A quiet UK revival? How can we respond?
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.
Andrew Ollerton: 'Let the Word move in power'
John Woods
Date posted: 6 Oct 2025
Dr Andrew Ollerton is a theologian, pastor, author and presenter who likes to “make complex ideas simple and relevant”. He lives in Wales and regularly speaks at conferences, festivals and churches, and films video content on locations around the world. He recently developed a new edition of The Bible Course with Bible Society. Here, he is interviewed by en reviews editor John Woods.
en: When was the first time that you began to find Christianity compelling?
AO: I was brought up by parents who made it compelling. In my family life, faith was not just a Sunday experience or a creed but was lived out. I credit my parents for that. I did have moments in my teenage and adult years when I had a crisis of faith. When I went to university to study geography I bumped into issues around the reconciling of science and faith which troubled me. What made Christianity compelling at that time included books I read, but also people I met. One professor had a PhD in science and in theology. The fact that he brought those two horizons together and embodied them was compelling.
Is there really a ministry recruitment crisis?
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 22 Nov 2025
“Ministry recruitment crisis.” How do those words make you feel? Do they fill you with dread? Panic? Are you tempted to let out a sigh as you mutter that you aren’t surprised?
Back in September, Carrie Sandom, of the Proclamation Trust, told us that there is a fall in the number of men and women coming forward for ministry training. What are we to think? en asked the principals and directors of some of the UK’s leading seminaries and colleges.
‘The last two years have been the most encouraging... of the past 30 years’
John Woods
Date posted: 13 Nov 2025
en Reviews Editor John Woods speaks to John Stevens about his time thus far serving with the FIEC.
en: You have been serving as National Director of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FIEC) for 15 years. What was you first experience of the FIEC?
How do we disciple Gen Z men?
Graeme Shanks
Date posted: 15 Oct 2025
“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” A friend reminded me recently of this quip often attributed to Winston Churchill. It is, of course, a massive generalisation. However, it is not one without a kernel of truth to it.
A quick glance at the way Britons voted at the 2024 general election would indicate that age was indeed a significant dividing line. It’s a trend that’s presented itself through the generations. To quote another group of influential wordsmiths from my childhood: "it’s like that and that's the way it is." Or is it?
everyday evangelism
What helps people in Britain today find faith?
Gavin Matthews
Date posted: 27 Jul 2025
The "Finding Jesus" report from the Evangelical Alliance has landed. They surveyed hundreds of people who have put their faith in Jesus in adulthood.
This was followed by intensive interviews with 20 of them about their experience. Along with a battery of statistics, the report contains stunning insights and is enhanced by heart-warming testimonies. It’s divided into three sections looking at what started people’s spiritual searching, how they were converted, and what the path of discipleship has looked like. It’s free to download!
Boomerang kids: Blessing or curse?
Tim Wilson
Date posted: 26 Jun 2025
Young men are returning to church. That is the headline which is grabbing all the attention right now. But an equally striking trend is unfolding that is not being considered by Christians. Young adults are also returning to live with their parents.
These are the “boomerang kids”, whose parents sent out but have come back. Their number is growing. A survey by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that 18% of 25- to 34-year-olds still lived with their parents. This was more likely among young men (23%) than young women (15%). With 18- to 24-year-olds this is over half.
culture watch
From Bob Vylan to Shine Jesus Shine and beyond
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 20 Jul 2025
Songs have the power to set a scene – whether rebellious, celebratory, or full of relief and hope. Songs like: School’s Out for Summer, We’re All Going on a Summer Holiday and Here Comes the Sun.
Songs sung together have even more power to unite us and evoke feelings. From terraces resounding with the sound of “swing low, sweet chariot” to the quiet beauty of a Gregorian chant or the moving repetition of a Taizé song, music made together has huge power.
culture watch
Fathers, sons and the 'vital' importance of trust
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 15 Jun 2025
Trust between fathers and sons may sometimes be faltering, despite the best intentions of all involved, but recent headlines have shone an unpleasant spotlight on one particular royal father and son.
After Prince Harry lost a legal battle over taxpayer-funded security, his first instinct seems to have been to call the BBC to arrange an interview and publicly air his unhappiness. And also to fuel speculation over the health of his father by saying he “doesn’t know how long” the King has left. Loyalty to his father appeared to have left the building. Long-term royal correspondent and commentator Jennie Bond told LBC that “trust has been completely blown out of the window” – presumably on all sides. How that must hurt everyone concerned.
Overlooked by the world, but purposed by God
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?
earth watch
A flourishing earth is possible - and promised
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 10 Nov 2025
It’s COP season again. COP30 – or to give it its full title, the 30th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – gets underway imminently.
