Revival is coming - but is the Church ready?

For much of my Christian life, I’ve responded to announcements of imminent revival with a mixture of doubt, irritation, weariness – and sometimes faith. So, it’s with a real sense of irony that, in recent months, I found myself saying that I believe we are on the brink of revival.

But what do I mean by this? Why do I think it’s happening? And how should the Church respond?

Changing times

First, I am convinced that the spiritual climate in Britain is changing. For much of the 20th century, the Christian faith has been rejected in favour of a secular rationalism. But now, this appears to have been found wanting; societal institutions, trust, community and discourse have all been fragmenting, and our culture has experienced a deepening crisis of meaning, alongside a rising sense of instability, uncertainty and anxiety.

In response, there is a growing openness to spirituality in general and, for some, a re-evaluation of Christianity in particular. The spiritual climate - which has been relatively hostile to Christian faith - is now increasingly conducive to it.

Apart from the very public conversions of prominent atheists and influencers, there is a lot more going on that doesn’t hit the media headlines. As I meet leaders from across the British Church, I hear stories of burgeoning Alpha courses, unusually fruitful campus evangelism, and people previously involved in communities as diverse as New Age crystal meditation, psychedelic drug use or gender critical intellectual feminism having dreams of Jesus, turning up to churches or talking to ministry leaders on their way to coming to faith.

Revival is about God coming very near to people, especially those outside the Church

This anecdotal evidence is backed up by Bible Society’s landmark research on attitudes to the Bible and faith. We’ve seen a rise in spiritual openness in Britain from less than 20 per cent of the adult population in 2018 to more than 25 per cent today – an increase of around 3 million adults in the space of less than seven years. We’ll be releasing a new report in April, and I expect that to transform many of the assumptions people have about Christian faith and roundly refute the narrative of decline that has become the default setting for both the mainstream media and (tragically) many believers as well.

Revival vs renewal

So how can we best describe what’s happening today? To ‘revive’ something can mean anything from giving it new strength, to restoring and regaining life and consciousness. Historians, theologians and revivalist preachers tend to use the word ‘revival’ in all of these senses with reference both to believers and to non-Christians who convert to Christianity.

What’s been happening could be described as the early stages of a spiritual awakening. However, it’s not only non-Christians who are being impacted. The effect of this clearing of the unsettled spiritual weather of secular rationalism has also been positive for believers who, in many places, are feeling more confident, desiring deeper discipleship and acting with greater faith.

If the scale of these changes had occurred in one denomination or in one location, we’d certainly be talking about it as a Big Deal. But it is even more powerful that this ‘quiet revival’ is astonishingly widespread. It draws attention not to a particular leadership style or way of doing church but rather points to God’s agency. Revival is about God coming very near to people, especially those outside the Church, so they can experience and know him. I believe we are at the beginning, not near the end, of what God intends to do among us in Britain.

Just as true conversion leads to personal transformation for the individual, so true revival leads to wider relational, community and cultural transformation for the good of the whole society. Cases for this have been made by historians for the 13th century Cistercian revival, the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century Welsh revivals and, perhaps most famously in the British context, the Wesleyan revival.

It was the French Marxist philosopher Elie Halévy who argued that Methodism helped prevent the social and ideological polarisation of English society and avoid the kind of bloody revolutions that were widespread across Europe into the 19th century.

Good news people

Right now, we are at a pivotal moment in Britain’s national life. Though the unsettled weather of secular rationalism may be clearing, we can’t go back to some version of the 1950s. I believe God is mobilising his people for a new wave of mission in Britain - and beyond - for decades to come. There is a great deal at stake – not simply the growth of the local church but the wellbeing and flourishing of our whole society.

Much of the cultural capital of over 1,000 years of Christian influence in Britain has been dismantled or severely damaged during the last few generations. The task of the Church in every generation is to announce the gospel of the coming kingdom and to witness in our personal and community lives, so that people “taste and see” a flavour of what that coming kingdom will be like.

This ‘quiet revival’ draws attention not to a particular leadership style but rather points to God’s agency

For the most part, decades of external biblical critique and internal theological withdrawal into the sacred-secular divide have left our biblical imagination for society narrow, impoverished and hugely under-resourced. Yet the culture is crying out for an authentic way of grounding a desire for connectedness in the midst of division, for a new economic model in the face of ‘growth’ that seems to involve inequality, environmental damage and dehumanising work, and for the healing of our embodiment as sexual beings in the wake of rampant pornography and sexual abuse.

United in faith

We should not be naïve. In this pivotal and highly contested cultural moment, there will be all kinds of temptations for the Church to ally itself with political populisms of the right or left. If we want to remain faithful to the gospel we need deeper roots. I believe our response should be to consecrate ourselves – to prepare for what may happen next and what God may require of us by returning with all sincerity to the disciplines of prayer, Bible study, the casting off of false gods and all that “so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1) so we can focus on aligning our lives and time with the priorities of the King and his Kingdom.

One way of expressing our faith today is to stop the non-essential and make room for God in our lives. We will literally need to make room for new believers coming into our congregations. But this making room is also psychological and emotional - and involves trusting the Holy Spirit when we feel pushed out of our comfort zones. I believe that unity will be of particular importance in coming decades – not simply among those who are like us, but across Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant confessions, and across cultural divides of race, class and socio-economic status.

We know from the prayer of Jesus in John 17 that he wants our witness to flow from our unity and that he is sending us into the world, just as he was sent by the Father. What an invitation we have to serve the purposes of God in our generation!