REVIVAL: From Wales to the Cities of Scotland
An apparent anomaly
It appeared to be a strange anomaly; so I assumed I must have made a simple transcription error in copying the data I was researching. As part of a sabbatical I had been granted - my only one in 30 years pastoral of ministry! - I had decided to explore people’s journeys to faith, replicating some work that Bishop John Finney had carried out for the Church of England’s Decade of Evangelism (1). I was serving as a Baptist minister in Scotland at the time; so I planned to approach everyone who had been baptised within Scottish Baptist churches during a recent calendar year to ask them to complete a comprehensive questionnaire about their conversion journey. As I wanted to know what my likely sample size would be, I researched how many baptisms there had been in Scottish Baptist Churches for each year during the 20th century (2). And that’s when I came face to face with the anomaly.
Figure 1: the number of baptism in Scottish Baptist churches during the 20th century
1905: a remarkable year
I discovered that 1905 had been a remarkable year. In the first decade of the 20th century, baptisms in Scottish Baptist churches averaged 959 per year. But in 1905, the figure stood at more than twice that: 1,970 baptisms were recorded!
Three churches reported more than 100 baptisms: Charlotte Baptist Chapel in Edinburgh had 130; Bellshill Baptist in Lanarkshire had 147; and Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow (later renamed Harper Memorial Church after its famous pastor, who was lost on board the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic) had a whopping 232! He reported that there had been over 700 conversions by April 1905, of whom more than 100 had joined the church.
A further six churches recorded between 50 and 100 baptisms. A two-month mission in the Stirling Baptist church is reported to have yielded 600 enquiries; over 500 of these had been followed up by the next month, although it was noted that ‘only a small proportion became church members’ (3). Denny Baptist Church reported 70 conversions in 1905, a ‘revival in embryo’ (4).
This peak was due to the far-reaching influence of the Welsh Revival, as was reported in a number of sources at the time.
Figure 2: Rev Joseph William Kemp (1872-1933)
Joseph William Kemp
Joseph Kemp had become the pastor of Hawick Baptist Church in 1898. On a visit to Charlotte Chapel in 1901, which was in vacancy at the time, he was overheard saying to a colleague, “God pity the man who comes here.” The church was in a moribund state indeed, ‘in peril of dissolution’ as the Church Secretary of the time put it. A typical Sunday morning congregation numbered 35, out of a membership of 100. (5)
However, Kemp felt a strong sense of call to the work and was inducted as the church’s new pastor on 2nd February 1902, as a 30-year old. He immediately called his congregation to ‘intensive, fervent and continuous prayer’ (6). The new prayer meetings he instituted became places of power; numbers increased and hope grew. Within the first three years of his pastorate, 347 people were added to the church’s membership!
Over the next few years, the office-bearers of Charlotte Chapel used the word ‘revival’ in three different senses. There was ‘continual revival’ as people were regularly being converted to Christ. But there were also two fairly brief periods of spontaneous and unusually intense outpourings of God’s Holy Spirit, first in January 1905 and then in December 1906; these were described as Revivals with a caopital R! (The third use of the term was for ‘Revival’ meetings).
Edinburgh’s climate badly affected Kemp’s health, especially in winter. So, in January 1905, the office-bearers persuaded Kemp to take a holiday – in Bournemouth! But the sight of so many invalids in wheelchairs made him feel worse!! So after only one day in the resort, he decided to travel to Wales to explore the Revival that had broken out there. He describes what he discovered:
“I spent two weeks watching, experiencing, drinking in, having my own heart searched, comparing my methods with those of the Holy Ghost; and then I returned to my people in Edinburgh to tell what I had seen. In Wales, I saw the people had learned to sing in a way that was new to me. I never heard such singing as theirs. They sang such old familiar hymns as ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’, and ‘There is a fountain filled with blood’, and ‘I need thee, oh I need thee’. They needed no organist or choir or leader. Their singing was natural. The Holy Ghost was in their singing as much as in any other exercise. They had the New Song ... The world knows nothing of it. Do not tell me that the sporting clubs, the dance halls, the movies, and operas can give you joy. They can for the moment give you some fun, but that is not joy. Joy is the gift of God. When a revival from God visits a congregation it brings with it joy.” (7)
Revival!
