Some of you may know that right now the Southern Baptists (SBC) convene in Southern California for their 2022 annual meeting.  At this very time, Mark Dever and 9 Marks, a Reformed faction of the SBC, produce their journal with the emphasis on revivalism (June 2022).  I wish I could be happy to join their concern.  Their accepted wokeism proceeds from the same root as revivalism, which is pragmatism.

One would think professing Reformed or Calvinists would insist on dependence on God for conversion and church growth.  I don’t believe these men.  They use measures as extreme as Charles Finney to produce results.  Among many ways, their wokeism reveals their contradiction or hypocrisy.

Jonathan Leeman writes in his introduction, and I agree, “Revivalism depends on God’s Words plus our methods.”  I also concur with these sentences:

Revivalism, which depends on our ingenuity and energy, brings short-term gains. It looks fruitful. It appeals to our yearning to see the results of our labors.

The SBC, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and independent Baptists are all rife with revivalism.  The adherents depend on more than the Word of God for the results.

A word to describe a particularly wicked kind of “our ingenuity and energy” and “our methods” is pandering.  This manifested itself in the seeker sensitive movement and the purpose-driven movement.  A church studies its particular demographic and forms a strategy that conforms to the culture.  The region likes either pop rock, rap, or southern gospel through which a church panders to its audience.

In “Six Marks of Revivalism,” Andrew Ballitch writes, “Revivalism can actually make this happen,” referring to meeting conditions that spur church growth.  He also writes, and I agree again, “This revivalism was by no means monolithic.”  Revivalism changes in how it manifests itself, because it centers on man, not God.  The new measures of Finney have morphed into whatever measures seem necessary to produce numbers.

Not that long ago, churches and their leaders decided they needed a neutral name to attract the lost to the church.  About one of the journal authors who wrote a few of the articles, the journal says “is the senior pastor of Fellowship in the Pass Church in Beaumont, California.”   A part of the church growth movement, which is an insidious form of revivalism, is that you’ve got to market your church with a branding or label.  If it’s all God, why not just call yourself “Beaumont Baptist Church”?

Church growth philosophy says it might offend an unsaved person to hear “Baptist.”  Someone might think, “Hell fire and brimstone.”  You don’t want to have that happen, so instead you call yourself, “Fellowship in the Pass Church.”  This practice illustrates a pragmatic mindset in the trajectory of revivalism.

The name “Baptist” carries with it doctrinal connotations.  Revivalism isn’t monolithic.  Unsaved people don’t like the feeling of “Baptist,” and you can change that feeling, help along the process of church growth and increase your numbers, by choosing a neutral, apparently non-offensive name.

Like we know that gas prices went up before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we know that revivalism in its present iteration panders to unchurched Harry and Sally.  That means the “blended worship” that 9 Marks won’t include in its presentation.  You also might want to appear “woke” to your younger and perhaps ethnic demographic.

To get and keep a specialized population, you must show support to its grievances.  For instance, you should call January 6 more than a “dustup,” as a recent NFL defensive coordinator, Jack Del Rio, did and was fined 100,000 dollars by his team.  It means muting strong statements against popular sin, especially homosexuality and even abortion, in the spirit of Tim Keller.  You might be complementarian, but you manage your speech so as not to offend egalitarians.  Be careful of delineating male and female roles as if those distinctions exist.

Mark Dever, Jonathan Leeman, and 9 Marks promoted and still push wokeism.  This matches the spirit of corporate America flying rainbow flags to celebrate gay pride.  You can’t go into a McDonalds or Starbucks without rainbows hanging all over.

Have you heard of “virtue signaling”?   Wokeism sends a signal to a demographic to attract, gain, and then keep their allegiance.  It is a new measure.

Ballitch gives as a characteristic of revivalism, “emotional manipulation.”  Wokeism is emotional manipulation.  He also lists “reductionist views of conversion.”  Revivalism reduced conversion to something short of true conversion.  Wokeism better “reconstructs conversion.”  It calls for repentance over implicit racism in all white people, specifying group guilt rather than individual.

Critical theory claims special knowledge of racism, a modern form of gnosticism.  The true gospel eliminates racial and ethnic barriers and sees everyone the same.  Including race in the gospel corrupts it.

With wokeism, wokeness becomes a necessary fruit of repentance like speaking in tongues among the Charismatics.  Important transformation of language must accompany the repentance.  Leadership attracts followers by modifying language, conforming to wokeism.  This easily fits a particular view of the kingdom compatible with the amillennialism of Dever and his church.

Root to Finney’s revivalism was pelagianism.  In his Systematic Theology, he denied man’s total depravity.  He saw within man a spark of goodness, which he could fan with human measures unto salvation.  With man’s sinful condition, his rebellion, the only solution is divine.  A theoretical Calvinism with God at center does not reach actual practice.

Is there a particular approach for growing an urban church?  Revivalism and wokeism both say, “Yes.”  The Bible says, “No.”  Don’t do anything different.  Just preach the gospel.  Don’t change based on white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, African, whatever.  Depend on God.

When 9 Marks points out the moat of revivalism in its audience’s eye, it should remove the beam of wokeism in its.