Is the Church Thriving?

A Series of Unusual Tweets and Testimonies Got Me Thinking, “Maybe.

What is Going On?

I first read a series of tweets from church leaders citing amazing and unexpected growth in attendance in their congregations over the last few months. They were not commenting on Easter crowds but on Easter-like trends.

Since their churches were not Anglican, I thought I’d better check in with some of the churches of my tribe, the congregations of The Anglican Church in North America.

So, I asked the Anglican Xers (formerly known as Twitterers) about their congregations. I posted this:

I have heard bits and pieces of a growing trend in churches toward more attendance. Objectively, did you see greater attendance than usual over Lent/Easter? Serious answers only, please.

Responses are coming in, and something is going on.

Here are a few of the responses…but only a few.

Daniel served on staff with me at Christ Church in Plano. I know him well; he is doing a great job in Athens, Georgia. But others chimed in.

(I love the look of that church!)

Here are a few others:

The word “exploded”. It hints at a biblical surge. (Acts 2).

Others said this:

• We have long since recovered from the pandemic shutdowns and our average attendance is now higher than it was pre-Covid.
• Ours, Church of the Lamb, increased from 149 to 201…and we meet in a cowshed barn. Seriously.
• We hit an all-time high on Easter Sunday at 285, but we’ve been consistently pretty high since Nov, w/ a big surge coming into Lent. More in my direct wheelhouse, our catechism classes have been roughly twice as large the last 12 months; it’s nearly all new families in the parish.

There are many reports like this. So, is something going on?

(Yes, of course, I know that it was Easter, but looking beyond that, it appears there is more to it than the Christmas/Easter people stopping in.)

But wait, there’s more.

Over the past two years, I have been funding kickstarter grants to Anglican congregations ready to conduct legitimate feasibility studies and organize capital campaigns for building construction, land acquisition, renovation, or ministry projects outside their operations budget. (LeaderWorks received a donation of $1,000,000 to help as many congregations as possible. In other words, we have an Anglican “Angel Investor”. Read about the LeaderWorks Trust here.)

At first, there was a tentativeness and hesitation about the idea of a consultant-led program. (Not a single recipient of the grant had ever used a consultant to lead their program. Almost none of these churches had ever had a capital campaign at all.) I even told the donor that I may have to rethink the plan; we may run out of churches before we run out of money.

I don’t think that anymore.

Below is a map of our ministry area. (I am working with a few Canadian leaders now.) But read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this map of our work over the last 24 months. (For the full Annual Report, download this file.)

Past and Current LeaderWorks Campaigns in Anglican Churches over the Last Two Years

This is all good news. What does this list represent? It represents the number of ACNA churches which are thriving and growing and making big plans to do more!

(There are more than a few more churches that have come on since this Annual Report was published.)

Again, this is good news. We have so much to be thankful for.

However, let’s not get too excited yet. Let's consider what might be happening and ask for wisdom from the Lord. In other words, a surge might be happening, or it might not. It could be nothing. It could be something.

But, what might be going on?

Here Are My Thoughts

I read finished Justin Brierley’s great book, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.” (You can buy it here on Amazon.)

Here are a few quotes from the early part of the book to help you understand why the author believes there is a resurgence of belief in God.

What’s attractive about the faith is precisely its countercultural stance — the “weirdness” of believing and living as if Jesus really has risen from the dead and is calling those who follow him to live a different story to the world around them.

…as the influence of New Atheism has waned, a variety of secular thinkers have been stepping forward to ask new questions about the value of religion and where the West is heading in the absence of the Christian story.

As I will argue in the rest of this book, people need a story to live by, but the stories we have been telling ourselves in the last several decades have been growing increasingly thin and superficial.

(New converts) found themselves drawn towards a story that made sense of their deepest longings and desires.

In the book, Brierley reports on his in-depth conversations with Tom Holland, Jordan Peterson, and Douglas Murray. Not all of them claim a Christian faith, but they can feel it getting closer. He mentions a few others in the book whose lives and works I am gaining appreciation for.

I posted a five-star rating for the book on Amazon. Here’s my review:

I loved this book. I ordered five more copies for my intellectual friends, hoping they would read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the contents. I am sure they will. Brierley is an engaging, honest, non-threatened presence that loves to hear people talk about their faith — even when it is their faith in their lack of faith.

Further, many of us have read about the conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Join the gazillion other readers and read her story here. Here is the crux of it. These are her words.

Yet, I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realization that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed, very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?

There are plenty of other stories of intellectual elites opening their hearts to the truth of the Gospel. Why? Because God is real. He is pervasively real — meaning he is everywhere. To illustrate this point, remember that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg is said to have commented on this:

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.

Thomas Aquinas (13th Century) wrote that theology was the queen of science. He meant that one’s view of God and the Bible affects every other area of life. In other words, knowledge of God’s Word informs all other knowledge, making theology a fundamental aspect of education.

Subsequent eras turned this on its head: Science, it has been assumed, was the reigning queen — perhaps even the king of everything else. “Follow the science…” we heard throughout the Pandemic. It was the “gold standard” of truth for our culture. It was a merit badge for trustworthiness.

But the luster is gone. Science is no longer blindly trusted. And the circle of skepticism keeps widening and widening. Politics is less about governing and more about power and control. Social media is tearing up our children. Our schools are battle zones. Everything is about Race. The borders of the world’s strongest nation are not secure. Our government is unable to act in our own best interests. And besides this, it is not trusted. It is financially feckless and reckless.

Closer to home and very sad for all Christians, some church leaders are compromised and have had high-profile falls.

So, if attendance increases at our churches, these reasons and others might explain why. The modern, politically correct, and ideological-laden narratives are leading our culture into a ditch. People might be coming back to the source of all knowledge, truth, and meaning: Our Triune God.

So What To Do About It

But what if all of this is true? What if there is a surge, however slight? Or even if the pulse of attendance is quickening, what should we do about it? Or, more to the point, even if attendance and interest are NOT surging, how should our churches to reach the culture and welcome visitors into their congregations?

I am thinking about these things and some next steps for church leaders. I have thoughts and ideas that I will organize and develop for a four or five-part series here and on Anglican Compass, where this article first appeared.

But for now, let’s pray that the Lord does in our day what he promised in his own: that he will draw all people to himself. (John 12:32)