_02
That's preachingcheatsheet.com to download your copy for free. And now back to the conversation. All right, well, let's get into the anatomy of a revival then, because you didn't just read about Asbury like most of us did. You went.

00:20:06 Speaker_02
What happened when you went there?

00:20:10 Speaker_00
I want to preface this by saying I'm not like a spiritual tourist, but I know Asbury because I've been there. I led worship there with an Alpha Conference. I'm very involved in Alpha and had been out there years ago with David Thomas and J.D.

00:20:26 Speaker_00
Wolfe, become great friends of people on the faculty there who I'd known. Asbury is one of those communities that's a well-respected Methodist seminary and Christian university, not prone to the excesses of emotionalism.

00:20:38 Speaker_00
And a little bit like when I heard a friend of mine were like saying, oh, the Spirit of God has begun to move with a bunch of students in a prayer meeting on campus. I was like, Oh, interesting, because I know those guys.

00:20:50 Speaker_00
It's like White Picket Fences, it's Kentucky, all that.

00:20:56 Speaker_00
So my interest was piqued, but also I'd woken up in the middle of the night a few nights before, and I don't normally do this, but I got out of bed and I'd gone and I started to pray in my living room and crying out to God.

00:21:11 Speaker_00
And with a, randomly I was listening to something on YouTube of like an American college band leading worship. It wasn't great.

00:21:17 Speaker_00
Like it was, it wasn't like the musicality was amazing, but this, I was like being really ministered to by the spirit of God. So the two and two together, I was like, huh, I felt like the spirit has been speaking to me a bit about the U.S.

00:21:29 Speaker_00
and about campuses. And once we got to, anyhow, I am, I checked in with a couple of friends who were out there and I said, Hey guys, What's going on? I'm just intrigued.

00:21:38 Speaker_00
And I think as a church pastor, probably like many of your listeners, I'm a student of the kingdom of God. I want to know what God is doing and how I can follow him.

00:21:47 Speaker_00
And so anything that God is seemingly doing, I'm interested in, I want to learn, because I want to follow Jesus. That's why I signed up to do it. I didn't really sign up to lead a church. I followed Jesus and I ended up here.

00:21:59 Speaker_00
And so when I hear Jesus moving, you know, I'm like, I want to be in the room, I want to see what he's doing. Now, that said, I don't believe in sort of spiritual tourism, so I didn't want to kind of just come and spectate.

00:22:09 Speaker_00
I had a friend who's on the faculty, he said, Al, actually, it would be helpful for you to come. We were planning on having a conversation anyhow around Renaissance, which we'll come on to.

00:22:16 Speaker_00
So I had an excuse to go and end up going last minute with one of our pastors from church and nothing really prepared me for what I saw. Deeply underwhelming musically, no celebrity Christians holding court, no

00:22:30 Speaker_00
excessive charismatic manifestations or, you know, phenomena, just a deep, deep sense of the presence of Jesus. And let me give a bit of eyewitness to that.

00:22:42 Speaker_00
When I got to the parking lot at Asbury over the road and we kind of snuck through, the whole town was closed and there were queues around the block. My friend who's on the faculty said, I'll sneak you in. You can be on the team, pray for people.

00:22:54 Speaker_00
We got to the parking lot on the back and I shut the door of the hire car, having flown from London overnight, stood on a tarmac, you know, sort of jet lagged and not really kind of spiritually awake.

00:23:04 Speaker_00
And I shut the car door and I'm four or five hundred meters away from the Hughes Auditorium where the meetings were happening. And in the car park, I would just stop and I was like, oh, wow, you can feel there's something going on. Really? Wow.

00:23:19 Speaker_00
And not a good feeling, not like I'm at Disneyland, let's go. What I experienced in the car park in Wilmore Asbury was a sense of the awe and fear of the Lord. Like literally I thought, this is not a drill, I've got to get right with God."

00:23:38 Speaker_00
So literally there and then, I didn't go into the main meeting, I was like, I've got to go and find a Bible, get in my face and pray, read Psalm 51 over and over.

00:23:46 Speaker_00
I just like God, you know, the sense of God's holiness and God's power and his love not condemning but convicting me of my sin.

00:23:58 Speaker_02
So let's break that down. Was that a physical... Explain that feeling a little bit more. Was it like you walked into a force field? What happened? Great question.

00:24:10 Speaker_00
You know that feeling when you're a kid and your parents say, hey, we need to talk to you. You know something's up.

00:24:16 Speaker_02
Oh yeah, yeah. Everything shifts in your spirit.

00:24:20 Speaker_00
And it wasn't unkind. I was just like, I'm aware of the holiness of God. And in Psalm 24, who may send the head of the Lord, those are clean hands and pure hearts.

00:24:29 Speaker_00
And, you know, it wasn't like I committed armed robbery, but my hands, you know, we all need clean hands and pure hearts. We need to keep coming back to Jesus.

00:24:37 Speaker_00
Like, pastoring is tiring, and, you know, my flame had probably grown dim, and it wasn't like I was...

00:24:46 Speaker_00
an armed robber but i was like i need you jesus whereas you know so i found myself just repenting before i got near um the room and then getting into the room i was like oh you know oh for a couple of hours i just sat there quietly in a chair

00:25:01 Speaker_00
of students got up, prayed, read scripture, people read the Bible, you've heard the accounts, but what it felt like to me was sitting in a swimming pool, well you know when you're a kid and you go in a swimming pool and there's a shallow end and you jump up and down and gradually you get more confident, you go deeper and deeper until you can't touch anymore and it's sort of like, but you know the bottom is there.

00:25:20 Speaker_00
you know, and you get back in the shallow end. And imagine that pool just carries on until it is very quickly over the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the ocean. Suddenly, if you ever swam over deep water, it's a very strange feeling.

