What about The Turning revival in Reading, UK?

Question 60073.

The Turning revival began in Reading in 2016 and for a while it was the most talked about thing in British evangelicalism. Reports of hundreds and then thousands of people praying to receive Jesus on the streets travelled quickly, and churches across the country wanted to know how to get it.

I want to look at it carefully rather than warmly or coldly. There were people involved whose love for the lost I would not question for a moment, and there were features of the method and the theology behind it that I think caused real harm. Both things can be true.

What The Turning was and where it came from

The model came from the United States, developed by Pastor Yinka Oyekan of The Gate church in Reading in partnership with an American ministry that had been running similar street campaigns.

The method involved teams going out with a short scripted conversation designed to move a stranger from a first greeting to a prayer of commitment in a few minutes. Local churches were mobilised across a city for a fortnight of intensive outreach.

The Turning revival then spread beyond Reading to other British towns and cities, with figures reported in the thousands. National Christian media covered it extensively and largely uncritically at first.

The numbers and what happened to them

The reported totals were remarkable. Hundreds in the first days, then figures in the thousands across the campaigns, described as decisions or as people praying to receive Jesus.

The difficulty came afterwards. Follow-up studies and reports from participating churches found that only a very small proportion of those who prayed ever appeared in a congregation, and in some places the number was close to none.

That gap is the central problem with the Turning revival, and it is not a technicality. If thousands genuinely came to faith, we would expect to see churches filling. We did not.

Why the script is the problem

The method used a set sequence of questions designed to secure agreement at each step, ending with an invitation to repeat a prayer. It is efficient and it is closer to a sales technique than to anything in the New Testament.

Notice what is missing. There is very little on sin, almost nothing on judgement, no call to count the cost, and no time for the hearer to understand what is being asked of them.

Compare Peter at Pentecost. He preaches the whole story, indicts his hearers for the crucifixion, waits for the question, and then calls for repentance and baptism. Compare Paul at Athens, who talks about the resurrection and the day of judgement and gets mocked for it.

Jesus told people to count the cost before following Him, and He let the rich young ruler walk away. A method that cannot allow anyone to say no has misunderstood what conversion is.

Decisions and conversions are not the same thing

This is the theological heart of the matter. A decision is something a person makes in a moment. Conversion is something God does, and it produces a life that continues.

Jesus taught this directly in the parable of the sower. Seed on rocky ground springs up immediately, and the immediacy is not presented as a good sign. It has no root, and when trouble comes it withers.

The New Testament measures by fruit rather than by response. You will recognise them by their fruits, and the test runs over years rather than minutes.

I am not saying that nobody was saved during the Turning revival. God is free and He can use a poor method. I am saying that counting raised hands and calling it revival is a category error.

The theology behind the method

The movement was connected to networks associated with the New Apostolic Reformation, and that connection shaped the framework more than the publicity suggested.

In that world, apostles and prophets are governing offices, cities are claimed for the kingdom through spiritual warfare, and the church is expected to take dominion over the seven mountains of cultural influence. Mass street decisions fit naturally into that scheme as territory being taken.

You can see the influence in the language. Cities are turned, regions are claimed, and numbers become evidence of a shift in the spiritual atmosphere. I have written on that theology in the New Apostolic Reformation and its leaders.

The ecumenical difficulty

Churches of every description were invited to take part, and that was presented as a strength. Unity is a good word and nobody wants to be the man arguing against it.

But the unity Scripture calls for is unity in the truth. Paul’s picture in Ephesians 4 is of one body growing up into the head, held together by one faith. Where congregations that disagree about how a person is saved run a joint campaign to save people, the disagreement has not gone away, it has been hidden.

The practical consequence during the Turning revival was that a person who prayed on the street might be directed to a church that would not teach them the gospel they had supposedly just believed.

What was genuinely good

I do not want to write this as though nothing commendable happened, because that would be unjust.

Christians who had never spoken to a stranger about Jesus went out and did it. Congregations that had been turned inwards for years looked outwards. Young people got a taste of the fact that the gospel is for people outside the building.

The hunger was real and the courage was real. My criticism is of the method and the framework, and I would rather work with someone who tried something and got it wrong than with someone who never left the vestry.

What we should learn from it

The first lesson is about how quickly British evangelicalism will believe a big number. We should have asked harder questions sooner, and the Christian press should have asked them first.

The second is that evangelism and follow-up cannot be separated. The Great Commission is to make disciples, teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded, and a method that produces decisions with no discipleship has done half a job at best.

The third is that faithfulness is measured over decades. The men and women who quietly run a Bible study for six people in a village hall for twenty years will have more to show for it than any fortnight campaign, and nobody will write an article about them.

The Turning revival and the problem of counting

I want to press on the arithmetic, because the numbers were the whole story and they deserve scrutiny.

In the New Testament there are exactly two places where converts are counted, both in the opening chapters of Acts, and in both cases the figure is followed immediately by a description of a continuing common life. Three thousand were added, and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

The number and the continuation are reported together. Luke counts people who stayed.

The Turning revival reported the first half of that equation and not the second, and when the second half was eventually looked for it was largely absent.

That is not a small reporting failure. It is the difference between the biblical way of measuring and a modern one.

What honest reporting would have looked like

Suppose the same campaigns had been reported differently. Suppose the figures published had been the number of people still meeting with a church six months later.

The numbers would have been far smaller and the story far less exciting, and the churches involved would have learned something useful. Instead a great many congregations spent a year expecting a wave that never arrived, and some good people concluded they had failed.

Christian media bears a share of this. A movement gets the reporting it is given, and uncritical coverage did the Turning revival no favours at all. Real friends ask hard questions early.

Would a real revival look like this?

It is worth asking what the historic awakenings actually looked like, since the Turning revival borrowed the word.

In the Welsh revival of 1904, in the Hebrides, in the Great Awakening, the recurring marks were a deep conviction of sin, a hunger for Scripture, restitution made to people who had been wronged, and lasting social change. Public houses emptied and debts were repaid.

None of those things is a technique and none of them can be scheduled for a fortnight in April. They arrived unbidden and they left a permanent mark on a community.

Set that beside a campaign with a script and a target, and the difference is not one of degree. The Turning revival was an evangelistic method with a revival name attached, and confusing the two raised expectations that nothing could have met.

Jesus said the wind blows where it wishes and so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit, which is a warning against any method that promises to produce the Spirit’s work on a timetable.

So, now what?

If your church is invited to join a campaign of this kind, ask three things before you commit. What exactly will be said to people? Who will disciple those who respond? And who is accountable if the numbers do not hold up?

If you took part in the Turning revival and have felt disillusioned since, do not let that make you cynical about evangelism itself. The problem was never that you wanted your town to hear about Jesus. That desire was right.

And if you prayed a prayer on a street in Reading and have wondered ever since whether anything happened, the question to ask is not whether the words were correct. It is whether you are trusting Jesus now. Are you? That is a question you can answer today, and the answer does not depend on a campaign. See also what genuine revival actually is.

Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 7:21, ESV