.png)
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then on YouTube and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Could it be revival? The surprising UK youth culture shift towards Jesus - with Glen Scrivener
For decades, the trend across Western countries seemed one-way: away from faith in Jesus Christ. But could the tide be turning?
Evangelist and author Glen Scrivener outlines signs of a "quiet revival" emerging, particularly among young people in the United Kingdom (and how things are different in Australia).
Drawing on new research from the UK Bible Society and reflecting on wider cultural shifts, Glen discusses why the story of secularisation may not be as inevitable as once thought — and why a surprising number of young adults are returning to church.
We also reflect on influences like Jordan Peterson, the role of community in a hyper-individualistic culture, and the opportunities — and challenges — now facing churches in both the UK and Australia.
Is this the beginning of a new movement towards Christ?
Anglican Aid
Anglican Aid - To find out more about how to support Anglican Aid.
ChurchSuite
Check out ChurchSuite at Reach Australia or at the Melbourne taster day.
The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is a website and app platform built specifically for churches.
Dominic Steele's preaching at Village
Subscribe to Dominic Steele's weekly sermons from the Village Church website.
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
sure, okay, big movements towards faith in jesus christ, but very different in the uk and australia. It is the pastor's heart, dominic steel. Glenn scrivener is with us. It has felt for 20 years that all the movement in the west has been essentially in one direction, away from Jesus Christ, and then more recently it's begun to feel like something is changing. Glenn Scrivener in the UK, along with Justin Briley, have been at the forefront of drawing our attention to these changes and recently Glenn has drawn on a new report from the UK Bible Society. They call it the Quiet Revival, but really it's quite extraordinary. Glenn works with Speak Life. He's the author of this book, the Air we Breathe, and he's been in Australia speaking at the Katoomba Christian Convention, to the west of Sydney, in the Blue Mountains. Glenn, it does feel like it does our pastor's hearts good to see this change in the wind 100%.
Glen Scrivener:But I've always been a bit sceptical about you know. Revival is just around the corner, and you know yeah.
Dominic Steele:I just kind of thought oh, justin Briley he sounds.
Glen Scrivener:I want what he says to be true but is it really is he clutching at straws yeah and Justin's from a more charismatic kind of background in which that kind of language of revival is just around the corner and that kind of thing is a lot more common. And so I think to begin with I was quite sceptical, just thinking this is an intellectual version of that, because in his book the Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, he doesn't have any statistics to kind of back up this sense and he's been pushed on that.
Glen Scrivener:He's been very much pushed on that and he's been very open to say look, all the statistics that I cite in the book are statistics that go in the opposite direction, that actually talk about dechristianization and greater secularization and all that kind of thing. And yet there was just this sense that he had, especially because he had a front row seat to some of the great intellectual debates of our time and saw the rise and fall of the new atheism and he saw the rise of a figure like Jordan Peterson and he saw more and more people kind of taking faith seriously and at least entertaining the idea of faith in an intellectual sense. And so that was really where he was coming from in the book. And then he wrote an article last year for the Spectator magazine. It was the most read article for the Spectator.
Dominic Steele:Super viral.
Glen Scrivener:Super viral in terms of revival in the United Kingdom and at that stage my skepticism was still there because I was like, oh okay, but you know, justin's a great mate of mine. But I just thought, you know, I can see why if you've got a book, then you want to make this thesis work. We still don't have the data behind it, but now the Bible Society, together with YouGov, have put out this survey based on 13,000 respondents, and the data is in. I think A Quiet Revival is a pretty good description of what's going on.
Dominic Steele:It almost sounds like it's downplaying it looking at some of those statistics.
Glen Scrivener:They are unbelievable from one point of view, but then quite believable if you've got your ear to the ground, if you're talking to a whole bunch of other pastors and you're figuring out what's going on in different churches. And we had all been noticing there are a heck of a lot more young guys, in particular young women as well, but young guys in the 18 to 34-year-old bracket.
Dominic Steele:I mean, some of those stats on young people are breathtaking. Give us some of those.
Glen Scrivener:I mean, some of those stats on young people are breathtaking. Give us some of those. So churchgoing is up.
