Pete Hughes: ‘We’re at the beginning of the Western Church being revived’

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The shaking of secularism is driving young people towards Jesus, says KXC Church leader Pete Hughes. He explains why he’s convinced revival is already on the way 

When the property developer Argent erected a sign outside the wasteland behind King’s Cross station in London, the message on it was a strong rebuttal to their critics: “King’s Cross is being delivered”.

The year was 2009, and the UK was still in the grip of a global financial crisis. Argent’s £3bn project to transform this downtrodden part of London into a hub of creativity and culture was at serious risk. 

Budding church planter Pete Hughes was on a prayer walk when he saw the bullish sign. Yes! he thought: King’s Cross is being delivered, smiling at the double meaning. For him, it was a prophetic pronouncement of how Jesus wanted to transform lives, not just streets.   

When I meet Hughes, he’s full of positive stories of what God has done in the intervening years. Since planting KXC Church in 2010, it has grown from 50 to 1,000 people attending on any given Sunday. Among those are Gen Z-ers who are new to faith, many of whom have found Jesus through dramatic encounters, supernatural dreams or an unexpected desire to read the Bible.