What does the quiet revival look like? Here’s a snapshot from one London church

I remember the argument - it was just a few weeks into the first Covid-19 restrictions. The novelty of both the restrictions in general, and online church in particular, were wearing off rapidly and being replaced by the gnawing dread of: This is much harder than it looks; the insecurity of: We’re not doing this as well as the other churches we can see online and a healthy dollop of: Is this the end of Church as we know it? melodrama.

That Sunday’s online service hadn’t gone the way we had wanted it to, and so an argument ensued…except it wasn’t really an argument. Our Zoom skills hadn’t advanced enough by that point to successfully host an argument and we were Christians, so we had to resort to passive aggressive messages in a hastily convened WhatsApp group instead.   

Turnaround Church

If you had told me then that we would soon experience the most dramatic turnaround in UK Church growth in our lifetimes, I would have laughed in your face. If you’d told me a few months later, as the Covid curtailment carried on, that we were at the start of a remarkable season of renewal spearheaded by Gen Z, my sobs would have echoed off my ice cream tub toward yet another empty youth zoom call. Indeed, at that point, if you’d suggested I listen to ‘The Blessing’ one more time, I may have been writing this from a prison cell.  

And yet, fast forward to a wild Friday night just last month, and I was settling in to take a look at a recent report from YouGov and Bible Society (I know how to party!).

Reading The Quiet Revival provoked three thoughts: 1) Am I the clever one who will puncture this particular parade by pointing out why this dataset is flawed - after three readings, no, not clever enough. 2) After a lifetime of reading statistics of UK Church decline while Richard Dawkins glared menacingly over my shoulder, this is actually very encouraging and 3) This does actually match the reality on the ground at Croydon Vineyard Church. We’ve lived this.   

I would not use the terminology ‘revival’ for what we’ve seen here in Croydon. Revival surely follows twelve old ladies travailing, eleven people teleported into the meeting, ten tarot card readers testifying of transformation…five gold fillings and a prophecy from a pear tree. Or something like that. But that Friday, I felt compelled to report that yes, we have seen a quiet uptick in church attendance. The patient ferment seems to be bubbling up somewhat. We’re not the biggest, the brightest or the best, but here’s a snapshot from an average south London church. You can quote it, critique it, or continue to pray for it - here’s what we vouch for…

Growth in numbers

“There has been a significant growth in the numbers of people going to church.” The Quiet Revival 

Tom and Lesley Thompson were young pioneers propelled out of South West London Vineyard in 2013 to plant Croydon Vineyard Church. The bulk of their team consisted of their four boys - all under 10 years old – and the bulk of their resources came from a one-off cash offering. People and pennies they did not have much of, but with some remarkable prophetic promises, a mischievous sense of humour and a wing and a prayer, they ran the gauntlet of inadequate venues, crushingly low number of responses to initial invitational campaigns and the pressures of pioneering with a young family to get a new church started.   

Survivorship bias means that we expect success stories from these scenarios, but the stats show that the majority of these endeavours fold within five years. So they did, with God’s help, an amazing job to get to 2018 with a growing team, 175 people in the room that Easter (over a third of which were under 18s) and a sense of momentum and hope. 

The two year on-again-off-again Covid curtailment had a certain brutality. For a church that reveled in friendships and a ministry philosophy of “everyone gets to play”, it was difficult to transfer online, and yet, the seed watered continued to grow. In time, Covid restrictions probably proved a mere pause, or maybe even something of a refinement.  

Post 2021, through a slightly nomadic expedition of Sunday gatherings around school halls and cinema screens, Sunday attendance, small group numbers and volunteer growth continued strong and steady. This Easter weekend, as has been so widely reported across churches in the UK and beyond, was fuller than ever, with over 500 people in attendance across the weekend.  

The majority of newcomers come from those returning to church after a long time away, some looking for a spiritual home having moved into a new area, and others stepping in for the first time ever. 

And, as per the report, it has been led by the young.

Leading the charge

“We see dramatic growth, led by the young.” The Quiet Revival 

Zac Carpenter was twelve years old when his family became one of the first to join our fledgling church. His passion and gifting for music became evident and he began performing at church events and leading worship as a teenager. In the years since, he has been an example of a Gen Z male leading the charge. He’s written new music, became the church worship pastor in 2021, and his ‘worship busking’ at major London train stations has been seen roughly a bazillion times online. He’s unafraid, unapologetic and, frustratingly, has unbelievably great hair. 

“More young people are finding faith.” The Quiet Revival 

Lara Sokunbi is another Gen Z leader. She joined the church in 2021 as our youth pastor and has overseen the youth ministry’s rebound from Covid, in both numbers attending and depth of discipleship among teenagers that we hadn’t seen as a church before. In 2018, she hadn’t really experienced being part of a youth group herself; in 2025 she’s plotting how to get a bigger coach for the summer youth festival, Dreaming The Impossible (DTI).   