Dominic Steele:So the decline it's not just up against the bottom point of COVID. It's up on the pre-COVID figures in the UK. Yeah.
Glen Scrivener:So the two surveys that were done by YouGov, which is the survey people who do all the surveys in Great Britain. It's very respected. This is not just the Bible Society pushing an agenda. In 2018, they asked a whole raft of questions to 19,000 English and Welsh people and then they asked the same questions to 13,000 English and Welsh people. It's a very robust study. But churchgoing was reported and this is all self-report and churchgoing is defined as at least monthly, and so 8% back in 2018, and then up to 12% in 2024, which is extraordinary enough. But then you dive down into the 18 to 24-year-old bracket and churchgoing is 16%. You dive down into male churchgoing of 18 to 24-year-olds and it's 21%. Wow, up from under 4% in 2018. So this is just extraordinary. So, from one point of view, it's 21% up from under 4% in 2018. So this is just extraordinary. So, from one point of view, it's unbelievable. From another point of view, it's like oh yeah, that's why this guy and this guy and this guy are showing up in my church.
Dominic Steele:I've made the observation that our Introducing God course and we've run roughly one a quarter for 10 years or something, one a term for 10 years, 10 years or something won a term for 10 years and pretty much it's been equal numbers male and female, or maybe slightly often, slightly more, just slightly more women than men, but suddenly last term, 70% male, right, yeah, yeah. And that's what we're seeing in youth groups, that's what we're seeing in youth groups as well.
Glen Scrivener:Like all of a sudden, there's more guys than girls in youth groups. This is unheard of unprecedented. But you start to think. You know, if there will be more guys, there'll be more girls as well, and the data in the UK is that it's not at the expense of female churchgoing. So female churchgoing is also up, just not quite as up. So female churchgoing is up to about 10%. It's just that male churchgoing is at around about 16%, so averaging out to the 12%. So extraordinary times.
Dominic Steele:What I mean, why. That's the big question, isn't it? I mean, and I don't think it is the same here. I mean I feel like there's. I mean we don't have. I don't think it is the same here, do you know? I mean I feel like there's, I mean you. Well, we don't have the data to say it's the same. I mean the? Uh, you've got a very robust study from the uk. We've just had the mccrindle report and we talked about that here on the pastor's heart a couple of weeks ago. I've been trying to do some analysis between the two and I can't make the same claims about young people but anecdotally, talking to my friends, there is something going on amongst young people and so I feel like the report just hasn't been done yet on what's going on here.
Glen Scrivener:Yeah, one point of similarity, I think, is I think the MacRindle report was very hopeful about the sort of the over 55s and over 65s.
Dominic Steele:And that was very interesting, wasn't it? You saw that same U shape. Tell me about that.
Glen Scrivener:Well, I guess if you were to imagine what the shape of churchgoing looks like, if you've got the sort of 18 to 24s on the left-hand side of the graph and the 65 plus at the right-hand side of the graph, you might imagine a sort of an incline from very low church attendance to very high church attendance. We'll put that up on the screen as you speak. Yeah, and that pretty much was the shape of 2018. The shape in 2024 is a you right With the people like a man in his 40s like me, I am the least likely to go to church. Under 4% of people like me are in church, as opposed to 18 to 24-year-olds, 21%, and almost as high figures for the retirees, and so the retiree population again is rediscovering faith. It's just these jaded Gen Xers like me, you know All these 90s kids listening to Nirvana. We're just not in church anymore. You're the problem.
Dominic Steele:I'm the problem, it's me.
Glen Scrivener:Let's come back to why, mm-hmm well, I think that has well one thing to say is we had the wrong paradigm in our head if we thought that secularization was inevitable, right, if we thought that the ratchet was always in the direction of greater secularization and and less and less church attendance. Um, that is not the way that church attendance ever operates and in fact you, you know, justin Briley's analogy throughout his book is of high tide and low tide and we might be at a low ebb, but tides don't only go out, and that's one way of looking at it. It's been a very popular way of thinking about the sea of faith, going back to Matthew Arnold's poem on Dover Beach back in 1851. Another, more biblical kind of a directly biblical analogy is the moon, you know, I think the moon getting brighter and dimmer. People like Jonathan Edwards would point to that when he was sort of talking about revivals. You know, sometimes the moon which is meant to be reflecting the light of the world into the world, sometimes the moon is bright, sometimes the moon is dim and it goes through phases and there's waxing and there's waning.
