Leading Churches at a Time of Increased Spiritual Openness
Five Leadership Learnings from the Most Fruitful UK Churches
Last week I had the blessing of taking part in a Leadership Tour organised by Alpha for a few hundred Catholic and Protestant leaders from Australia, Canada, and USA. (A few Brits and Kiwis tagged along.)
The tour took us to UK churches where disproportionate missional fruit is being seen. Not only did I want to soak in and learn everything I could from these leaders, but also, as a Catholic, I wanted to ‘get outside my box’ to awaken new imagination and inspiration for what could be possible in our parishes.
It did not disappoint! However, the tour should come with a health warning: If you don’t want your discontent increased, DON’T do this tour!
Discontent is not a bad thing; the challenge is to allow it to exist within us peacefully and remain “holy” discontent.
In no particular order, here are the learnings I am taking from this mind-blowing week.
1. The so-called ‘quiet revival’ is Kindling - not Fire.
Yes, we know the data is faulty and that we have perhaps been hasty to call Gen Z’s spiritual openness in coming to church ‘revival’. But, every church leader/Catholic priest you speak to will share anecdotes of baptisms being higher than previous years. Stories of Jesus speaking audibly to completely unchurched teenagers, or of young adults having dreams leading them to church, seem (crazily) not rare.
In the words of Stephen Foster, pastor at St Aldate’s Oxford,
Secularism is having a crisis of faith
If it isn’t revival, what can we call it? Jon Tyson, Senior Pastor at Church of the City New York, used a metaphor that struck me as one of the best I’ve heard. He referred to the new sparks of evangelistic revival as kindling. When we see bright new kindling flames, we want to get some big fat logs on the fire - quickly - before they go out.
This is a wise way to see the current moment in time. God is guiding young people with new sparks of faith into our churches as a wake-up call. Will we respond by building the discipleship pathways they need to grow mature in their faith? Will we respond by building the confidence of parishioners to invite friends and family to church, so it becomes normal?
We heard a statistic that 4 million people in the UK have heard of Alpha but have not done it because they haven’t been invited. There are a few fish jumping into the boat right now: God wants to wake us up and see us putting out our nets.
2. Gen Z will inspire greater holiness in us - but they also need spiritual mothers and fathers.
Every church leader we heard from said the same thing: the new converts of Gen Z burn for holiness. They want the whole package - vigils of prayer, fasting, serious study of the Bible. Forget the warm-up games and go straight to the substance. That’s what they’re looking for.
I went with three British Catholic priests to the all-night worship vigil at Saint Church in Hackney. The queue outside the church began one hour before it opened - 3000 people passed through that church in prayer that night. Inside, there was raw, hungry, passionate worship. This is not just emotionalism, though. I was struck by the discipline to all-night worship like this. You keep going offering the sacrifice of praise, even when you’re tired or not feeling it. People came with their big, physical Bibles and dipped into them between prayer and worship.1 Many would have stayed through to the morning (though the priests and I left a couple of hours in!).
There is another side to this phenomenon. We were reminded again and again that this generation cries out to be discipled - they long for wise, loving and good spiritual fathers and mothers.
I loved what Pete Hughes, pastor of KXC church, said:
Leaders are driven by destination. Fathers are driven by delight.
The young converts of Gen Z need fathers and mothers who are present to them with delight. This is so important in a world that drives relentlessly and mercilessly, and whose message is that you are never enough. Christians can be present as spiritual fathers and mothers who delight in the person, delight that they are enough, delight that God is with them even now - and that he is good.
3. The necessity of restructuring is occupying us - to the detriment of mission needed now.
As I traveled through the tour with Catholic priests and leaders from both the UK and further afield, I felt the discontent grow - day by day.
We were hearing from church leaders in traditions which are - let’s just say - more nimble than our own. Even the churches in the Anglican tradition (church plants coming from Holy Trinity Brompton) have navigated the structures and traditions effectively to launch their very best leaders and pastors into leading communities in neighbourhoods where Jesus, the Gospel message, and the Church are most needed.
It is verifiably quicker to evangelise by launching a new church in a neighbourhood, than it is to move a parish from maintenance to mission (which is what we do in the Catholic context).
Do you know what makes our Catholic scenario even slower?
When the most apostolic, mission-minded priests also have to lead a ‘cluster’ or ‘family’ of three/four/five parishes - each with different teams and ways of doing things. When they have a multi-year consultation to steward, and responsibility for navigating the eventual merger of multiple communities.
Do you know how we can make it even slower still?
When we give the apostolic priest with a heart for the lost two or three diocesan roles on top!
I know all this has to be done - and I know that restructuring can be done in a missional key. I am sympathetic, and I know it is one of the greatest burdens a bishop can carry.
But what we are not seeing (yet) is more people coming into our communities thanks to these long, complicated, time-consuming processes. People are seeking the church now - and we’re on the whole not effective at reaching them thanks to all that we’re tied up in every day.
