A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. The Rev. Bob Little comes to the Renewal Fellowship Executive Director position from ministering in the Presbyterian Church in Canada in Maple, Ontario, since 1982. He was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland and Hartford, Connecticut.
All of us are watching, with excitement, the thrilling events which are taking place in eastern Europe. The T.V. pictures convey the exhilaration on the faces and hearts of the people on the streets when they found freedom and democracy. A tide of “people power” swept ordinary citizens into action. After forty years of darkness were dispelled there were glimmers of light and hope.
As I watched this dynamic at work, I asked, can such a movement of light-power sweep over the church of Jesus Christ and especially in our Presbyterian church? Almost automatically I found myself answering in the words of our Lord to Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Like the prophet we admit “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” If the Bible is clear on anything it is obvious on this, what was described in Ezekiel was spiritual “people power.” Surely it can happen today.
God gives the real source for action in Ezekiel in chapter 37, verse 14: “I will put my spirit in you, and you will live.” This happened in verse 31 of Acts 4: “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” It will be the same now, if prayer, Holy Spirit power and the word preached form our experience.
I have a conviction! God has already fulfilled his part in his sovereign grace. The power is available. The other side awaits our commitment to the Lord and his church we love. My vision is that lay people and pastors will rise up, leave the hostage situation of our comfortable ecclesiastical enclaves and spread out across our communities, in a new freedom, to show the beauty and favour of our saving Lord.
I remember my mother telling me about such a movement in Belfast in the 1920s when a godly Presbyterian minister, W.P. Nicholson, led thousands to Christ and others to spiritual blessings. As a student in Edinburgh in the early ’50s another Presbyterian minister, Duncan Campbell, thrilled me as he told me about the awakening in the Western Isles of Scotland in the late ’40s. He said the roads were black with people going to pray. It has happened more recently in Africa, South America and parts of eastern Europe.
Can it happen in Canada? In the Presbyterian church? The Lord replies, “It’s not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” Those of us who are committed to renewal will have to pay the price and practise prayer, possession, of Holy Ghost power and bold presentation of God’s word.
You in the Renewal Fellowship have called and appointed me to be your leader. I accept this challenge and am prepared to give my time, energy and spiritual resources to this cause. Years of decline, compromise and spiritual lethargy have blanketed the church in Canada. The time has come to call all those in the pew and pulpit to rise up in this last decade of the twentieth century and bring freedom and life to the dying world around us.
As your Executive Director from April 1990, I am prepared to visit your churches, small groups and individuals to encourage you in renewal, revival and evangelism, the latter being nearest to my own heart. The Renewal Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in Canada is the servant of, and is prepared to work with, our whole church.