Glen Scrivener:And I think, if we had this idea in our heads, that church going kind of, you know, the kingdom got going with Constantine in 312 and it kept going as a plateau and then it dropped off a cliff in the 1960s and it's been all downhill since then. I think that kind of is the thumbnail sketch that I have in my head about the way in which the fortunes of the kingdom go. But I think the tide coming in and out is much more true to history actually, and I've read about it a little bit in the Air we Breathe. But the idea of the waxing and the waning is the way that the fortunes of the church have gone throughout the time. So one thing we need to do is get rid of that old paradigm, and another thing to do is I think the story of the West has kind of run out of steam.
Dominic Steele:I mean, that's really what Joe Rogan was observing, wasn't it? I mean, these people have got a better life than me.
Glen Scrivener:Yes, yeah, yeah, and you can't deny that it works. And that was Joe Rogan's kind of line to Wes Hough when Wes Hough went on to Joe Rogan at the start of the year. And so it's very interesting how history is playing a role in Joe Rogan's thinking about things, because you know he's let slip on the podcast that you know he's been going to church and that sort of thing. And I think when he was asked by Wes Huff, what do you make of Jesus? He said well, isn't it interesting that that's even a question to ponder? The fact that that's a question to ponder in the year 2025 is extraordinary when you think that this guy got crucified and all that kind of stuff.
Glen Scrivener:And so the historical growth of Christianity has made Joe Rogan think the pragmatic success of Christianity in being able to order our lives and and give us a sense of sanity and gravity and groundedness in the midst of the swirling culture wars I think that's been something that's that's really resonated with Joe Rogan and really resonated with the sort of people who kind of listen to Joe Rogan, and so that sense that the story of the west has run out, the story of just limitless potential and just self-invention every other five minutes. Um it is. It's a little bit like the prodigal son, isn't it?
Dominic Steele:you know, we've, we've gone into the far country and the money is finding that the pig food doesn't taste that good.
Glen Scrivener:And then a figure like jordan peterson steps forward and, um, jordan peterson is very much like we'll clean. And Jordan Peterson is very much like well, clean your room. Yeah. He's very much like you've got too much chaos in your life because you've gone for too much hedonic pleasure and that sense of freedom and you need more order in your life. And so he then.
Glen Scrivener:I kind of think the voice of Jordan Peterson, which has been phenomenally powerful in getting people into church so many of the young guys in our church they'd been listening to Jordan Peterson that was. He was the gateway drug. They're leapfrogging him into the kingdom. But I think his message is a message essentially of become a hired servant right, go from being the younger brother to being the older brother. And that's the little pep talk that I do with all the young men that are coming into our church. Jordan Peterson, he might give you 12 sensible rules for life, but the way of the kingdom is quite different. That Christ kind of invites you in. Still stinking of pig, you were dead and now you're alive again. That's the story of Luke 15. And then the next day after the celebration, you might want to put those 12 rules for life into effect in your life, and so I think that the message of Jordan Peterson, which is essentially a message of law, isn't it? It is interesting how it has made people think I really should get into church, and it's interesting how he's used the Bible in order to do that. It's really interesting how he has made people pay attention to these ancient texts.
Glen Scrivener:And the people who show up in my Bible, the people who show up in my church, are people who have ordered a Bible from Amazon. They've started in King James translation. They've started in Genesis. They arrive in church, they've got all sorts of questions about Leviticus and the sacraments and what they want is something deep and rich and old and tethered and challenging. And the strangeness of Christianity is actually an attractive thing. The ancientness of Christianity is actually an attractive thing, and I think we need to be clever about how we respond to this surprising rebirth, because I think the sort of things that I learned at Bible college 20 years ago was kind of to get rid of anything challenging, to get rid of anything that was a barrier to faith, to get rid of anything that made Christianity look ancient, and we were constantly trying to let's do cafe style church right.