00:25:33 Speaker_00
You're over the deep ocean, maybe over, I don't know if you go fishing, but if you're out at sea and you're no longer in the shallows, and the ocean is like a thousand meters deep at that point, it feels very different.

00:25:43 Speaker_00
And it felt like suddenly, oh, there's no bottom to this pool. The presence of God is

00:25:48 Speaker_00
But the veil has been torn back, and I'm swimming in the deep now, and I'm in the presence of Jesus, and he's in the room, and it's not a drill, and my sin is being revealed, but my heart is being loved.

00:26:00 Speaker_00
And so for three or four days, I sat there just literally like I was sitting in the throne room of heaven, and it was the most remarkable. And that's where it's not about hype. Man, it's not something you can schedule. Jesus wants to go.

00:26:13 Speaker_00
I've sat in those kind of environments three or four times in my life, had the privilege of seeing God moving in revival in three or four different places, three or four different continents.

00:26:21 Speaker_00
And every time I've seen God move in great power and presence, it's felt utterly unboxable and wild, and you can't control it, and you can't tame him, as Aslan and Lewis's stories, he's not a tame lion. So

00:26:39 Speaker_00
Long story short, and there are plenty of accounts that I and others have written lots about this, I get back on the plane four or five days later and Yeah, God bless the good people at American Airlines.

00:26:49 Speaker_00
And my friend Steve and I are at the back of the plane, and there's two little seats by the toilets because we booked last night. And I wept all the way over the Atlantic.

00:26:58 Speaker_00
And the stewardess thought Steve and I had had an argument and, you know, he kept bringing me tissues and pretzels, you know. But I'm there and I'm weeping. So I was like, God, I never want to go back. I don't want to go back to my church.

00:27:10 Speaker_00
You know, I don't go out to dry worship. I want to be in the presence of God, you know. I never want to leave your presence.

00:27:17 Speaker_00
You know, and I literally were thinking, if I go to be with you today, if my plane never makes a home, I'll be so delighted to sit in your presence.

00:27:24 Speaker_00
That's how wonderful sitting in a moment with lingering in the presence of Jesus when he's in the room is like, we've not seen anything. The impulse is no eyes seen, no ears heard. So I get back to London.

00:27:37 Speaker_00
So on the plane on the way over, I'm weeping and crying out to God. And the Lord said to me two things I'll never forget. Number one, you've got 18 months to prepare for revival. So I start thinking, gosh, that's terrifying.

00:27:55 Speaker_00
I think about my church, like if that happened in our church, I mean, we don't have enough toilets, we don't have enough people to pray or So I sat with that question and I started making a list.

00:28:09 Speaker_00
I was like, what would we do differently if we had 18 months to prepare for revival? Like, how would we pastor differently? What would our structures and systems be? How would we lead people to Christ? How do we do Sundays?

00:28:18 Speaker_00
What would we do behind the scenes? I started making a list. Are we going to do this, this? You know, I saw they had a cajon rather than a drum kit at the outpouring. Oh, I'm going to have a cajon on Sunday rather than a drum kit.

00:28:28 Speaker_00
And the second thing I felt the Lord say was simply this, and it was a sort of chuckle, and I felt the Lord say, Al, change nothing but your heart. Change nothing but your heart.

00:28:40 Speaker_00
So I sort of put a line through the list of plans I'd made and was like, okay, that's what you're calling us to do. And anyone listening to this, the message in this season for us is to change nothing but our hearts.

00:28:51 Speaker_00
You know, how we run services, how we run church, how we lead in our businesses, how we pray, how we love our families, all of it has to begin with the revival has to start in your heart, behind closed doors, on your knees in repentance saying, Jesus, I'm a sinful person.

00:29:06 Speaker_00
Like Isaiah, here am I, unclean, send me, fill me, meet with me. So go back to London and story for another question, another day, but we began to see God do the most extraordinary things. And straight away.

00:29:22 Speaker_00
You know, overnight, I arrived back on a Saturday, and I arrived at church on Sunday. Before I got up to speak, the presence of God had filled our church building. People were weeping, people were flooding the front, repenting.

00:29:32 Speaker_00
You know, no one had done an altar call. More people came to faith in those first two weeks than had come in the previous seven years of church planting. And honestly, It's nothing but the heart.

00:29:43 Speaker_00
The heart of the leader is the nexus of the kingdom of God in a community. If you get your heart right, the kingdom of God will flow. And that's not to be sort of works-based. You can't earn anything.

00:29:53 Speaker_00
But Jesus is enthroned on our hearts, everything changes. We know that. And as leaders, that's what God wants for us, is our heart.

00:30:03 Speaker_02
So I've got a couple of questions. One of them is awkward, but I have to ask it. Okay, Al. One of the questions is, so really you didn't do anything differently. You didn't advertise, you didn't, quote, change the programming.

00:30:15 Speaker_02
The plane lands and people just start showing up and doing things that are not, quote, in the script or in a planning center. Is that right?

00:30:25 Speaker_00
Yeah. So we had a few things happen that were instrumental for us in London. Please tell. I think personal change is the most powerful hermeneutic of God at work in your life.

00:30:43 Speaker_00
Actually, when God moves in your life, and I stood up that first Sunday and I just burst into tears. I was like, guys, I'm really sorry. I failed you. I repented publicly. you know, that is not without cost, but it's also, it gives people permission.

00:30:59 Speaker_00
So yeah, in how I led it was leading differently. The heart means you change your heart, you act differently, right? So definitely I brought a different leadership style from that day to what we've been doing.

00:31:11 Speaker_00
But also like, I'd say characterized by repentance, second and characterized by unity. So I'll give you an example. You won't mind me saying about this, but I've got a great friend, Pete Hughes, who leads a church AXC.

00:31:23 Speaker_00
And you know, if you haven't had Pete on this podcast, then you need to. He's an amazing thinker. writer. But Pete and I lead churches a mile apart in London.

