EA survey shows
Covid hope
Peter Lynas
As many people are coming to faith during
the pandemic as before, says the Evangelical
Alliance’s latest church survey.
Church attendance was still very high during
lockdown
(including online and
in-person
services). 67% of
respondents
saw church
attendance as a vital part of their discipleship,
while only 29% said they’d invited someone
to an online service in the last three months.
The UK's 'spiritual openness' is both an opportunity and a challenge
In recent months, I’ve noticed something shifting. Church leaders across the UK tell me that political conversations are becoming more contested, pastoral pressures are continuing to grow, and more people are turning up at church. This doesn’t feel like a passing phase, but part of something bigger.
Some have described the larger cultural moment as a "polycrisis" – not one crisis, but many, colliding at the same time. War in Ukraine and the Middle East; persistent cost of living pressures; a political landscape fracturing in ways that feel genuinely new; and artificial intelligence arriving faster than most of us can process, raising real questions about work, identity and what it means to be human.