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Rebecca Chapman

Date posted: 9 Apr 2025

As we look forward to Easter, some of us may reflect on how many people attended Christmas services, and be recalling the joy of overflowing churches.

There has been talk of a Christian revival in the UK for at least a year – and speculation about it everywhere from the press to podcasts. But where is the data showing us how the Spirit is moving? Instead, we are often presented with disappointing data from various denominations about decreasing numbers of people attending church.

Tim Vasby-Burnie

Date posted: 10 May 2025

Reports of a "Quiet Revival" have been exciting Christians in recent weeks, yet for the foreseeable future we will continue to feel the deep relevance of 1 Peter to the contemporary church: we are “exiles” in this world (1 Peter 1:1).

As with many of our brothers and sisters across the world, we are a minority in a culture that is suspicious of our faith and all too ready to speak maliciously against the church (1 Peter 3:16, 4:4). Do you feel this yourself?

One dark, blacked-out evening early in 1945, when returning from an evening service, I overheard my brother Harold quietly speaking to mother.

She was distressed at seeing her eldest son, Fred, go to Malaya as a soldier. Harold himself would soon be joining the army. She was naturally afraid that she might lose both sons in the war. He spoke to her gently of death as a gateway into ‘the Lord’s presence’ and not the end of life.

Village churches, like those in both cities and towns, are as diverse as their geographical situations.

Some villages are dormitories of cities and large towns and have a population who are very used to commuting for most of their needs, whereas some are very isolated with villagers who are more dependent on the facilities that are provided within the village itself. Whatever the type of village the churches tend to fall into three basic categories.

When Marian Evans’s novel Adam Bede came out in 1859 it made the name ‘George Eliot’ justly famous.

Her novels soon took their place among the finest in the English language. To discerning readers, however, Marian’s scepticism indicated a growing problem about Christianity and the church.

God is amongst us

Tim Shenton tells of incidents in the life of Rowland Hill, the preacher.

On Sunday June 16 1771 Rowland Hill preached at Dursley to huge crowds, and that evening he went for the first time to Wotton-under-edge, Gloucestershire, which was to become his favourite summer residence.

Crowding around the house

I may be wrong because memories tend to get mixed, but I think it was that same night that something else happened. As the meeting closed and the people began to move towards the doors, the congregation, with few exceptions, began to follow Evan, who was already on his way to Sunnyside. As he entered the house and went to his room, the hundreds from the meeting crowded round the house. My uncle stood in the doorway, wondering what to do with them.

One man spoke for them all: would Evan Roberts just come out and speak to them? There was no disorder, but an eager, hopeful expectation that could be felt. My uncle went to Evan's room and told him what the people wanted. Evan shook his head and said he could not do that - he was not given freedom, he was not free.

When the parents of Mrs. Bethan Lloyd-Jones heard of the outbreak of revival in Wales, they sent their children to relatives in the area that they might experience something of this move of God. In 1987 Mrs. Lloyd-Jones recorded for EN her recollections of that time . . .

'Maggie', said my father to my mother in the late spring of 1904, 'I'm determined that we should send Ieuan and Bethan down to Newcastle Emlyn - now, at once.'

Dr. Douglas Johnson, known as DJ, was born on December 31 1904. Because he was so self-effacing, few people realise just how important he was for the revival of evangelicalism in the last century, and how much we owe to his work. He was quietly behind many important developments that we take for granted.

The 1920s were the heyday of a thoroughgoing liberalism that had captured theological education and not only the student Christian movements, but much of the leadership of the churches in Britain. It was the lowest point of the status of biblical evangelicalism for over 100 years. Any confidence in the authority and reliability of the Bible was treated with scorn by many.

This year is the centenary of the 1904/05 Welsh Revival. Here we read of its beginnings . . .

On Sunday evening 18 December 1903, Evan Roberts preached his first sermon at his home church of Moriah, Loughor. He preached on Luke 9.23: 'Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."'

Every major news provider had an obituary on file, revised and updated every year or so as the Queen Mother's extraordinary longevity continued. She had planned her own funeral long in advance; the implications of her passing had been contemplated and discussed for decades.

The media pessimistically warned that public response would be disappointingly lukewarm. Even in the hours before her coffin was placed on its magnificent catafalque in the ancient Hall of Westminster, some commentators predicted that it would be mainly tourists who attended her lying-in-state, and speculated that its length had been deliberately kept short to avoid the embarrassment of a low turn-out. They were wrong.

Towards the end of the 1950s, Richard Bowdler left the staff of All Souls, Langham Place, and the ministry of 'Chaplain to the Stores' passed to Michael Harper.

He was a Londoner (the family home had been in Welbeck Street) and he had long been an occasional visitor to All Souls. He was converted to Christ in his first year at Cambridge, and during the vacations had alternated between All Souls and Westminster Chapel.