Revival statistics can’t tell you everything

Stories of growing church numbers continue to make news in the Christian press. The authors of the now withdrawn Quiet Revival report could not surely have foreseen the ways in which their work was so extensively poured over, praised and critiqued. Their work has sparked a significant conversation and many ministers have told me that many elements of the report really resonated. The withdrawal was due to error on YouGov’s part, and we must await further research in order to know which elements of the Quiet Revival thesis were accurate. I believe the Church has much to be thankful for. This report has stirred up enthusiasm and interest and generated real belief that revival is possible and may be beginning.  

Those of us who are not statisticians read reports like the Bible Society’s and accounts such as Premier Christianity’s ‘signs of renewal’ in much the same way. We read for the story and for the emotional impact. When we hear such stories of people coming to Christ we are, of course, delighted. This is a normal and indeed appropriate reaction. Much of our theology is generated and used in this way, to impact our emotions. This does not mean it has not got substance but that the way we know as Christians is closely identified with our emotions. We feel God’s presence, the move of the Spirit or the signs of revival in our very bones. The Bible indicates this way of knowing about God also, the Psalms are emotive for example. When we pray, if we don’t have the words we know that the Spirit intercedes with groans (Romans 8:26). We are feeling beings who navigate our Christian lives with passion.  

We also tell ourselves stories. Stories make up our understanding of the life of Jesus and our own lives. We typically find our journey in the faith by mapping it across to things we read in scripture. So when we give prophetic words we might heavily rely upon the words of scripture or ideas or images we find there. Both our feelings and our stories are a big part of how we think as Christian believers.   

The story of renewal in the UK is encouraging. It is calling us to action, to double down our efforts and raise our expectation. There is a risk however that we forget that coming to faith in Jesus is typically a process that takes time. It can take years and it is often not dramatic. There are many ways a person comes to belief in Jesus and there may even be false starts and changes to different churches along the way. The same stories that encourage us may end up discouraging us if we think we are not seeing what everyone else is seeing. When we count conversions using statistics we do not necessarily explore these faith journeys.  

There is a risk that we forget that coming to faith in Jesus is typically a process that takes time

Counting conversions using statistics is a useful tool for population wide studies. However it does miss those people who experience the world differently.

My academic work often looks at the experiences of autistic Christians. Sometimes autistic Christians do not attend church, other times they do but they behave differently. For example, an autistic Christian may attend only sometimes or entirely online or maybe only for the service and nothing else the church puts on. There is a good possibility that the autistic experience of faith is not captured in surveys or even in stories told to others. This is also the case with other ways of being, what about a person who has spent very many years being unsure of whether they could call themselves a Christian or not. They might not tick the ‘I became a Christian recently’ box on a survey but that does not mean that their participation in the church community is not meaningful and important for us to know about. Stories about the Quiet Revival run the risk of missing these different accounts and homogenising ‘conversion’.  

the broken hearted and the poor need a way to be heard in their own terms

Christians have always been interested and drawn to the stories found in the margins of society. We as believers spend a lot of time there. We run food banks, baby clothes banks, we include people who are excluded elsewhere by reasons of gender, race or other category. We join in the mission of Jesus to bring good news to the poor, to release captives and let the oppressed go free. The margins hold people who are without resources or access to social capital. Consequently, the broken hearted and the poor need a way to be heard in their own terms. The stories of individuals become important in these contexts.  

In the midst of our enthusiasm for renewal in the UK Church we must not forget those people who express faith and enquire about faith differently. They may be the quiet ones, sitting at the back of the church. They may be the ones who come every time to Alpha but never quite take the plunge. They may never meet you but join your online service. They will also have a story to tell and one which helps encourage and challenge us to include them in our feelings and our stories about revival.