00:31:33 Speaker_00
We're probably the two, in this part of London, we're probably the two youngest large churches, new plants, both plants in the last 10 years. You know, most of our congregation being that kind of 20s and 30s, young, young, creative churches.

00:31:47 Speaker_00
And we would be friends, but to be honest with you, we'd not really work together. We run slightly different circles. We're a little bit looking over each other's shoulders. If Pete is doing a series on Leviticus, I'll think, well, that's a good idea.

00:31:57 Speaker_00
And if, you know, if I've, if I've got something, people be like, oh, you know, so we, we, we be cordial and friendly, but we weren't really in, in deep unity.

00:32:06 Speaker_00
You know, we were kind of cheering each other on from, you know, different, from a distance.

00:32:12 Speaker_00
And Pete was also at the outpouring, and I found Pete at the front of the altar, and I was with him, and we were just on our knees, and we said, look, we might as well pray for revival in London.

00:32:20 Speaker_00
We're here in an outpouring, look, we need this in London. So we get down on our knees, and we sort of covenantally start praying for each other.

00:32:27 Speaker_00
And Pete starts praying, and he prays, Lord, it breaks my heart to pray this, but send revival to London, but don't start with my church, start with Al's church. In that moment, something broke, because that's a big prayer.

00:32:43 Speaker_02
That takes a lot. Wow. That's a huge prayer. If you've led a church for 20 minutes, that's a big prayer.

00:32:49 Speaker_00
Okay, so Pete is genuinely praying for revival. Of course, I'm there going, and Lord, send revival to Pete's church too.

00:32:55 Speaker_02
That's right. You're not going to say amen. Yeah, I'll take it.

00:32:59 Speaker_00
Pete, something in both of us broke. The idol of competition, the idol of comparison broke.

00:33:07 Speaker_00
We got back to London, and within three or four days, we started talking to our teams, we started talking to our churches, we started to see the wind of the Spirit moving among us.

00:33:18 Speaker_00
And there's no secret formula to this, it's like we were eyewitnesses to, hey guys, here's the headline, go low, humble yourself, God comes, ascend the hill of the Lord, clean hands, pure heart, you know, call on the Lord, he's on the move.

00:33:31 Speaker_00
And people are just like, okay, let's do it, let's go, we'll go in, you know, and people are up for it. Pete and I talked three or four days later, and we were like, hey, should we just get our churches together and pray for revival?

00:33:44 Speaker_00
Never done this before. It wouldn't happen. Be awkward. Be a sort of contrived campaign. Sometimes churches get together as part of a campaign. We were like, hey, so we called our churches together for like a solemn assembly, see Joel 2.

00:33:56 Speaker_00
We were like, we're calling a solemn assembly of our churches. And another friend called Wale, who has another church, similar church, we were like, let's get these churches together. And the three of us stood up.

00:34:06 Speaker_00
at that first prayer gathering, what was now called a joint prayer gathering, and we expected a hundred people to come. You know, if we put all our prayer meetings together on a weeknight, it'd be like a hundred people.

00:34:16 Speaker_00
The door's at seven o'clock, and there's a queue of young people around the block.

00:34:20 Speaker_00
Word had got out that these three church leaders had stood in the furnace of the presence of God, and the fruit of it was repentance, reconciliation, and a commitment to humble unity among their churches. We literally called our church saying,

00:34:35 Speaker_00
When we stood up, we repented publicly on Sundays. We're like, I'm sorry we've been in competition. I went to Pete's church and I said this in front of his whole church. Pete stood up in our building and said it in front of our whole community.

00:34:45 Speaker_00
Something broke over us in that part of the city. And the fruit of it has been remarkable. We've been going 18 months now. More people are coming to faith in our church than ever before. We love each other deeply.

00:34:56 Speaker_00
If the plumbing goes wrong at my church or Pete's church, we're all one team. You couldn't put a skin of paper between our churches.

00:35:05 Speaker_00
We are working in complete unity, to the point of which where I sort of think of myself as a campus of his church and vice versa. That stuff is supernatural. You all know this, it doesn't happen naturally. Jesus, when he gets your heart,

00:35:22 Speaker_00
His prayer is that we love one another, that we work together in unity. And we know this Psalm 133, if you take nothing away from this episode, Psalm 133, where brothers and sisters dwell in unity, God commands blessing.

00:35:35 Speaker_00
Work backwards on the equation as a leader in your business, in your church, in your ministry. If you want blessing, the smile, the favor of God on your life, work back up the equation, unity.

00:35:46 Speaker_00
You have to promote the needs and the wishes and the desires of others above your own. Love you past around the corner as yourself. And then God will do whatever he wants to do.

00:35:55 Speaker_00
And we may not see the freedom at this side of heaven, but we'll live better.

00:35:59 Speaker_02
Thank you for sharing that. That's so helpful, Al. And I guess that leads me to a version of my awkward question, which I think I have to ask. So, you were convicted. You land in Asbury. Pete's convicted. Others are convicted.

00:36:14 Speaker_02
And this new era, so to speak, opens up. But, you know, you didn't start ministry 18 months ago. You've been at this for years, right? How long have you been in ministry?

00:36:27 Speaker_00
Well, I came to faith. As a pastor. Oh, as a pastor. I came to faith aged 18 and got involved in leading worship later that year. So, small group. I was on the staff of a church by my early 20s and I'm in my 40s now. So, I've been going for five years.

00:36:44 Speaker_00
Planted Saint seven, eight years ago and was on the leadership team of HTB and Alpha for 10 years before that. So, yeah, you're right. There is a lot of preparation that happens for things like this.

00:36:55 Speaker_02
So I guess, you know, this is because I'm thinking about the people listening who haven't experienced what you experienced, and I would put myself in that category. I mean, when you look back on, pick it up from when you planted St.

00:37:07 Speaker_02
Church, do you look back on that and go, I wasn't even a Christian? I'm just asking that question because it seems, I'm sure there are people who have genuinely repented and who are in that posture but haven't seen revival.

