Kum Ba Yah Revival

I'm an old dude. I was there when the Jesus People first starting singing the African song, Kum Ba Yah. I was a young pastor, playing a folk guitar. Something profoundly new happened with the young people of the church in those days. The singing of that song took us into a place of profound peace and a new sense of spiritual reality. We didn't know what to call it then. None of us had read Brother Lawrence yet. But we were having our first experience of "practicing the presence of the Lord."

Every once in awhile, I hear some person, usually a clergy-type, refer to the song, "Kum Ba Yah". It is invariably said with disdain, as if the worst thing we could do is sit around singing "Kum Ba Yah". The ridicule is mean to discourage us from ever going back to that. I partly understand that. The song provided a form that once represented a treasured experience, namely, the experience of the presence of the Lord. And our longing for His Presence, ah -- His Presence! -- can draw us back to old forms, looking again for what one of my friends calls "the magic we knew."

I have been in gatherings of people who once tasted the wonderful sense of His Presence, but never went on to spiritual maturity, never went on to sing a new song (there is good reason that the Psalmists enjoin us to do that). They continue to sing "Kum Ba Yah" trying to recreate the experience (we're not quite sure what that was), but all it is now is a tired old song full of sentiment. Sentiment is not the same thing as vibrant life, the vibrant life we once experienced when we sang that song. We can find ourselves "holding to the outward form of our religion, while rejecting the real power of it."

Nevertheless, I want to address the scoffing and mocking voices who would discourage us from "sitting around a campfire, holding hands, and singing Kum Ba Yah." I woke up in the middle of the night from a light sleep and a sort of dream, almost a waking dream if you know what I mean. I was hearing voices around me singing quietly. The words were not immediately important. What I felt was an intense yearning of radical believers to enter into the presence of the Lord, and stay there. The music was rich, warm, harmonious -- African sounding. And then I recognized it as a new variation of that old song, "Kum Ba Yah." I sensed that heaven was talking. It's time for a Kum Ba Yah revival.

Kum Ba Yah is a song of a suffering people whose only respite from trouble is the presence of the Lord. When fear is all around, there is a deep need to find rest in a place where our trust can be restored in Him to live another day. We are on the verge of a great awakening, and a mighty spiritual battle, and the only song, the only prayer that will see us through is some version of "Lord, come by us, come by here." I saw it this summer when our national Vineyard gathered in Kitchener, Ontario, and our new national director, David Ruis, led us in a new version of Psalm 23, a song he wrote called "Lead On". It was at once both a marching song and a resting song, a "presence of the Lord song." Sometimes we hummed the song, other times we sang it, but it went home with us. I still sing it quietly to myself when I want to rest and be restored in His Presence.

As warriors come back, victorious but bruised and bloody from battle, we will need to sit around our fires, hold hands, and sing our Kum Ba Yah songs once again. A revived sense of the presence of the Lord must undergird the revival of the church militant and the coming of the Kingdom of the Lord. Let's be careful how we speak about "Kum Ba Yah."

Kum ba yah my Lord
Kum ba yah
Kum ba yah my Lord
Kum ba yah
Kum ba yah my Lord
Kum ba yah
O Lord kum ba yah