Interpretive Trends: Christian Revitalization for the Early 21st Century

The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements is a research center that grew out of a concern to take the pulse and heart of the various movements of revitalization which are developing in a variety of cultural settings across world Christianity. It is significant that this research is being pursued within the arena of theological education. This means the Center intends to assist those persons called of God for ministry in the early twenty first century to discern new realities not observed in previous generations of Christian leadership, and to minister effectively within those realities. The Center seeks to track with the Spirit of God, as revealed in the biblical and confessional documents of our Triune faith, in discerning how God is at work amid the crucial human demographic and cultural developments that are redefining the shape of Christianity. Our learning and praxis need to be responsive to these shifts, that include post-denominationalism, transnationalism, urbanization, and globalization. Social scientists are at work in these fields, but here it is being asked, how is Christian revitalization occurring in the midst of these realities, and in what ways is it making a difference at all levels of human culture, amid its brokenness? We expect to be finding new ways of doing homiletics, Christian discipleship, and, yes, historical and systematic theology, by seeing how preaching and Christian formation are being practiced in the midst of revival, as it is in the Global South and East. Revival is being manifested in the midst of these shifting social realities. In so doing, it tends to move ahead of and apart from the routinized life of congregations concerned with their own survival and well-being.