00:37:24 Speaker_02
I imagine there are people who sincerely love God, but they haven't had the experience that you have. I'm just wondering, and let me nuance this even a little more, Al. That's a question I ask myself on a regular basis.

00:37:39 Speaker_02
Like, I love God, I read the Bible, I pray, try to serve the church, but it's like, am I getting this right? It's a really big question for me personally.

00:37:50 Speaker_00
So again, let me preface your question a little bit. I wouldn't say what we're seeing in London's revival. I think what we saw in Asbury was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to equip and renew the church, particularly younger leaders.

00:38:04 Speaker_00
And I think it was an operating system download.

00:38:06 Speaker_02
So you wouldn't call it a revival?

00:38:08 Speaker_00
I think what we're seeing in London is not yet revival. I think we're pre-revival. being in breakings of God do wonderful things, but I've yet to see when a million people have come to faith in London, then we'll talk about revival.

00:38:20 Speaker_00
So that's just a caveat that in terms of like, the danger of these things is that you create a sort of priesthood of the revivalist.

00:38:30 Speaker_02
The initiated.

00:38:31 Speaker_00
Yep, yep. who was in the room. That is not at all been my experience. I think for me, what I've learned is that God is drawing us all the time. You know, when you become a Christian, you don't stop needing Jesus.

00:38:53 Speaker_00
You know, the longer I walk with Jesus, the more I need him, the more I'm aware of my own sin.

00:38:58 Speaker_00
I think where we got to—and I wouldn't want to negate either and have a sort of two-secessionist view of the move for the Spirit—God does move sovereignly in space and time as he wants to, and he'll move in human culture when he wants to.

00:39:09 Speaker_00
The question is, are we ready and available when he does move? And what can we do to prepare the way for the Lord? Now, the ministry of John the Baptist is really interesting in this regard, and I think

00:39:19 Speaker_00
The more we try and lead in this moment, we need to learn from the sort of John the Baptist view of, you know, he must increase, I must decrease, the understanding of humility. I think what we're learning is that God is going to reach a generation.

00:39:33 Speaker_00
God never leaves himself without a witness. The question is, will we be available to what he wants to do? And in each generation, you have to learn to speak a different language and position your heart slightly differently.

00:39:46 Speaker_00
I would say that we've come for a season of the church where many of the structures have been buffeted by the pandemic, by the sort of successes and failures, if we're honest. big churches or famous pastors or all that stuff.

00:40:03 Speaker_00
And I think we're in a fundamental culture shift moment where God is reforming his church, and it has to start with him breaking in and around the young particularly. So what is that characterized by?

00:40:14 Speaker_00
If you look at John the Baptist, Mark 1, you see a kind of three-part type move that John does. Number one, he calls people to consecration. You know, repent is the message of John the Baptist. You know, repent and receive forgiveness for your sins.

00:40:28 Speaker_00
So there's a calling on the church in this moment to learn to come back and walk in repentance. And that's really important. Second thing we see is that the church learns to contend. Like John calls people to contend for the one who is to come.

00:40:43 Speaker_00
And that looks like in John's ministry, I'm not worthy. There's one coming after me who's going to be the one. And John points to Jesus.

00:40:52 Speaker_00
We need church leaders who learn to contend not for their agenda, their ego, and their strategy, but to make space for Jesus to have the reins of their future and their governance in their church.

00:41:06 Speaker_00
And then the third thing we see is that God calls us to communion with Himself. So John leads to Jesus arriving, and then the Spirit comes, the Father says, this is my Son whom I love, with Him I'm well pleased. We see the Trinity for the first time.

00:41:20 Speaker_00
And I think that's significant. In this next generation, we're going to need leaders who are really, really committed to walking in holiness and humility.

00:41:27 Speaker_00
We need leaders who are really committed to plurality and who are not about their ego, who want to work with others and who learn to lead differently. So much of what we've been learning over the last 18 months to be preparing to lead differently.

00:41:38 Speaker_00
Plurality, not sort of superstar leader. Humility and how we work together, listening well, working as a team, that kind of stuff, good stuff. And then the third thing is really being committed to pursuing communion with God and with each other.

00:41:53 Speaker_00
Now, none of this is sexy or exciting. It's hard. It's painful. Repentance and reconciliation is really hard work, and it's ongoing. Working together is hard work. So we feel like we're in a

00:42:07 Speaker_00
preparing the way moment in London where we're learning as leaders to go low, get out the way, rewire and rethink some things we did that were probably wrong and to get in such a position that we build a high, you know, Isaiah talks of a highway of holiness, like what would it look like for you to light up, you know,

00:42:25 Speaker_00
at the end of Die Hard when Bruce Willis runs out on the runway with a Zippo lighter and lights up the runway.

00:42:31 Speaker_00
What would it look like for us to light up the night in our churches in such a way that were the plane of God's presence to land among us, we'd be ready for it. And I think that's my heart for our leaders in our generation.

00:42:41 Speaker_00
It's not that we pursue revival—pointless—but we prepare the way for Jesus. Definitely worth doing. So that when we leave the earth and we leave the earth for the next generation, we've actually made the church more

00:42:53 Speaker_00
more Jesus-centered, more available to God's plan, and that we've seen people come to know Jesus. So, I don't know if that's a long answer to a deep question. The question was much better than my answer, put it that way.

00:43:04 Speaker_02
No, that's a really helpful reframing, Al, and it makes sense of what I'm seeing in the sense that this perhaps isn't revival, it's pre-revival. And it's preparing hearts of the leaders to be in position.

00:43:18 Speaker_02
Because you're right, you know, Asbury didn't last forever. They declared an end to it. You see these college baptisms, if you follow J.P. Pluto or Jenny Allen, that are happening. And again, it's not...