Dimly we might recall COP26 hitting headlines in the UK four years ago when Glasgow hosted it. Boris Johnson’s one minute to midnight speech, perhaps? Maybe “keeping 1.5 alive”? Or Alok Sharma’s tears when India pulled the rug on his deal to phase out coal?
Rediscovering the 'lost' art of kneeling in prayer
Roger Carswell
Date posted: 18 Sep 2025
A visitor to the Continental Congress in America was eager to see George Washington. He asked a steward: “Which one of those men is George Washington?”
The reply came: “When the Congress goes to prayer, the one who kneels is General George Washington.”
Pakistan’s little-known Christian story
Mike Wakely
Date posted: 5 Feb 2025
In a small town in western Punjab, now in northern Pakistan, there lived a Hindu from a caste of farmers. His name was Nattu Lal. He heard the gospel, put his faith in Christ and was baptised in November 1872.
Nattu was the son of the head man in his village. His family was wealthy, but Nattu wasted his money and proved himself to be a poor Christian witness. But he did one thing that was of immense importance. He brought a poor man called Ditt to faith in Jesus.
Church growth? ‘That’s putting the cart before the horse’
John Woods
Date posted: 1 Nov 2023
en Reviews Editor John Woods talks to David Brown, an experienced church ‘revitaliser’ in France.
en: Thank you for speaking to us and thank you for writing Re-Connect Your Church: a practical handbook for church revitalisation. One of the words you use a lot in your book is ‘healthy’. What do you mean by healthy, and why is that such an important term for you as you think of the church?
history
Those who ‘rest in unvisited tombs’
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 Apr 2022
In a recent statement regarding some of the cultural turmoil in North America, historian Owen Strachan, the Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, made an observation about church history that I found quite surprising. He noted that ‘epic stands for truth … are usually taken alone, so high is their cost’.
I found it quite surprising because my own study of church history has given me a fundamentally different perspective. It is a perspective that I have learned inductively from church history (be it the Apostolic era with the Pauline circle, or the Cappadocian Fathers, or the Celtic Church, or the Reformers, or the Puritan brotherhood, or the Evangelical revivals of the 18th century), and it is namely this: God never does a great work in the history of the church except through a band of brothers and sisters.
history
David Zeisberger’s zest for spreading the gospel
Michael Haykin
Date posted: 1 May 2021
When William Carey drew up his paradigm-changing book An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens in 1792, he included a mini-history of missions.
He cited examples of missionaries passionate for the expansion of the rule of Christ. In this mini-history, he referenced a remarkable missions-minded community, the Moravians. Carey’s words about this 18th-century body of believers are tantalisingly brief, but indicative of their influence upon him. ‘When I came to evangelism and missions,’ Carey noted, ‘none of the moderns have equalled the Moravian Brethren in this good work’.
Living Christianly in a Covid world
Richard Cunningham
Date posted: 1 Aug 2020
Richard Cunningham explores C.S. Lewis’ sermon, ‘Learning in Wartime’ and what we may learn from it in the midst of a pandemic
I understood just how strange and surreal life had become under the shadow of Covid-19 when, waking from a vivid dream, I found conscious reality stranger than my night visions.
Storm clouds over China’s church
Tony Lambert
Date posted: 1 Sep 2018
Tony Lambert gives his assessment of what is going on in the world’s most populous nation
Since the death of Mao in 1976, the church in China has enjoyed remarkable growth and revival.
Just a boy amidst the Revival
Richard Bewes
Date posted: 1 Nov 2017
Richard Bewes recounts his childhood with missionary parents in East Africa
My parents were missionaries in Kenya.
Knowing God Better
Depending on God’s Spirit
Jonathan Lamb
Date posted: 1 Feb 2017
‘I believe in the Holy Ghost,
I believe in the Holy Ghost.’
It was apparently the habit of the great
Baptist preacher, C. H. Spurgeon, to say this
quietly under his breath every
time he
mounted
the
steps of
the pulpit at
the
Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Even if
the story is apocryphal, Spurgeon’s ministry
affirmed the importance of the Spirit’s work:
‘Men might be poor and uneducated, their
words might be broken and ungrammatical;
but if the might of the Spirit attended them,
the humblest evangelist would be more
successful than the most learned divine
or the most eloquent of preachers.’
Below me, the clouds
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.
Pastor of the village church
Brian & Val Maidstone
Date posted: 1 Dec 2010
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.
Reaction and distraction
Ranald Macaulay
Date posted: 1 Jul 2008
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.
The second Whitefield
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.