When Kemp returned from visiting Wales, he spoke at Charlotte Chapel’s monthly conference, on Saturday 22nd January 1905; and ‘the fire of God fell’ (8). Night after night during 1905, prayer meetings took place, increasing in numbers and intensity. People poured out their hearts, and a mighty flood of blessing swept through the church. Services often began before the appointed time with spontaneous prayer and praise. The building’s 750 seats were always taken, with many having to stand. Sometimes the pastor asked Christians to leave to make way for unbelievers, whereupon they left the building to take part in marches of witness around the streets of the capital city to encourage even more people to attend the services. About 1,000 conversions occurred that year; at one communion service, 66 new believers were received into membership!
Ian Balfour, in his history of Charlotte Chapel, reflects: ‘The spiritual experience of such a visitation of the Holy Spirit could not be expressed in human terms; there was a holy abandon, a spiritual glow, and a deep overwhelming sense of the presence of God. There was uninhibited liberty, abounding unspeakable joy, and an outflowing of Christian love. There was heart-warming fellowship and radiant communion with the Lord. At the same time, there was a keen sensitiveness to the awfulness of sin and worldliness, and a deep desire to be right with God and with one another. There was also an overwhelming longing for the salvation of others. It was essentially a prayer movement. The clock did not govern meetings. Prayer was spontaneous, with many praying at one time ... but there was no confusion; all was in the Spirit’ (8). The impact was seen not only in hundreds of conversions, but in a keen desire for Bible study, a greater holiness of character, a deeper urge to evangelise, and generous giving.
Kemp himself reflected: ‘I have yet to witness a movement that has produced more permanent results in the lives of men, women and children*. There were irregularities no doubt; even some commotion …The people poured out their hearts in importunate prayer. Such a movement with all its irregularities is to be preferred far above the dull, dreary, monotonous decorum of many churches. Under these influences, the crowds thronged the Chapel, which only three years before maintained a ‘sombre vacuum’. After the first years of this work, we had personally dealt with no fewer than one thousand souls. Who had brought it? God - during the prayer meetings.’ (9)
[*NB During my time on the staff at Charlotte Chapel, I met a woman in her late 80s who had been converted under Kemp’s ministry as an 11-year old; wonderfully, she was still going on strongly with the Lord and keen to tell me about those heady days.]
Back to normal
However, by the end of 1905, the Revival was over. During 1906, in his own words, Kemp was ’reorganising the work in the Chapel on generally accepted church lines’ (10). Fascinatingly, the church membership, as recorded in April that year, comprised 359 women and 128 men; the 1905 Revival seems to have had a far greater impact on women than on men.
Fresh stirrings, but short-lived
On the penultimate Saturday of 1906, the Chapel’s monthly conference was addressed by some students from Glasgow’s Bible Training Institute who had heard about Revival at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
At the late evening prayer meeting the following day, Sunday 21st December 1906, the fire of God fell again! (11) Quite suddenly, an overwhelming sense of God’s presence came upon those in attendance. For the next eight weeks, the church’s prayer meeting were characterised by unusual intensity; as a result, they often lasted much longer than was anticipated. A whole night of prayer was arranged for Saturday/Sunday 16-17th February. However, on the Sunday, no one professed conversion – although 20 did so the following Sunday.
Right from the beginning, Kemp was aware that ‘All who know anything at all of Revivals know that periods of declension almost invariably follow … By and by a cooling process begins, the exuberance of feeling is dulled, activity slackens, and meetings lose their freshness and power, the blessing ebbs, conversions are less and less frequent, rivalries appear, and in the end many fall back into apathy and some in to sin (12).