00:43:31 Speaker_02
It's not an end in itself, but for you to frame it as pre-revival. But you said something that caught my, well, a lot of things that caught my interest, but this one in particular I want to go a little bit deeper on.

00:43:41 Speaker_02
You said, and it was very quick, it was an aside almost, we're rethinking things that we might have gotten wrong. When you look back, what are some of the things that you're rethinking now that perhaps weren't quite right?

00:43:55 Speaker_00
Well, it's a long list. All right, let's go. I think I'll start with myself. How I led was much more... my energy would go into the public, not the private. And my preparation would go into making myself look good in public rather than in private.

00:44:14 Speaker_00
We talk about preparation, and we all love preparation, and preachers do this the whole time. But I didn't pray as much as I do now for what I do in public. And that's a challenge.

00:44:25 Speaker_00
Here I am talking to you, we've just been exchanging travel plans today, I'm about to get on a plane, you've been off a plane. I'm going to go and speak somewhere else around the world. And I'm aware of like, now I haven't looked at my talks.

00:44:37 Speaker_00
The number one thing I'm thinking about is praying, God, would you really walk in the room before I get on speak? I think there's been a change in my heart around what it looks like to lead in the next season.

00:44:46 Speaker_00
That's not dependent on gifting or skill or technique. None of those things are bad, like good to learn your preaching techniques, good to research, just find your voice, all that stuff. But I'm aware that like,

00:44:59 Speaker_00
If the Lord doesn't build the house, then we're just working in vain. So I think for me in my heart and my life, I've learned that what happens in secret and my heart and my hunger for Jesus has to outweigh whatever ending I do in public.

00:45:17 Speaker_00
then in terms of how I lead with others, and I could go more into the heart of the leader, like reconciliation.

00:45:22 Speaker_00
I've spent so many awkward conversations the last two years, 18 months, with people I've heard going back decades saying, I'm so sorry, I think this has come to my conscience.

00:45:32 Speaker_00
I wanted to raise this because I think I may have upset you in a conversation we had 20 years ago. And that stuff has been really painful, but really good to do. So the life of the leader,

00:45:44 Speaker_00
is important, the heart of the lead is important, and I think we're learning to lead differently. I certainly am.

00:45:50 Speaker_00
Secondly, how I lead my team, I'm trying to balance a sort of, hey, we've got work to do with, hey, we've, you know, it's interesting when Jesus sends out the workers into the harvest fields.

00:46:05 Speaker_00
If you look at the sending out, you know, Jesus has the harvest plants for the workers, a few. I've never really seen this. The first thing Jesus does is ask the Lord to harvest. He calls people to prayer. Then he calls them to himself.

00:46:15 Speaker_00
He calls himself to himself. So actually, the first thing we're called to do in ministry is not to go do raise the dead, heal the sick, you know, cast out demons, that stuff is going to happen.

00:46:26 Speaker_00
But the first thing is to turn to the Lord the Father, come to Jesus, to meet and encounter God.

00:46:30 Speaker_00
So I think learning to lead a team who have a prioritization of the presence of God in the midst of the program and putting that above the program is really key. So I'll give you one example.

00:46:41 Speaker_00
You know, if you've talked about Asper, you've heard about the consecration room. You know, we basically ditched the green room and we instituted the consecration room, and that has been transformative.

00:46:49 Speaker_00
You know we put up teams in a room before we do any planning center we get my face is we pray for each other we make sure right relation they don't get to go up on a platform they got.

00:46:59 Speaker_00
beef with somebody else, or if they're just not right, we need to get right. And that's up to them. No one's going to force them.

00:47:06 Speaker_00
It's not the sort of thought police or draconian, you know, the Spanish Inquisition, but we just want to give opportunities to people to get right with Jesus. Someone says to me, well, you know, can you just do that on your morning quiet time?

00:47:16 Speaker_00
And of course you can, but we're a team. It seems to me that there's a dynamic where as a team, we consecrate ourselves to the Lord. And so we've just seen that when we get on our faces in the hidden place and we lead out of a place of

00:47:29 Speaker_00
behind the scenes, in the prayer rooms, in the prayer closets, calling on the Lord before we go out into public, what we see happen in public is ten times more effective. Demons are getting cast out without us even laying hands on.

00:47:43 Speaker_00
People are walking off the street. Every Sunday, we're seeing an acceleration of the ordinary work of God that you can't explain. And that's because Jesus has got more bandwidth in his people. Does that make sense?

00:47:58 Speaker_02
It makes a lot of sense. And it leads to another question. What has revival personally cost you? I imagine there's a cost. Anytime there's a change, anytime there's a shift, there's a cost.

00:48:13 Speaker_00
So I'll tell you, we've started praying with these three churches, and when we started praying, we're like, you know, hundreds and hundreds turn up, and young people around the block, you know, a thousand plus now.

00:48:27 Speaker_00
And then we like somebody said, we should go all night. We should pray all night. Let's let's pray. You know, so we did. We prayed all night. And I remember just for a few, like, um, a few of these gatherings, we do them quite regularly.

00:48:37 Speaker_00
I was just really tired. I remember ringing a mentor, David Thomas, who was involved in the outpouring Asbury and say, David, you know, help me. I'm stewarding.

00:48:45 Speaker_00
It's something that feels God is on the move, and we feel like we're in this stage where we position the church for stewarding and outpouring, and we want to live in such a way that all of a sudden—he was really helpful.

00:48:56 Speaker_00
He said, Al, you know, when God begins to move, you're going to get less sleep. you know, be more tired. And actually, that was really helpful because I have had less sleep in the last 18 months.

00:49:07 Speaker_00
So I know a lot of you could Evan Roberts in the Welsh revival, a lot of revivals burn out not because God's love runs hard. It's because his, you know, bluntly leaders just mess it up. We get tired and we burn up.

00:49:22 Speaker_00
So I think being aware of the cost spiritually, we've never experienced the level of attack that we do now. I mean, I've had people come up to me in the street, you know, just like, you know, like crazy spiritual encounters happening.