Glen Scrivener:Let's have, you know, chairs in a circle rather than in rows, and let's get rid of sacraments and we won't do a weekly communion, because that might not be good for mission. The people who show up in church now, they're like where's your communion? Why have you got kneelers and nobody's kneeling? And like, like, where's your communion? Why have you got kneelers and nobody's kneeling? And like why are we not reading the Bible more? And so I think the things that we thought of.
Dominic Steele:I mean, are you genuine? I mean, I just want to push you on that. You're genuinely hearing that from a 22-year-old. I'm not from a kind of one of our peers who kind of remembers College Chapel and thinks that would be kind of cool.
Glen Scrivener:Oh, no, and even before these stats were coming out, you know pretty much the only growing part of the Church of England was Evensong at cathedrals and again that's driven by younger people.
Dominic Steele:We've just seen that here. I was talking to Sandy Grant, the dean here, and he said they're having their biggest numbers on Thursday night Evensong in years.
Glen Scrivener:Well, of course, and you know, Cranmer was evangelising us the whole time and I think a lot of us Anglicans kind of got rid of that because we thought it was holding us back.
Dominic Steele:Okay, so let me be devil's advocate. Why is it then in the UK that the Anglicans are still going down the toilet and the Catholics and the Pentecostals are?
Glen Scrivener:going up. Yeah, and I donentecostals are going up. Yeah, and I don't think they are going down the toilet. I think they're kind of almost just about holding their own in the midst of a lot of other growth. So against population growth, against population, I think, even against population growth. What these stats would suggest, if we dive into them, is that the C of E is just about holding its own but being totally outshone by, interestingly, roman Catholics and Pentecostals. So between 18.
Dominic Steele:Roman Catholics who are believing in creedal Catholicism, or Roman Catholics who have kind of gone off into Francis, kind of.
Glen Scrivener:Really hard to say with this data. Really hard to say. But one thing that's interesting is between 18 and 34 years old. If you're a churchgoer, um, you are just as likely to be roman catholic as you are to be anglican, which is no one would have thought that 30 years ago.
Glen Scrivener:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and the pentecostals are are coming up right behind, snapping on the heels of the anglicans at about 18 as opposed to 20, um, who are anglican? So what people? I mean, what's similar between Pentecostals and Roman Catholics? One is immigration, yeah, and we can't sidestep that.
Dominic Steele:And you very interesting. The big increase in the UK has been migrants going to church, which is not seen in the MacRindle report in Australia, that they're essentially going to church at the same rate as the general population.
Glen Scrivener:I guess it will depend on from what nations your immigrant populations are being drawn. So one common denominator between the Pentecostals and the Roman Catholics is you might expect from certain countries to have larger numbers of those. You might expect from certain countries to have larger numbers of those. But also we're talking about people who embrace the weird, the strange, the non-modern, Like if we're living in the West and we're all very late modern people who just have a very scientific mindset, In one sense evangelicals, especially evangelicals who are not charismatic. We press into the plainness of it. Let's explain everything. Our preaching is explanation and we don't want to do anything in church to kind of spook the horses, and so we explain, even whatever minimal liturgy we do. Let me just explain when we say this word.
Dominic Steele:Prayer is talking to God Prayer is just talking to God.
Glen Scrivener:It's nothing weird. It's nothing weird. And yet I think people are looking for weird. They're looking for prayer, they're looking for the transcendence, they're looking for something strange, something they can't get elsewhere. And so isn't it interesting that Pentecostal churches are doing better and Roman Catholic churches are doing better because they, in their different ways, are strange, a little bit weird.
Glen Scrivener:And it's interesting that Tom Holland kind of says that one of the things that we should do, having read Dominion and if we get on board the sort of the Dominion thesis and my book is basically Dominion for Dummies and I'm the Dummy, but if you get on board with this thesis that we have come from, uh, christianization over the over the past 20 centuries, actually, what we should do is because christianity has become so secularized and it is now the air we breathe, it is now the water that we swim in. Um, christians shouldn't try to blend in with western culture and Western civilisation. We should be weird and we should embrace the weird stuff. And isn't it interesting that it's the Pentecostals and the Roman Catholics that seem to be doing very well in this environment.