Special prayer times continued to be held, and sometimes with a powerful impact on those present. The church continued to grow and prosper. But the heady days of 1905 didn’t return to Charlotte Chapel; nor were they repeated in the USA, where Kemp pastored two churches between 1915 and 1919; neither did they in New Zealand, where he served as the pastor of the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle from 1920 until his death from a brain tumour in 1933.
Some personal reflections
So, what are we to make of the phenomena of 1905 in Charlotte Chapel? Almost by definition, what we call ‘revivals’ are exceptional occurrences, special and rare moments when God pours out his Spirit on his people in remarkable ways. That was certainly true of the 1905 Charlotte Chapel ‘Revival’.
However, when we look at the biblical use of the word ‘revive’, we discover something rather different. Biblically speaking, revival is about restoring normality, not creating something exceptional.
In our English NIV Bibles, the verb ‘revive’ occurs 8 times, all the occurrences being in the Old Testament; and although the noun ‘revival’ never occurs*, there are several examples of what we would call spiritual ‘revivals’ taking place amongst God’s people – especially in the days of the Old Testament.
We can think of the great revivals that took place during the reigns of King Hezekiah and King Josiah; and also those that took place under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah after God’s people had returned to Jerusalem, following their 70-year exile in Babylon.
[*Although the word ‘revival’ never occurs in the Bible, the related word ‘restore’ occurs well over 100 times].
There are, however, three places in the Old Testament where the word ‘revive’ is used in a non-religious sense, which help us see what spiritual ‘revival’ is about at its heart.
Physical revival for a strong man, Samson: Judges 15.14-19
“When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived.” Revival for Samson meant a return of his very considerable physical strength, which had drained out of him during the course of a battle he had fought for the Lord against the Philistines.
Similarly, we may need to be revived when we have become exhausted from the spiritual battles we have been fighting (as with Elijah, 1 Kings 19.4-8), or when we are feeling spiritually parched (Ps 42.1-2; 63.1).
Emotional revival for a sad man, Jacob: Genesis 45.25-28
“When they told him everything Joseph had said to them … the spirit of their father Jacob revived.” Revival for Jacob meant a return of his old spirit of adventure. From being full of despair over the apparent loss of his favourite son, Joseph, Jacob now had plenty to look forward to in life; hope returned and the heartache of so any years was displaced by a newfound joy!
Similarly, we may need to be revived when we have ‘had the stuffing knocked out of us’ as a result of some sort of trauma, such as unexpected loss or disappointment.
From these examples of ‘non-religious’ revival – one physical (as also in 1 Samuel 30.11-12) and one emotional – we catch glimpses of what spiritual revival is about. Spiritual revival is about God’s people being restored to a normal level of spiritual vitality. Biblically speaking, spiritual revival doesn’t create abnormal conditions; it’s about God making us once again the kind of people he always intended us to be.
So, when is revival needed corporately? Spiritual revival is needed corporately whenever a group of God’s people are living in a way that falls short of how he intends us to be. Such was the case in no fewer than five of the seven churches to whom Jesus sent letters, recorded for us Revelation 2-3. Without revival, they were in danger of being closed down or becoming extinct. In each case, the remedy was simply to “hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” and to act in responsive obedience. That principle stands good for today, if we are seeking God to revive his church.
David Hunt
SOURCES
Finding Faith Today: How Does It Happen? by John Finney (British and Foreign Bible Society, 1992)
Reflecting on our Past: a Statistical look at Baptists in Scotland, 1892-1997 – by Rev David Hunt (private publication, November 1997)
The Baptists in Scotland, a History, Baptist Union of Scotland, p207, by David Bebbington (1988)
op. cit., p 271
Revival in Rose Street - Charlotte Baptist Chapel, Edinburgh, 1808-2008, p91, by Ian LS Balfour (Rutherford House, 2007)
op cit, p92
op cit, p99
op cit. p100
op cit. p101
op cit. p104
op cit. p108
op cit. p111