00:49:36 Speaker_00
You know, I'm walking through my neighborhood and people coming up to me out of nowhere, like, literally, I'm suddenly talking to a demoniac in the street who's saying, I know what you're trying to do.

00:49:46 Speaker_00
I'm like, oh, I'm speaking to something here that's not of God and not of man.

00:49:49 Speaker_02
Like, literally, you're walking to a coffee shop and somebody comes up to you. Can you play that out a little bit more? That's interesting.

00:49:58 Speaker_00
Yes, I'm walking to the church building where we're going to do this prayer gathering and this guy comes up to me literally in my face like he's about to kill me. He looks quite scary and he says, we know who you are. We know why you're here.

00:50:09 Speaker_00
We want you to know that we've been on this land for a thousand years. You don't have authority here. I'm like, this is like, okay. I'm not dealing with mental health crisis here.

00:50:17 Speaker_00
I'm not dressed like a vicar, but I'm actually the vicar, which in the Anglican terms means I own the land. I'm the steward.

00:50:24 Speaker_02
Yeah, you dress like you're dressing today. So he theoretically doesn't even have any idea who you are.

00:50:29 Speaker_00
Don't give away. there's something going on there. So I had this conversation with the guy just to say, well actually no, I'm terribly sorry, this isn't your land, this is the land that belongs to Jesus.

00:50:41 Speaker_00
But those kind of encounters have started to happen, and that sounds very scary and supernatural, but they're not. Most of the time we're just seeing when the light flares up, when the light gets turned up, the shadow increases.

00:50:55 Speaker_00
When the sun comes out, you notice the shadow, and that's just a sign that God is on work. And that's something that you don't take into account when you think, oh, let's pray for an awakening our generation.

00:51:06 Speaker_00
Well, what comes with that is personal cost, attack spiritually, but also a heightened sense of the battle. So we've had to learn how to do the battle. We've learned how to spiritual warfare. We've had to learn how to contend and in prayer.

00:51:21 Speaker_00
just, you know, is woken us up, you know, it's woken us up from our slumber a little bit. But hey, it's what we see in the book of Acts, it's what we hear about in the early church, so we shouldn't be surprised.

00:51:33 Speaker_00
So yeah, I mean, the cost has definitely been increased, but the blessing is increased. So I don't feel, I don't want to ever go back to,

00:51:42 Speaker_00
settling for a low watermark in my relationship with God and in my relationship with my expectancy around what I want God to do. Now, there's no first or second class Christians.

00:51:52 Speaker_00
The question is, on the watch and the time and the hours God gives you, how big is your faith and expectancy for what you want God to do in your moment? And I do not want any of us listening to get to heaven and look back with regrets.

00:52:04 Speaker_00
I want us to get to heaven and look back saying, Jesus, He didn't answer a whole bunch of prayers that we prayed, but we prayed for an awakening in Canada. We prayed for young people, our kids and our grandkids to come home.

00:52:15 Speaker_00
We prayed that you'd turn the tide in the popular discussion around Jesus, that we'd go through the gates of heaven. tired, bleeding, bruised, exhausted, but with the victor's crown on our heads because we poured everything out in faith before God.

00:52:33 Speaker_00
It's up to God what he does with that. It won't always look glamorous, this side of heaven, but what we're looking for is the well-done, good and faithful servant, the other side, right?

00:52:42 Speaker_02
This is so helpful. So I want you to go back to how you started at Saint, the church, when you planted it. Yeah. I mean, there was so much I was going to get to, and I think we'll have to park that for another day. But, like, your church is beautiful.

00:52:58 Speaker_02
I haven't been there personally. I will next time I'm in London come by. But it got written up in an architectural digest. I mean, I read that article in Prep 4 today. It's magnificent. It's beautiful. It's white.

00:53:12 Speaker_02
And you took an old, I'm going to call it Gothic style, because I'm not from England. I don't know what it is. But imagine, you know, just this old cathedral-type Anglican church that you've just transformed into something new.

00:53:26 Speaker_02
You obviously had a team, you had a staff. When you look back on that, there's some things you would do differently, but how can you see what you've done as preparation? Or can you? Reframe it if you need to.

00:53:40 Speaker_00
Yeah. Look, we know from the accounts in the Old Testament that God cares about buildings. And often, revival, think of the glory of God filling a temple, and they dedicate the temple.

00:53:53 Speaker_00
It says that the cloud of glory filled the temple, and the priest can do their work. So God is no stranger to being honored with space. In fact, the Incarnation teaches us that space is important to God. He matters, matter matters to God.

00:54:06 Speaker_00
He comes and moves in the neighborhood. And William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, said, you know, why should the devil have all the good tunes? You know, famous thing. Why should the devil have all the good architecture?

00:54:18 Speaker_00
You know, why should the buildings that we dedicate to the glory of God be second rate? Now, that's not to say that we can always do it, but with what we have, we've got to try and aim for the best.

00:54:31 Speaker_00
But our buildings speak of, in the same way that our coffee or our welcome or our anything, it speaks of love.

00:54:40 Speaker_00
You know, if you are invited into a home and there's no furniture and there's damp and cold and you're made to sit on the floor and no one looks after you, you wouldn't feel very welcomed.

00:54:49 Speaker_00
If I come around to your house, Kerry, I hope you'll come around to my house when you're in London. I'll look after you. I'll make you feel at home. I'll make sure you're dry and warm and that you feel welcomed.

00:55:01 Speaker_00
And buildings speak of the nature of the welcome, the Father's house. And so we don't make an idle out of buildings, but buildings are not incompatible with the presence of God. In fact, they are. of the presence of God in the Old Testament.

00:55:16 Speaker_00
And of course, in the New Testament, Jesus points to himself. He says, don't worry about the temple. It's me. I'm the new temple. You're all the people where the Holy Spirit lives. But we still got to have places to meet. And we built the building.