There are no easy answers to any of this… I’m just aware that, however ‘discontent’ I would have felt before the tour, seeing the effectiveness of other churches grew that feeling tenfold.
In the history of the Church, the Holy Spirit tends to be genius at short-cutting the system and enabling grace and acceleration where we never expected to see them, so… can we please pray for this?!
4. The Church is at the point of giving birth - but there is not enough Power to bring forth children.
This was a line which stuck with me powerfully from Tope Koleoso, lead pastor of Jubilee Church London (which he planted in 1995). What does it mean? The new believers finding their way to our churches are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless more who would come to faith, but the Church as Mother needs to bring them forth. In the words of St Paul,
My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you! (Galatians 4:19)
Other translations use “birth pangs.” This is the role of the Church, to give birth to new believers, and bring them to full maturity (see CCC 169).
What is the power that is needed to bring new believers forth?
It can only be the power of the Holy Spirit that brings people to new life in Christ. But the Church channels this power; it is proportionate to our faith and our prayer.
This was a consistent theme throughout the week. Pete Hughes, in his remarkable testimony of how KXC church began, spoke of the need for contending, travailing intercessory prayer. He spoke of praying with integrity: when your prayer and your desperation match.
We frequently heard of praying with your body - that is, fasting.
And we frequently heard that this is a battle not of this world (Ephesians 6:12).
This type of prayer is not one we teach on much within the Catholic context. We have a strong, rich tradition of contemplative, abiding prayer. This in itself brings forth power, as transforming union with God increases Jesus’ presence in proportion to our personal sanctification.
But there’s also a place for corporate, intentional intercession. (I spoke at length on this topic with Jim Jensen in the Archdiocese of Omaha in 2024 and you can listen here. At Divine Renovation, we coach parish leadership teams in building foundations of Missional Prayer. You can connect with us about this here.)
(^^ This is what hunger looks like - the queue into Saint Church for the all-night prayer.)
In this time of increased spiritual openness, there is also increased spiritual battle. The tactics that worked previously we now find no longer work. Jon Tyson spoke on Mark 9:14-29, the disciples’ inability to cast a demon out of a boy.
And when [Jesus] had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29 And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:28-29)
We need more power. All the speakers we heard during the week were aligned that greater power of the Holy Spirit comes when…
we build a corporate culture of faith that enables miracles and a greater channeling of the activity of God;
we lean into contending prayer and fasting that longs for the advancing of the Kingdom.
Who is with me - we need more of this?!
5. We need new pipelines for leadership.
What seems common in churches that are seeing disproportionate missional fruit are pipelines that get the most talented people into leadership fast. The most fruitful pastors are the ones always looking around them for the emerging leaders, who spot potential charisms of preaching, pastoring, evangelism, and want to call them forth.
At St Aldate’s in Oxford, we heard the testimony of a 20-year-old student who had done Alpha just over six months ago and had become a Christian. In the last few weeks, she had given the final talk at Alpha, ‘What About the Church?’ She was articulate and bright and clearly a gifted speaker. And she was already preaching at church!
Would you take this kind of risk with an emerging leader?
Our fruitfulness in bringing forth new believers relies not only on more power of the Holy Spirit but also on our capacity to reap the harvest.
In an inspiring presentation on church planting - which sent all the Catholics into spirals of imaginative visioning - Sarah Jackson, CEO of the Revitalise Trust, was clear that we do not have a harvest problem, we have a worker problem. The neighbourhoods of Britain are crying out for churches where people can encounter the living God. They are crying out for good pastors who can evangelise, pastor and disciple.
And yet, churches can only be planted at the speed at which leaders are raised - that is, at rate of the sending capacity of a church. That is, the percentage of the congregation who are mature, apostolic disciples, capable of being sent to evangelise, disciple and pastor people (even, a small community).
If you are in a Catholic parish, what would you estimate is its sending capacity?
My guess is that for most, it is less than one percent, if anything. It is a sliver of the seating capacity - of those in the pews.
For me, this is a devastating reality. We have a deficit of imagination when it comes to leadership in our communities. In a missional parish, we can invite people into a pipeline from Alpha helper, to Alpha host, to Alpha coordinator, to small group leader. And beyond that?
I believe we have untold charisms of leadership, pastoring, preaching, and evangelism in our pews that are unknown and untapped, because of the limitations of our pastoral imagination.
And that is limiting the evangelistic effectiveness of our churches.
Tell me: Do you feel sufficiently discontent yet?!
If so, I am glad, because I believe that in the history of the Church that is precisely how the Lord brings about reform. He allows discontent to rise in the hearts of his faithful disciples who long for more - more missionary fruit, more Kingdom advancement. I believe we need to keep our discontent holy (not bitter), but be bold and courageous in praying for, imagining, and pursuing change that will make our Church fit for purpose in this time of spiritual openness.
Come, Holy Spirit! Fall afresh! More power!
There has been an increase in Bible sales of 134% among Gen Z over the last six years.