The Quiet Revival exposed a quiet jealousy in me that few church leaders talk about

Everyone in the room was winning.

One leader described launching a second service because they’d simply run out of room. Another talked about young families who just appeared one Sunday and kept coming back.

I sat there doing the maths. 30 people. Adults and children counted together. No waiting list. No overflow room. Nobody who just turned up unannounced.

The voice comparison creates

I’m glad for the churches that are growing. I genuinely am. But underneath every congratulation I offered across the table, something I wasn’t proud of was quietly forming.

Am I doing something wrong?

There’s a voice that has nothing to do with theology or strategy. It shows up the second someone else’s life looks more like the one you were supposed to have.

The reports are real. Something is shifting in our culture. I believe that. But belief in a movement doesn’t automatically silence doubt about your place in it.

When I took on the leadership four years ago, I arrived with a picture in my head. New people flowing in. The room we met in becoming too small. Stories of lives turned around, people with no church background whatsoever finding their way through the door. I believed it was coming. I prayed like it was coming.

It didn’t come.

And somewhere in the gap between that picture and 30 people on a Sunday morning, a question I’ve only recently been honest about started forming. When I imagined the growth finally arriving — the full room, the stories, the second service — who exactly was I picturing?

The people whose lives would change. Yes. But also: me. A leader who was making a difference. Leaving a dent in the universe. A life that wasn’t wasted.

I had spent four years measuring the wrong thing.

Though in fairness, I’m not sure I invented that measure. The assumption that numbers equal blessing runs deep. We borrowed that framework, dressed it in theological language, and forgot we borrowed it.

What 30 people taught me

We were sitting in a circle, working through a list someone had put on the screen. Welcome. Love. Grace. Kindness. We were talking through them one by one when someone asked the room what came to mind.

She didn’t answer straight away. Then quietly, struggling to find the words, she said: “When I look at that list, what I think of is Derek.”

The room went quiet.

She talked about the struggle and about feeling seen when she wasn’t sure anyone was looking. The difficulities with her son. She was crying before she finished.

I was on the other side of the circle. I looked down. Couldn’t look up. Face down. Embarrassed in a way I didn’t fully understand. Until I did.

I still want more people. I want to say that clearly. I’m not making peace with smallness or dressing stagnation up as faithfulness. The reports are good news and I want some of it.

But something shifted in that circle.

Because if I’m honest, I was jealous of bigger churches. Their resources, their name in the community, the way doors seem to open for them that stay closed for me.

Underneath it, the same two questions had been running on a loop.

Am I enough? Do I matter?

The assumption that numbers equal blessing runs deep. We borrowed that framework, dressed it in theological language, and forgot we borrowed it.

The reports didn’t create those questions. They just shone a light on them. And the woman in that circle, without knowing it, answered them in a way that a full room never could have.

I still look at the reports. I probably always will. And the comparing voice still shows up — quieter now, but there.

But when I meet with those 30 people on a Sunday, I’m starting to see something I was missing before. 30 individuals. Each one carrying something. Hopes they haven’t said out loud. Griefs that are still inside. Questions they’re not sure faith can hold.

And maybe the work — the real work — is building the kind of community where they discover that it can. Slowly. By showing up consistently enough that people stop performing and start talking. By being small enough that nobody falls through the gaps. By knowing that the woman in the corner has a son who is struggling, asking about him by name, and still asking three months later.

For a lot of people, that’s the thing they’ve been looking for without knowing what to call it.

These people know me. If I disappeared on Sunday, someone would notice by Tuesday.