Send the Fire Again

By Clive Price

 

REVIVALS // SEND THE FIRE AGAIN // FIJI

 

Spontaneous applause swept through the hall as Welsh pastor Sarah Trinder grabbed the microphone and screamed, "Something's started happening--at last! We've been waiting long enough. Bless God! Praise Him!"

 

The audience responded with cheers and laughter--then jumped to their feet and started marching on the spot. It was a dramatic moment at "Celtic Wildfire: The Gathering," a four-day conference held in a leisure center overlooking the vast coastline of Port Talbot, South Wales.

 

It was like an echo from the past, for this tiny nation--a principality of Great Britain, with its own language and culture--had already hosted a major revival. In 1904, in a tiny chapel in Loughor, an explosive awakening occurred that spread like wildfire to other communities. Men left their pints of ale in the pubs to check out the commotion in the chapels--and found them packed with people crying for Christ's mercy.

 

Drunk on revival fervor, men and women took their untamed intensity of prayer from the church to the carpenter's shop, the train station, the ferry boat--and more than 1,000 feet below the stunning Welsh landscape to the dark halls of the coal mines.

 

That was 100 years ago. But the rumbling has started again. The longing for a fresh awakening became almost tangible at the Port Talbot conference last fall. The seaside air was rich with expectation.

 

Trinder, 48, led the people in a song that went, "It's the sound of r-e-v-i-v-a-l!" The former school principal directed them to look through a big picture window at the spectacular sea view outside. "That's what we're going to walk on! That's what Jesus walked on--and that's where we're going." The marching became faster and louder.

 

"I've got this feeling that something is going to be released," she exclaimed. "Let's shove over and do what the Holy Spirit tells us." Chairs were quickly stacked up in piles to make way for falling bodies as Welsh Christians--thirsty for fresh rain from heaven--hit the floor after receiving prayer.

 

People can't help but smile when Trinder speaks. She exudes a sense of joy that is explosive and contagious. She peppers her message with hilarious comments and funny stories--often cracking jokes at her own expense.

 

Trinder is part of a new wave of revivalists who offer fresh hope for Welsh communities. She leads a Pentecostal congregation called Tabernacle in the former mining town of Pontllanfraith. When she became pastor in 1999, fewer than 40 people attended the church. Now there are more than 100. "We believe that we're going to be a church in the community--and God's raising us up," Trinder told Charisma.

 

Her vision is to develop a church that's more like a leisure center--complete with gymnasium, Jacuzzi, healing rooms and a sanctuary for worship. She believes the church should be out in the marketplace as Jesus was. "We're just at the very early stages," she said. "We're looking around for land."

 

These new revivalists might not fit all the criteria of the typical conservative evangelical pastor--Trinder demolishes that image straightaway. But they are plugging into ancient powerlines that run right through the history and heritage of Wales like the seams of gold Roman invaders once mined here.

 

They take inspiration from yesterday in a bid to take new ground tomorrow. The Welsh Revival of 1904 made a deep impact on this land and sparked similar happenings as far away as Australia and Japan. But on the 100th anniversary of the historic revival, the fire needs to be ignited again.

 

"If we don't prophesy, if we don't release the word of God in our lives, then Wales will not be able to come into its destiny," 22-year-old Gary Morgan warned the conference crowd. This fiery young preacher stirred hearts at the event with his whoever-dares-wins style of preaching, and with his call to "become abandoned" and "unlock revival" in the land.

 

Like Trinder's, his bold proclamations triggered some noisy responses. As he hit the strings of a guitar that was lying on the stage behind him, Irish singer-songwriter Liz Fitzgibbon--part of the worship team--started shaking uncontrollably. "God is saying to our land, 'You need to start to hear the key of heaven,'" Morgan told his audience. The atmosphere was electric.

 

It was a powerful message. Morgan later told Charisma that his hope is for Wales to be transformed so that once again it can "bless the nations." He doesn't get dewy-eyed with stories of past awakenings, but his face shows a fierce yearning for something heavenly to happen now. "What people need is a demonstration of God in the workplace," he explained.

 

When he's not leading prophetic schools at Church on the Move in Neath, Morgan works as a quality engineer for the Toyota car company. "I'm not frightened to give people words at work. You'll get the wisecracks. But when you get [co-workers] on their own and speak something of what the Lord is saying, they think, How do you know that?"