Lara also serves on the leadership team of DTI, which has also seen significant growth since starting in 2020. This summer, dozens of young people from Croydon will once again join thousands of others from around the country to worship Jesus, have a blast, and test how little sleep a youth leader can have and still display the fruit of the Spirit. 

Growing in diversity

“The Church demonstrates greater ethnic diversity than ever before.” The Quiet Revival 

As a church based in a very diverse part of the country, we’ve had both the opportunity and the obligation to lean into ethnic diversity. Tom and Lesley’s leadership in this has been crucial, but so has been the decisions of individuals and families through the years to step into this, even at personal discomfort or cost. 

Sal de Almeida had recently moved to Croydon and was looking for a local church when he responded to a high street invitation card given out in the early days. After a church social event, he spoke privately with Tom and Lesley: “I’m the only non-white person here, and this social is very white culture. I don’t feel comfortable here, but I think God might want me to stay.” That proved to be one of many crucial conversations, and Sal has been a key leader in our church for over a decade now. The Quiet Revival statistics would suggest that these kinds of conversations and decisions must have been happening all over UK churches.

Endurance Attah and Catherine Thomas were the first Black women to join Croydon Vineyard. The decision to be the first - even when it’s not always comfortable - has paved the way for many others. Both Endurance and Catherine have become pillars of Croydon Vineyard and key figures in the under 18s ministry and intercession. They’ve shaken and stirred us with what service can look like, Catherine often pitching up to serve on kid’s ministry after working a night shift as a midwife.  

Croydon Vineyard has gone from a majority white church in 2017 to significant diversity through the staff team, small group leadership and in our Sunday gatherings in 2024. Most of us would say, not discounting the missteps and mistakes that doing life together entails, that it’s one of the joys of our lives to be part of an intergenerational, multi-ethnic community that Jesus is bringing together in the UK. And inevitably this joy spills over into the borough where we’re placed. 

Creating community

“Churchgoers are more likely to actively participate in activities aimed at benefitting the community around them.” The Quiet Revival 

Croydon operates as one of the front doors into the UK for asylum seekers. While they may have been tempted to shave some points off their golf handicap or calendar in a cruise or two, Liz Mott and Jan Prothero took the joy they found in their faith and poured a big chunk of their retirement into Vineyard English School (VES), our church compassion project.  

VES began by simply offering hot drinks and prayer to people in the queue for the Home Office Immigration Centre. It then moved to host a few students in the borrowed back room of Croydon Library and has grown, over the years, to become the largest provider of adult English language education in the borough. All fuelled by the hundreds of volunteer hours given by Liz, Jan and many other ‘quiet’ servants like them.   

In the baffling, but regularly repeated, experience of the kingdom economy, they actually label this service as one of the joys of their lives - with them leading scores of believers, non-believers, and not-yet-sures in post-English class Bible studies each week.  

There’s power in the word 

“More people are reading the Bible.” The Quiet Revival 

It’s not always sexy, but the week-in week-out teaching of the Bible, opening the word in small groups, hosting theology conversations, subsidising further theological study for staff, letting the Bible do the work, really does bear fruit.

In 2020, Tom wrote a simple daily devotional, The New Testament Journey, working through the scriptures one chapter each weekday. Year on year it’s gone from an online blog, to a community reading project, to a paperback book, to an audio podcast and, most recently, to a mobile app, helping hundreds of people engage with the Bible.  

This is what it takes to win the battle to ”be a community formed by the words of Jesus”.    

Real life renewal

“A remarkable new and life-giving phenomenon seems to be under way in Britain.” The Quiet Revival 

Of course, highlight reels like this can hide and they can skew.  

We’ve had our share of shocks and setbacks, illnesses and bereavements. We’ve lived the heartbreak, horror and hopes-as-yet-unfulfilled of the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom. We’ve had the weekly grind of setting up and tearing down equipment in school halls. But the last few years have been punctuated, with increased frequency, with the ’now’ of the kingdom as well. The ‘stories’ section of our website is filling up: the sick do get healed, people are being set free and Jesus is turning lives around in Croydon.   

We’ve used the language “contending for a spiritual awakening” to call our church to prayer through the 2018-2024 period. We may now be seeing a stirring, but we’ll keep contending, just as we know thousands of others across the UK are doing.  We rejoice, that “a remarkable new and life-giving phenomenon seems to be under way in Britain”, as the report claims.

We can vouch for it, and we’ll keep on praying: “Come, Holy Spirit”.