The Night the Revival Never Came

True Revival Can’t Be Manufactured

TL;DR

In an age where churches chase results and emotional highs, we risk mistaking revivalism for revival. Drawing on Andrew and Kara Root’s examination Hartmut Rosa’s idea of resonance and semi-controllability, this piece argues that true revival can’t be manufactured—it can only be received when we stop trying to control the Spirit and make space for God to move.

True Revival Can’t Be Manufactured

The preacher boldly declared, “Another verse!” Then another. And another. The pianist kept playing, the room quiet except for the hum of forced emotion. You could feel the strain—a mixture of restless teenagers, overzealous church workers, and probably more than a few emotionally exhausted souls. Everyone waited for something to happen, but nothing did. The preacher clearly expected a greater response from the teenagers, myself included, gathered at the camp. His repeated calls for “just one more verse” made it obvious he was determined to force a response—one way or another.

Looking back, that moment taught me something about control: you can’t manufacture the Spirit.

In The Congregation in a Secular Age, theologian Andrew Root writes about how both people and churches are trapped in a cycle of busyness and constant motion. Drawing from sociologist Hartmut Rosa, Root argues that “Silicon Valley time” has become the new timekeeper of society—a culture of acceleration in which life moves faster and faster, but meaning keeps slipping further away.

For churches, this creates a kind of lose-lose scenario: try to keep up with the pace of the world and you’ll burn out; fall behind, and you risk becoming irrelevant. As Root puts it, this dynamic isn’t something we can simply “opt out” of—it’s the water we swim in. But he also offers a counterpoint: “The answer to acceleration is resonance.”

From Control to Resonance

In his later work with his spouse, Kara Root, A Pilgrimage into Letting Go, Root expands on Rosa’s distinction between resonance and controllability. Rosa describes four ways we attempt to control the world:

1. Make it visible

2. Make it reachable

3. Make it manageable

4. Make it useful

These four impulses—to see, reach, manage, and use—shape nearly everything about modern life, including how we do church. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the way we’ve approached revival.

Revival vs. Revivalism

To be clear, revival and revivalism are not the same thing. As author Michelle Van Loon writes,

“If you squint, revival and revivalism might look nearly identical. However, revivalism tends to work toward the goal of revival via a programmed, often emotionally manipulative approach.”

Revivalism seeks to manufacture what only the Spirit can give. It promises spiritual renewal through human technique—music that swells just so, sermons designed to stir, predictable altar calls that mimic the effects of the Spirit without its unpredictability.

Van Loon notes that revivalism’s appeal lies in its seeming efficiency:

“It spurs rapid numerical growth in congregations it touches, creating a church environment that chases the spiritual quick fix to the diminishment of the slow work of discipleship.”

This speed and efficiency has led to what author J. Michael Jordan calls the “anxiety–repentance–relief” model—an emotional pattern baked into much of modern evangelical worship and born from the desire to fast-track discipleship or manufacture responses. What happens, of course, is that over time, church becomes less about God’s uncontrollable grace and more about managing spiritual outcomes.

In his book The Hybrid Congregation, author Michael Huerter talks about how this puts church leaders, especially worship leaders in a sort of double bind, having to “craft musical experiences that achieve either the perception or the reality of an unmediated encounter with God.” No wonder, as I’m seeing in my work with Green Room Leaders, a ministry non-profit that supports worship leaders, they are burning out, as Root & Root predict, at a furious pace.

The Resonance of True Revival

By contrast, Rosa’s four marks of resonance—being affected, self-efficacy, adaptive transformation, and uncontrollability—line up surprisingly well with the anatomy of true revival.

• People are affected by the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

• They respond with self-efficacy, taking concrete steps of faith.

• They experience transformation, often unexpected and unplanned.

• And it all remains fundamentally uncontrollable.

This kind of revival isn’t manufactured—it’s received. It can’t be scheduled, replicated, or reverse-engineered. It only happens when there’s space for resonance, when our need for control gives way to openness before God.

Manufactured Calling & Control Masquerading as Faith

I learned this lesson the hard way. During my college years, the “highest” ministry calling, at least in my circles, was to become a missionary. I tried convincing myself that God was calling me to Ethiopia, even using that as a test for my then-girlfriend (now wife): Would she be willing to go with me?

I remember even so much as meeting with the head of the missions agency, trying to force the issue. But it never sat right. It was more like I was manufacturing a calling—togetherness pressure if there ever were such a thing—rather than responding to the Spirit’s true invitation.

On the other end of the spectrum, some church traditions swing the opposite direction, assuming that no structure is necessary—that the Spirit will simply “show up” if we let go completely. Van Loon cautions that this kind of chaos can breed a “culture of immaturity.” While Van Loon highlights charismatic communities, certainly the same thing could be true of more rigid, conservative contexts, where practical tools such as counseling or therapy are eschewed in favor of simply assuming God will do all the work.

In both extremes—over-programmed or under-prepared—we’re still trying to control the outcome. Whether through manipulation or presumption, we’ve turned resonance into a mechanism.

The Way of Semi-Controllability

Root and Root offer a helpful middle ground: semi-controllability.

“All Christian practices faithfully done—particularly contemplative or mystical ones—are semi-controllable. They must have some of the elements of controllability—being visible, reachable, manageable, or useful. But if they have all four, they become completely controllable and lose the potential for resonance.”

Faithful ministry requires some structure—practices that are visible and reachable—but not so much that everything becomes predictable. Prayer, worship, and preaching must always leave room for surprise, for the uncontrollable grace of the Spirit to move.

Perhaps the most freeing realization I’ve had as a preacher is learning to trust that it isn’t all on me. Of course, I still have to do the work—study the text, craft a thoughtful sermon, and show up prepared. It would be immature to step into the pulpit and simply “wing it” for twenty minutes. But whether or not the sermon lands isn’t mine to control. I imagine the same is true for worship leaders who stand before a congregation to help mediate an encounter with God. They can—and should—prepare well, but their imperfections won’t derail the Spirit’s work. The wind of God blows where it will.

As described in the book, even Kara Root’s beautifully crafted daily prayers from their pilgrimage sometimes fell flat with her family, the family’s fatigue or grumpiness upsetting the mood and perhaps “quenching the Spirit,” whether intentional or not. We are all human, after all. And sometimes even the most sincere practices sometimes feel flat. There are moments when the Spirit doesn’t seem to show up, when the words fall lifeless. That’s life. Again, we can’t control God.

Leaving Room for the Spirit

That night at youth camp still comes to mind. The preacher’s intentions were sincere—he wanted students to meet God. But in his effort to make something happen, he squeezed out the very thing he was hoping for: space for the Spirit to move freely.

Revival can’t be manufactured.

In a culture obsessed with control, churches will need to recover the courage to leave some things unfinished, unplanned, and unscripted—trusting that God’s uncontrollable grace still moves best in the spaces we can’t manage.