The quiet revival is making Christians more confident than ever in sharing Jesus

My barber is in his late 20s. I regretfully admit that, despite me having my hair sculpted (or more accurately, hacked off) for many years at that place, he and I have never spoken about my faith.

But the last time I visited, a friend was leaving the shop as I arrived and my barber asked how I knew him. We went to the same local church as one another, but did I have the confidence to explain our connection? Would he find it weird that I went to church? Would it change the dynamic of our conversation?

I chose to tell him the truth, and it started a dialogue. “So, you’re into that religion stuff then?” We talked for a while, and he genuinely seemed quite intrigued.

Growing in faith

Our conversation challenged me, especially when I look at the younger generation. New data is showing that not only are they more open to faith, but they are rapidly growing in confidence about sharing their own personal experiences of it.

In April last year, Bible Society launched the Quiet Revival report. The survey revealed that young people - and particularly men - were returning to faith. At the same time, various news stories reported on the rise of Bible sales in the UK and in other parts of the world.

Premier league footballers are celebrating their baptisms as bestselling rappers are speaking the name of Jesus

These stories have largely been welcomed (I am glad to say!) with optimism from those within the Church.

That’s not to say the Quiet Revival hasn’t also had its detractors (which any research study worth its salt should have, in my opinion). But it confirmed what Jersey Road found a few years earlier, when we ran a story with the BBC about young people being more likely to pray than older generations.

The spiritual winds in the UK are changing. People, like my barber, are genuinely open.

Barriers to entry

But despite the hopeful narrative, there could still be barriers - not necessarily from those searching for faith, but from those in the pews.

For so long, the Church and orthodox theology has been peripheral and even irrelevant. The Church has been on the back foot for decades - at times being blamed for failings in society, at others, being the butt of the joke.

And because we have been in that posture of defensiveness for such a long time, it may take some deliberate readjustment to truly embrace what is now happening. Rather than being an seen as an archaic irrelevance, the Church is now an attractive community for those who have realised that post modernism and rampant individualism have failed.

What is interesting in the reports that have been released this past year is that both the Orthodox and charismatic streams of the church have experienced growth. In Orthodoxy, there is a sense of the sacred; in the charismatic movement, an experience of the supernatural - despite their divergent styles, both offer something ‘otherworldly’ to those searching for meaning beyond themselves. That contrast is making the Church attractive again.

Confident Christianity

Twice a year we run the Evangelical Trust Tracker, which measures the attitudes of evangelical audiences. In the latest survey, we asked whether or not UK evangelicals felt more confident in sharing their faith since the launch of the Quiet Revival report.

The responses were pretty astonishing. Forty eight per cent of UK evangelicals said that they did. And the difference between generations was particularly noticeable, with 68 per cent of 18–24-year-olds, 84 per cent of 25–34-year-olds and 77 per cent of 35–44-year-olds all noting more confidence in evangelism since the Quiet Revival report launched. In comparison, only 40 per cent of 55–64-year-olds said the same.

The spiritual winds in the UK are changing. People, like my barber, are genuinely intrigued and open

As a communications agency, Jersey Road also work with elite athletes, music artists and social media influencers. We have seen a growing confidence in those who have a platform talking openly and authentically about their faith. Premier league footballers are celebrating their baptisms as bestselling rappers are speaking the name of Jesus when receiving industry awards.

Something is changing and, in that change, we have a choice.

Theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”

The enemy of this current season will be indifference or scepticism or, worse, criticism of the changing spiritual tide.

As people of faith, we can either embrace what is happening and accept that God is answering the prayers of thousands of believers who have quietly prayed for revival over previous generations, or we can fold our arms and sit stubbornly in our cynicism on the side lines.

I, for one, want to be part of the action.