I first heard of the recent events in Cwmbran three weeks ago from an Elim Pastor friend here in Derby. He told me over lunch one day of a local Elim church in Wales that had seen a man walk out of his wheel chair and then subsequently people had been coming to Christ every day for a month.
Now a Pentecostal Church claiming it is having a Revival / Outpouring/ Visitation is really nothing new. I have been around this sort of stuff since 1994 when I was deeply impacted by the Toronto or Fathers outpouring in 1994. So when three weeks later I hear of the numbers who were coming to Christ was not abating I decided to go and look for myself. I went with my Elim Pastor friend and also the Pastor of a New Frontiers Church in the City.
So what did I find.... Is it Revival, is it a move of God?
Firstly, I have to say I have been in meetings far more powerful in terms of the manifest presence of God. However I was hugely impacted by this event on several fronts.
1. By the Humility.
Cwmbran is not a nice middle class, typical home of evangelical Christianity. It is a very poor Welsh town in the Valleys. The two buildings of note near the "Tin Pentecostal Cathedral" were Lidl's and Aldi's sure sign you aren't in the smartest neighborhood. The area is surrounded by poor social housing and the first thing that impacts you when you arrive at Victory church is, this move of God is touching people from the poorest areas of society. The first that I have seen in my lifetime among a people group I long to see reached with the Gospel. Never have I seen so many tattoo's in a church service!
The humility of it's Pastor Richard Taylor also impacted me. He was clearly submitted to, God, his denomination and to his peers. He has clearly realized he had been given something from God that he had to steward it with a Holy submission. He publicly invited correction from General Superintendent of the Elim Churches John Glass to oversee him and the church while this move was happening.
2. By the Simple preaching of the Cross of Jesus and the power of the Gospel to save.
Here I was deeply challenged. Never have I heard a congregation cheer when the text of a Bible is read. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life, was announced.
For this congregation this was a personal reality; they sang, clapped, prayed and gave God glory like people who had genuinely been saved from Hell. These were the humble poor as Wesley said who had believed. My favorite quote of the night from Pastor Richard was, "how the Gospel works is like this; Jesus washes you in His blood so God by His Holy Spirit can get inside of you and change you from the inside out".
When talking on Revival and comparing what is happening with other movements he said, "we aren't having gold dust and diamonds, the only diamonds we have here are these precious souls."
I had stepped back into the simple Gospel that I heard as a young man of 25. The Gospel that changed me from a sinner to a saint and put a love for Christ in my heart. It was simple message, full of the cross, full of the love of Christ. It was a "Primitive" Pentecostalism, a foursquare Gospel, Jesus was healer, savior, baptizer in the Holy Spirit and future coming King. The message that has seen 800,000,000 souls world wide caught up in the greatest move of God in History since the Spirit first fell on a mixed group of believers in Bonnae Brae Street.
3. It was rooted in a stream of Revival.
It is too early to call this Revival or awakening, I do not know if it has spread to other churches in Wales or elsewhere. In an internet age the possibility humanly for that to happen is easy. However Pr Richard Taylor was drenched in the Welsh Revival narrative and clearly longed with all his heart for God to do it again. This church had clearly prayed and sought God. it had dug ditches to it's community and were church planting in other areas. As they sung I could hear in my heart, the distant sound of another song that had thronged the Valley's in the past in 1904, whispering in the rafters of the Tin cathedral.
Here is love vast as the Ocean, loving kindness as a flood. when the prince of life our ransom shed for us His precious Blood....
My hear leapt, would the valleys come aflame again, Lord our nation needs a Holy touch from the King.
4. They were reaching the people no-one else is reaching.
It was this fourth area that gripped me. Leading a City Mission, we work day in day out with the neediest of our City. Chaotic lifestyles, cynical rejection of any God, as life is tough. Drugs, drink and casual sex is the lot we see people live for on the whole. To be honest we see pitiful little fruit for our extensive labour. Here in Cwmbran these people we love so dearly were coming to Christ in their hundreds. From where I sat, I looked at a dual heritage girl in her early twenties, tattoos on her arms, teeth missing where methadone had done it's work of destruction. As the Gospel was preached I watched the tears stream down her face as she received Christs love. My mind went back to the accounts of Whitfield preaching to the miners in Bristol, where this Hymn was written.