00:55:28 Speaker_00
The building was first built in 1792. It replaced the building that was on the site since 1275. And I'll take you up that one. We still got it in the gardens here.

00:55:37 Speaker_00
We're a church plant, seven, eight years old, a saint, but the community that I'm the vicar of in the Anglican world has been here for nearly a thousand years praying. So, you know, and we've had to do the building up a few times in that time.

00:55:49 Speaker_00
So when we rebuilt the building, we said, well, look, 99% of people here don't go to church. They won't come near a church. And these buildings, when they're empty and crumbling and dying, they look like the embassies of a country that's pulled out.

00:56:01 Speaker_00
They're boarded up. And that says the king and the kingdom isn't here and doesn't matter to us.

00:56:09 Speaker_00
We want every church to be like a cathedral of hope, a cathedral of creativity in that community, that wherever you're listening to, wherever church you're part of, your place in the community matters, and the building you're in is important.

00:56:24 Speaker_00
It's not unimportant, if you get what I'm saying. So we wanted to do the building well. Yeah, we worked with amazing architect John Porson, who's famous for being the father of modern minimalism.

00:56:34 Speaker_00
That's not really, we knew John, my wife's an architect and she'd worked with John and he was a friend. So we asked him whether he'd help us with the building and he'd done a few churches over the years that have become quite well known.

00:56:43 Speaker_00
So we said, look, we really want to do this really well. Same with Ez Devlin, who helped to design a chapel. She's a designer who works a lot with kind of Beyonce and you know, the Olympics and you two over the years, and she's an amazing creative.

00:56:59 Speaker_00
You know, our church buildings shouldn't just be like, they should reflect the glory of God in every aspect, every creativity. They should be mirrors, a little echo of the future coming of heaven.

00:57:15 Speaker_00
That's not to say that we shouldn't love the poor and our buildings should be exclusivist and alienating to people, but we want to speak to people of the goodness and the love and the beauty of heaven and the beauty of God.

00:57:29 Speaker_00
And so for that reason, matter matters, buildings are important, caring for people is important, how you make people feel and how you welcome them is important.

00:57:38 Speaker_02
Well, and you've used it, I believe, or artists have used it. Ed Sheeran did a concert there. Who are some of the others who have filmed videos or done a concert in your church since it was renovated?

00:57:50 Speaker_00
We've had a lot. I mean, we had lots of it. I never know who anyone knows. Like, I don't know. So like Coldplay launched an album with us.

00:57:57 Speaker_02
I thought it was Coldplay.

00:58:00 Speaker_00
Stormzy. Would he be well known?

00:58:01 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah. Stormzy.

00:58:02 Speaker_00
Yeah, yeah. Did a thing with a guy called Sam for recently. We've hosted like, yeah, lots of different people and lots of people no one's ever heard of.

00:58:10 Speaker_02
And what is the ministry or the idea behind that? Like, what's the philosophy?

00:58:16 Speaker_00
Yeah. Again, In our generation, the church is not necessarily known as a place which is for the stewarding of the culture of the moment. Yeah, we're really against it pretty well right now.

00:58:32 Speaker_00
Church anti-culture or church mimicking culture, we're usually 10 years behind or whatever.

00:58:38 Speaker_00
But actually, historically, the moments of the greatest flourishing of the Kingdom of God have coincided, whether you think of Gutenberg and the printing press or the Renaissance.

00:58:47 Speaker_00
in Europe when the Dark Ages kind of gave way to this explosion of light. They've coincided with moments when the church has become so filled with the presence of God that the creativity that flows from the churches really impacts the culture.

00:59:04 Speaker_00
And churches are meant to be places where we're made in the image of a creator, where we're marked by the creativity of God so that we can go and remake the world. And in the age of the algorithm,

00:59:16 Speaker_00
The creativity of the human made in the image of a creator is an urgent thing that we need to recover in the church.

00:59:23 Speaker_00
So for us as a church community, we serve a place in the world, East London, which is very creative, more creative per square mile than almost anywhere else on the planet. And we have this vision to reach and serve those creatives.

00:59:35 Speaker_00
And actually there'll be creatives, everyone listening to this, there'll be people in your community who are shaping the future. They may not be a creative with a capital C, but everybody is creative.

00:59:44 Speaker_00
Everyone is making stuff and creating their new future. So for those who are shaping that, we want the church to be the kind of crucible of creativity for the world, the place where God plays out his creativity through the lives of the people there.

00:59:58 Speaker_00
So we've opened up our doors to host musicians like Stormzy or Coldplay or Ed Sheeran, not because we're trying to make money. We don't make any money off it. Not because we're trying to look cool. We don't look cool. It's not the game.

01:00:10 Speaker_00
but because we believe in creativity as a reflection of the image of God. And so when you're in that world, the last place you think is going to welcome you is the church.

01:00:20 Speaker_00
Again, I don't want to say who, but one of the leading artists in the world came and did a show with us early on. I remember having a conversation with him in his green room in the church because I'm the

01:00:30 Speaker_00
So I kind of wander past security and say, hey, you know, welcome to my church. I'm going to slip out and say hello. So I welcome this person. I said to them, you're so welcome here. I'm the vicar. I wanted to say hello.

01:00:38 Speaker_00
And he said, stop, you know, sit down. Told the security to go away. He said, hey, tell me why someone like you would let someone like me come and play in your church.

01:00:49 Speaker_00
And I said, well, because someone like you, what you do reflects the someone that I worship. You're made in the image of a creator. And the light bulbs go on in this guy's life. He's like, oh. The church is meant to give meaning to the world.

01:01:08 Speaker_00
You know, Adam is invited by God in the beginning of Genesis to name the animals, a significant creative act, the first creative act that human race is involved in.

