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.
Sharing Jesus in the barracks and over a brew
SASRA
Date posted: 17 Aug 2025
The UK’s “quiet revival” is a God-given opportunity for Christian evangelism.
For the Soldiers’ and Aviators’ Scripture Readers Association (SASRA), this means sharing the gospel in the military with more troops and their families, in barracks and stations that are inaccessible to churches.
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!
letter from Australia
Renewed faith down under?
David Robertson
Date posted: 20 Jul 2025
There has been a great deal of talk about the “quiet revival” in the UK, but has it arrived in Australia?
Like the UK, there has been a lot of discussion and numerous articles and anecdotes that this is indeed the case. The statistical evidence has come through the McCrindle Research 2025 report – An Undercurrent of Faith: Australia’s Renewed Relationship with Christianity. McCrindle is an excellent research organisation with a good track record.
More UK adults exploring Christianity? New report reveals why
Milla Ling-Davies
Date posted: 2 Jul 2025
Amid recent reports of a “quiet revival” and renewed exploration of Christianity in the UK, the question remains: Why the growing interest? A new report from the Evangelical Alliance has helped reveal the answer.
The Evangelical Alliance’s (EA) “Finding Jesus” research, conducted in 2024 and released this June, found that UK adults are investigating Christianity primarily due to a need for meaning and hope – often prompted by a personal crisis.
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?
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.
Fear and fervent prayer: lessons from South Korea's Christians
David (Sung Tae) Kim
Date posted: 12 Dec 2024
South Korea, long recognised as a symbol of democracy in Asia, now faces significant fear and uncertainty after President Yoon Suk-yeol's recent declaration of martial law.
This move included attempts to restrict civil liberties, suppress political activities, curb media freedoms, and grant the military authority to take control of the National Assembly. These measures have stirred widespread fear and protest across the country.
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?
UK in transition: Have you prayed for Liz Truss?
James Mildred
Date posted: 1 Oct 2022
What should we make of Liz Truss?
I’m always struck by the apostle Paul’s command in 1 Timothy 2:1-2, where he says God wants us to pray for all kinds of people. He then immediately gives the examples of kings, emperors, and those in authority over us, and draws a connection between prayers for these people and the freedom we enjoy to live quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. Recognising our human weakness and tendency to ignore commands, he adds a further reason to this duty: it pleases God who wants all kinds of people to be saved.
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.
Brazil: ‘God above all’
Christianheadlines.com
Date posted: 1 Apr 2020
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro made a
surprise visit to The Send, a worship event
in Sao Paulo, saying he ‘believes in Jesus as
his Saviour and that Brazil belongs to God,’
it was reported in March.
Bolsonaro hasn’t been quiet about his
faith. He considers himself a God-fearing
man. His
faith was
strengthened during
his presidential campaign and after he was
nearly killed in an assassination attempt.
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.’
The revival so quiet you can’t actually hear it?
Three years ago I wrote a comment piece for Evangelicals Now suggesting that there was a quiet work of God taking place in the churches and we had not noticed it.
Imagine my delight when the Bible Society published “The Quiet Revival”, a survey by YouGov showing that church attendance in the UK had risen by 50% in the last six years and that the main growth was among young people. Only 4% of young people attended church at least once a month in 2018, now the figure is 16%.