Statistics and the church typically don’t make for encouraging reading in the UK.
And so, when the results of the latest World Values Survey (which captures people’s views on a range of topics, including religion) were released last month, you might have given the subsequent news articles about the UK’s declining church attendance a wide berth.
Not so me. I’m a numbers guy – which my family and colleagues will attest to. And so, when the data was helpfully published on the survey’s website, I put the kettle on and settled in for some time alone with the graphs.
Yes, there are downward trends in people’s engagement with the church. But that isn’t what I got out of the research. What I saw was something exciting in the data, and you don’t have to be a statistician to see the same thing. It’s an uptick.
Not just one, statistically insignificant uptick… but many, significant upticks – between 2018 and now – in belief in God, belief in heaven, belief in hell and… confidence in the church.
The latter has gone from 49% at the beginning in 1981, to 31% in 2018. And that suddenly shoots back up again to 42%. For years there has been a steady decline in faith in the church – the prevailing narrative has been ‘people don’t believe in God and people don’t care about church.’
If this data is correct, then anti-religious sentiment here in the UK has been pushed back by a quarter of a century. We’re back in the 90’s, in the best way possible.
Shifts like this can only be explained by something extraordinary taking place – an external event that causes a mass change in behaviour. Sound familiar?
During the pandemic we saw churches on the front foot locally. People noticed that at the time of need was is a group in the community that continued to be there, and to meet those needs.
The pandemic also brought us as a nation in closer proximity to death. We were presented with death each day, on the daily news. Most of us knew someone who died, often traumatically.
When people who have experienced the loss of someone they know, they often become more interested in religion, more open to having conversations about faith. It’s sometimes called ‘The Funeral Effect’. As a nation, we have gone through this en masse.
It’s not had the same impact on all of us. In fact it's had opposite effects on different age groups. Baby boomers are now less likely to believe in hell, than they did five years ago.
But there's something strange going on with our kids. Gen Z and millennials have started believing in hell more than they did before the pandemic. They're not believing in God. They're not necessarily getting into organised religion.
This isn’t an isolated statistic – other research is showing that young people are more open to prayer and that they’re seeking something beyond what this world can offer.
People who've been exposed to organised religion, especially baby boomers, are becoming more entrenched in their beliefs around death. If they’re not atheists, then they’ve become more committed universalists, subscribing – consciously or subconsciously – to a liberal Christian belief that, ‘It will all be alright and you’re probably going to heaven’.
Not so for young people, it would seem. When presented with death, young people have no such belief structure to lean on. And so, they’re left with big questions. ‘What on earth is going on in the world? What has happened to my relative. Are they in hell?’
I saw the same as a missionary in China – when kids who were brought up as complete atheists suddenly had big questions and were looking for answers when a family member died. It’s not an immediate belief in God, but it’s a desire for something spiritual and a willingness to pray.
I’m regularly hearing about this same openness in schools. My 15-year-old son, Sam, told me about a girl at school struggling with depression who sought him out. She had questions which neither she, nor her humanist parents, could provide answers for. She knew that he’d struggled with similar issues. Sam was able to share that it was his faith in Jesus that had helped him through. Now, he’s studying the Bible with her.
These are not one-offs, and I regularly hear similar stories.
In the UK these are people who may never have darkened the door of a church are suddenly open to something.
Are you beginning to understand my excitement about the data?
There are people out there with more confidence in the church than just a few years ago. Just as we’ve got into the mindset of thinking it’s impossible to get anyone along to church, we’ve moved back 25 years.
The data suggests that people – including young people – might actually be willing to accept our invitation.
Even my Muslim friends are looking into the faith of their parents and are wanting to know more, are looking for answers to spiritual questions.
If you’re sceptical about the data, then why not put it to the test for yourself? It could be an invitation to a church service, or an event your church is running. It could be a chat about something deeper than what you’d normally talk about.
You might meet someone like Naz.
“I was an atheist. I didn’t believe in God at all," he explains.
One day George, from a local church, knocked on Naz’s door and invited him to Body and Soul – a gym session for men, which includes time dedicated to reading the Bible.
“If he knocked on my door six months earlier, I probably wouldn’t have answered. I was depressed. I just wanted to be alone. He knocked on my door at the right moment and at the right time.”
Naz built friendships in the church, started reading the Bible and Praise God, he has given his life to the Lord. You can hear his full story here.
As Christians, all this means now is the time to be on the front foot. The fields are white into the harvest.
What we haven't seen yet is an uptick in lots of extra people coming to church.
Many churches are still licking their wounds after the pandemic – yours might be one of them. Lots of us are feeling tired and trying hard just to fill our church rotas for ministry within the church.
Let me encourage you – there is nothing that energises like meeting people like Naz and seeing God at work in the people around you – this is what we hear from churches we work with.
It helps to have someone come alongside you. We would love to do just that.
When you have a family funeral, you get to talk about deep and meaningful things for a while, but then the window closes.
It’s exciting times of huge opportunity to share Jesus – but it won’t last forever.
Let’s seize it now.
Click here to find out more about how your church can get connected to your local community.
LCM shares the gospel alongside the local church of London, equipping everyday Christians to lovingly bring a message of hope in Christ to those least likely to hear it.
Registered Charity No. 247186