01:01:17 Speaker_00
God could have named the animals A for aardvark, B for badger, you know, he could have gone through it. But he says, Hey, Adam, I want you to be involved in this process. And it says whatever Adam named them, God called them.

01:01:28 Speaker_00
Now we're inviting the culture to be involved in God's creativity. So when we open our doors, we welcome an artist and it doesn't need to be someone famous. Fame is an illusion.

01:01:37 Speaker_00
We're actually inviting them to find their place in God's story and God's purpose for their life. So every church should be a cathedral of creativity. Every church should be a place where startups

01:01:48 Speaker_00
come to get energized, where AI comes to get the code to help it think right. Church should be the place, like the great cathedrals of old, where the first art and the first language is formed that shapes the Western world.

01:02:02 Speaker_00
And we've lost that vision and that calling, but here's the thing, In the next 30 years, with the fundamental shifts coming down the train tracks of human life, we're going to recover that through the church.

01:02:14 Speaker_00
It's going to be paramount, otherwise we'll cease to exist. In the age of an algorithm, when you as a Christian following Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit in a community, you're the source of original thought.

01:02:25 Speaker_00
God is the only one who creates ex nihilo out of nothing. Algorithms can't do that. So our job as the church and our gospel in this moment is more urgent than ever to reconnect the creative with the creator, the artist with the original maker.

01:02:40 Speaker_00
And so churches are gonna be the most exciting places to be in the next 50 years. You know, I think get ready, because if we get this right, we got a renaissance coming.

01:02:52 Speaker_02
Wow. I'll tell you, I am so intrigued to learn more. So this is in all of these episodes we've done, Al, this is the first edition of Between Two Flights where I flew in and you're flying out.

01:03:06 Speaker_02
So we probably need to wrap up right now, but here's what I'd love to do next time I'm in London. Let's go meet at St. Oh, let's. And we'll sit down, and we'll have a film crew there, and we'll continue this conversation.

01:03:20 Speaker_02
And I think that would be amazing, because I got to two of my questions, so that's pretty good for an hour.

01:03:27 Speaker_02
And there's so much we left on the table, so if you're open to a round two, I would be very open to that, and we'll do this in person next time.

01:03:35 Speaker_00
Can I ask you a question, Kerry?

01:03:36 Speaker_02
Yeah, please.

01:03:37 Speaker_00
Are you allergic to bees? I am not, no. When you come, I'm going to take you to meet 500,000 members of Thaint that live on our roof. And I'll tell you why the future of the church looks like keeping an apiary.

01:03:54 Speaker_00
And we're going to look at that with your film crew. So look forward to it.

01:03:56 Speaker_02
That will be amazing. Al, I've enjoyed this so much. I want to thank you for being with us. So if people want to track with you and the incredible work that's happening at SAINT, where's an easy place to find you?

01:04:10 Speaker_00
Well, listen, I want to say firstly, Kerry, to you, thank you. I'm slightly mortified as a Brit, we don't like, you know, you wanted me to talk, so I've tried to talk, but I find this whole thing quite excruciating.

01:04:26 Speaker_00
And I won't be able to do this because I find it, you know, I'm going to go and hide now having spoken to you, but I'm so grateful for you, for your encouragement and speaking with you has been great.

01:04:37 Speaker_00
And I hope some of this, what I've shared has been helpful. I mean if you want to check out and connect him with what I've talked about. I love messaging with people so my instagram is open and anybody can message me.

01:04:48 Speaker_00
I'm at al gordon but there's a dot between the d and the o n so at a l g o r d dot o n. So people can just message me if they want to find out more but also our churchsaint.church on Instagram, or Renaissance. I talked about Renaissance.

01:05:05 Speaker_00
We run a thing called Renaissance that's training leaders now all over the place and helping create space for these kind of conversations. And that's at renaissance.movement. And people will be delighted to connect in.

01:05:14 Speaker_00
We'd be delighted to connect in with everyone listening. But thank you for having me. I can't wait to catch up in London. Let's do it. That'd be great.

01:05:22 Speaker_02
I'm excited for it. Al, thank you so much.

01:05:25 Speaker_00
Yeah, we'll go hang out.

01:05:26 Speaker_02
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Some really interesting thoughts on revival.

01:05:30 Speaker_02
And if you want to get more, you can head on over to kerryneuhoff.com slash episode 693, where you will get all of the show notes and a link to everything that we talked about on the podcast. Make sure you check out Subsplash and Glue Plus.

01:05:45 Speaker_02
Subsplash puts today's most innovative church technology into your hands. Go to subsplash.com to schedule a quick, no-obligation demo and get $500 off when you sign up.

01:05:57 Speaker_02
And Glue Plus is an all-in-one membership community where church leaders can access everything they need. head over to plus, that's plus.glue.us, glue is G-L-O-O, .us slash carry, and use the code carrysave20 for 20% off your subscription.

01:06:15 Speaker_02
So excited for next episode. Will Gadara is back in the house. We go into the backstory behind Unreasonable Hospitality, which has stayed in the top five of all best-selling books on the New York Times list now for a couple of years.

01:06:29 Speaker_02
We talk about the TV series The Bear, Navigating Control and Collaboration, and so much more. Also coming up on the podcast, we have got Chad Veach, Bob Goff, J.P. Pucluta, Jenny Allen, Noah Herron, David Kinnaman, and a whole lot more coming up.

01:06:44 Speaker_02
And before we go, how about I put something truly useful in your hands? You can join over 30,000 leaders who have downloaded my free Preaching Cheat Sheet. To start transforming your preaching, go to PreachingCheatSheet.com, get your copy for free.

01:06:59 Speaker_02
That's preachingchichi.com. Hey, whatever you're doing today, thank you so much for listening. I do not take this for granted. This is one of the great joys of my life to be able to do this with you. And we'll catch you next time on the podcast.

01:07:10 Speaker_02
I hope our time together today has helped you identify and scale a growth barrier that you're facing.