Dominic Steele:You've talked about coming to Christian faith, coming through the Jordan-Peterson gate you and Justin Briley also, and brightly, I think, expressing concern and worry about Andrew Tate and other people like that. What's your take on this?
Glen Scrivener:Well, in this cultural moment, I think there are a lot of lost boys, there are a lot of questions about what masculinity is, if we only ever hear the word toxic, that's, that's attached to the word masculinity. Well, what does it mean for a young boy to kind of grow up in in this age? And, uh, the the drama adolescence on netflix is kind of a real grappling with that kind of thing and it offers no answers whatsoever. Um, it does name check andrew tate in episode of Adolescence, this wildly popular Netflix series, and I think what's going on? There is a bunch of lost boys and his audience is overwhelmingly preteen and teen, like young teen looking up to this caricature of a toxic masculinity essentially. Caricature of a toxic masculinity essentially.
Glen Scrivener:But I think what we can offer in the church is a kind of a healthy masculinity where we can, from a biblical point of view, kind of say, yes, there is a difference between male and female and there's a goodness to being a man, just as there's a goodness to being a woman. But let us shape our vision of masculinity through Jesus Christ and through the scriptures, in which a real man lays down his life for his bride in order to bring about new life and you've got a very yes from strength, but that strength is to be used in sacrificial service of others. And when you see that lived out in church communities, when you see that lived out in Christian marriages, I think there's something incredibly attractive to a population that really doesn't know what a woman is and doesn't know what a man is either.
Dominic Steele:Hmm, and I'm looking for somebody who will tell me what a woman is and tell me what a man is.
Glen Scrivener:Yeah, and at that point you realize that what they're looking for when they come into church is a kind of does this work? Is this grounded in real life? Is this livable? What does this mean for the way in which I carry myself in the world? And again-.
Dominic Steele:How does that change your preaching?
Glen Scrivener:Well, exactly I think we can learn from Jordan Peterson. There's lots of things that I caution about with Jordan Peterson. If people go to the Speak Life channel on YouTube they'll see there's probably a couple of dozen videos I've done on Jordan Peterson and all of them are like this. I say here's what I appreciate, here's what we need to critique. What I appreciate is he can stand on a stage in Toronto and preach his way, verse by verse, through Genesis, and thousands will come and he will take his time over it and he will get people interested and engaged in the Bible. And the way he treats the Bible is interesting and he treats it as a human text. That is sort of the process of generations and eons, of kind of evolution. And here's the wisdom. It's a very bottom-up vision of the Bible and so he treats it as a human text. That is the greatest source of wisdom for humans. Okay, so it's a human text that humanizes us, and we might look at that and think, nope, that's not what the Bible is, and that would be true. But in another sense, that kind of is what the Bible is, but it's so much more. There is a top-down vision of the Bible, but it is not less than a human text that is there to humanize us, just as the Lord Jesus. He is fully human. He's not less than human, right, he is more than human. And I think that the scriptures, in that same way, the word of God written, has a humanity to it.
Glen Scrivener:And Jordan Peterson preaches a human text in order to humanize humans. I think my danger as a preacher is to teach the Bible, as this is a super spiritual text for super spiritual Christians to fine tune their discipleship. And on a Sunday I will pitch my preaching to the super spiritual Christian and kind of almost assume okay, there is what makes you human, and that's off to one side, and I'm just going to deal with your discipleship. How can you pray a little bit more, evangelize a little bit more, give a little bit more right? And I think I have fallen into a danger of preaching in that sort of sense. And I think Jordan Peterson gives us a good challenge. In what sense does the passage that I'm preaching this Sunday, how does it humanize humans, how does it speak into the human condition? He's very good at that and I think he can teach us lots.
Dominic Steele:On the issue of individualism versus community what do you? Think is going on there that is helping us in the ministry of Jesus.
Glen Scrivener:Well, interestingly, in the data from the Bible Society a couple of weeks ago, those who are churchgoing have well over two times more sense of continuity and commitment to their locality. So when you ask somebody, do you feel connected to your local area, something like 25% of non-churchgoers say yes. Something like 63% of churchgoers say they feel a connection to their locality.
