Biblically, the theme of revival appears as a verb: the cry in Psalms 80 and 85 for God to revive his people, the work of his hands. This cry is elemental, visceral, and, given the propensity of the contemporary church to fade into mediocrity, an entirely legitimate one to adopt. Nothing is more common in the Christian church than spiritual atrophy, against which the prayer for the Spirit to revive his church is not only apt, but necessary. Once the verb becomes a noun, however, an important shift takes place in the collective consciousness. By dismissing a decent, robust and dynamic verb for a noun, which is what we do when we deploy the term revival, we enter a particular religious psychology, and arguably a consumer package, that has at its centre the hope and expectation of a large-scale evangelistic impact and church growth. We enter the world of altar calls, the anxious seat, and mood-inducing music. We enter the world not just of revival but revivalism.
[Ian Stackhouse, Revival, Faddism and the Gospel, in Andrew Walter and Kristin Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster, 2003), p239]
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