Is it Revival? An outpouring a major move of God... I don't know, but what I do know is this where once they were blind , now they see, and Lord my prayer is do it in Derby, do it in our nation.
Now a Pentecostal Church claiming it is having a Revival / Outpouring/ Visitation is really nothing new. I have been around this sort of stuff since 1994 when I was deeply impacted by the Toronto or Fathers outpouring in 1994. So when three weeks later I hear of the numbers who were coming to Christ was not abating I decided to go and look for myself. I went with my Elim Pastor friend and also the Pastor of a New Frontiers Church in the City.
So what did I find.... Is it Revival, is it a move of God?
Firstly, I have to say I have been in meetings far more powerful in terms of the manifest presence of God. However I was hugely impacted by this event on several fronts.
1. By the Humility.
Cwmbran is not a nice middle class, typical home of evangelical Christianity. It is a very poor Welsh town in the Valleys. The two buildings of note near the "Tin Pentecostal Cathedral" were Lidl's and Aldi's sure sign you aren't in the smartest neighborhood. The area is surrounded by poor social housing and the first thing that impacts you when you arrive at Victory church is, this move of God is touching people from the poorest areas of society. The first that I have seen in my lifetime among a people group I long to see reached with the Gospel. Never have I seen so many tattoo's in a church service!
2. By the Simple preaching of the Cross of Jesus and the power of the Gospel to save.
Here I was deeply challenged. Never have I heard a congregation cheer when the text of a Bible is read. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life, was announced.
For this congregation this was a personal reality; they sang, clapped, prayed and gave God glory like people who had genuinely been saved from Hell. These were the humble poor as Wesley said who had believed. My favorite quote of the night from Pastor Richard was, "how the Gospel works is like this; Jesus washes you in His blood so God by His Holy Spirit can get inside of you and change you from the inside out".
When talking on Revival and comparing what is happening with other movements he said, "we aren't having gold dust and diamonds, the only diamonds we have here are these precious souls."
I had stepped back into the simple Gospel that I heard as a young man of 25. The Gospel that changed me from a sinner to a saint and put a love for Christ in my heart. It was simple message, full of the cross, full of the love of Christ. It was a "Primitive" Pentecostalism, a foursquare Gospel, Jesus was healer, savior, baptizer in the Holy Spirit and future coming King. The message that has seen 800,000,000 souls world wide caught up in the greatest move of God in History since the Spirit first fell on a mixed group of believers in Bonnae Brae Street.
3. It was rooted in a stream of Revival.
It is too early to call this Revival or awakening, I do not know if it has spread to other churches in Wales or elsewhere. In an internet age the possibility humanly for that to happen is easy. However Pr Richard Taylor was drenched in the Welsh Revival narrative and clearly longed with all his heart for God to do it again. This church had clearly prayed and sought God. it had dug ditches to it's community and were church planting in other areas. As they sung I could hear in my heart, the distant sound of another song that had thronged the Valley's in the past in 1904, whispering in the rafters of the Tin cathedral.
Here is love vast as the Ocean, loving kindness as a flood. when the prince of life our ransom shed for us His precious Blood....
My hear leapt, would the valleys come aflame again, Lord our nation needs a Holy touch from the King.
4. They were reaching the people no-one else is reaching.
It was this fourth area that gripped me. Leading a City Mission, we work day in day out with the neediest of our City. Chaotic lifestyles, cynical rejection of any God, as life is tough. Drugs, drink and casual sex is the lot we see people live for on the whole. To be honest we see pitiful little fruit for our extensive labour. Here in Cwmbran these people we love so dearly were coming to Christ in their hundreds. From where I sat, I looked at a dual heritage girl in her early twenties, tattoos on her arms, teeth missing where methadone had done it's work of destruction. As the Gospel was preached I watched the tears stream down her face as she received Christs love. My mind went back to the accounts of Whitfield preaching to the miners in Bristol, where this Hymn was written.
He speaks, and listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive;
the mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
the humble poor believe
Is it Revival? An outpouring a major move of God... I don't know, but what I do know is this where once they were blind , now they see, and Lord my prayer is do it in Derby, do it in our nation.