Dominic Steele:I know people here, whereas in the block of flats I live in.
Glen Scrivener:You know nobody, yeah, and there is no third space anymore. You know, maybe the gym is your third space that you go to. You're not at work, you're not at home, where else are you? Or maybe the gym, but everybody's got their headphones in and nobody's like interacting there. Whereas, my goodness, every Sunday we've got this pilot plan to the kingdom, we've got this family of God, brothers and sisters, meeting together in their locality, eyeballing one another, carrying one another's burdens, breaking bread together.
Glen Scrivener:This is incredibly powerful for a generation that has just been hitting the self button and just been hitting the freedom button and the individualism button and the self-creation button and realizing that it leads you again and again, more and more into the far country and down into the pigsty, and all of a sudden, we're invited to a feast in which we're face to face with one another, in which we bear burdens, break bread. It's, it's, uh, it's exactly what gen z say they want. Okay, gen z say they want authenticity. Um, but the price of authenticity is actually that kind of vulnerability and sacrificial kind of service of one another, and I think people who have had enough of a fake authenticity and a kind of a virtue signaling authenticity online, those who have had enough of that and see that it's shallow. They're ready to dive in with both feet to an actual community where I know and am known, and I think this is a real opportunity for the gospel.
Dominic Steele:Crystal ball what's going to happen?
Glen Scrivener:Well, interestingly, tom Holland talks about where we are in this cultural moment and he says there are three kind of directions we could go in from here. If we have come to see that our values are largely Christian, even that secular people, their critiques of the church, are essentially Christian critiques. Right, you know, we are bigoted and cruel and coercive and unenlightened and anti-science and restrictive and regressive. Right, those are the critiques that the secular world has for the church. But we can only make those critiques if we think that the highest values are compassion, equality, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, progress, all these things that have come to us from the kingdom. So Tom Holland says you know, people are starting to wake up to that. We can go in three directions from here. We could jump onto the progressive train and just say, all right, maybe Christianity got us this far, but we don't need it anymore and we will try and forge a kind of progressive future without being held back by the shackles of Christianity. And that's one route that the culture might go down. Another route that we might go down is to say, okay, all these values that we prize, like human equality and human rights and human dignity, all these things were Christian myths, so let's get rid of the myths, you know, get rid of Christianity and get rid of human rights, you know, and you might get a whole bunch of Andrew Taits out of this, and so you get a kind of an anti-woke backlash right. They think the progressives are woke and they are happy with the label anti-woke and they hate virtue signaling, which means they end up hating virtue as well in the end, and so that's a quite stark and unattractive vision. But then he says you know, the third vision is revival. The third vision is that actually the church regains confidence to tell its own story and people are converted and the church is strengthened and, you know, there's a sense of return to Christ in that way. Those are the three options, and I remember him laying this out to me in an interview he did for our channel a couple of years ago, and I remember sitting there thinking to me in an interview he did for our channel a couple of years ago, and I remember sitting there thinking it's going to be all three, isn't it? And I think it is, it's going to be all three.
Glen Scrivener:It's a glorious mess, but I think in the data that the Quiet Revival puts there's like 35% of young people are really interested in the Bible, but an even greater number think that the Bible is dangerous. 49% of people really want to have a spiritual conversation with you, but 51% don't. And it's going to be this mess and there will be those who will absolutely persecute the church because we are the ones holding us back from our great progressive future. And I don't see any of that slowing down, nor do I see anything slowing down from the anti-woke crowd. But then we've got this revival thing happening at the same time, and so what I don't think there's any room for as we look at some of this encouraging data is triumphalism or kind of high fives and we are so back, and I don't think any of this means that we won't be persecuted. I think we'll be persecuted a lot more in the future and we'll see a lot more gospel growth in the future, and if we don't want to make that trade, then I'm not sure we really know Jesus.
Dominic Steele:Thanks so much for coming in. Bless you, glenn Scribner about to hop on a plane back to the UK. He's from Speak Life Channel in the United Kingdom. My name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon. Thank you very much, sir.
Glen Scrivener:Thank you. Sorry I got a bit excited.
