If People Are Interested Again, What Will We Do With Them?
Over the past eighteen months or so, Justin Brierley’s The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God has prompted fresh conversation about whether Western culture may be becoming more open, however tentatively, to Christianity. The podcast traces the loss of momentum of the New Atheism and suggests that curiosity, spiritual hunger, and even belief may be re-emerging in unexpected places.
Brierley’s thesis and the Bible Society’s Quiet Revival report, which helps to back up his claims, have, perhaps unsurprisingly, been met with a wide range of responses. My own experience is limited and largely anecdotal, but it has left me feeling cautiously optimistic about similar trends emerging here in Aotearoa. I’d be genuinely interested, by the way, in what you have observed in your context.
Yet whether this rebirth proves to be real, short-lived, or illusory, the central challenge facing the Church does not change. The question is not whether people are becoming more interested in Christianity, but whether the Church is clear and serious about how disciples are actually formed.
Ken Morgan’s Pathways framework exposes a fundamental weakness in much contemporary church practice: the assumption that information leads naturally to transformation. For many years, the sermon has carried disproportionate weight as the primary engine of discipleship. Morgan argues that while preaching can inform, inspire, and shape belief, it cannot reliably produce mature disciples on its own. People change not because they know more, but because they practise differently- over time, in relationship, with clarity about what obedience looks like next. Without an intentional pathway that turns belief into embodied practice, sermons tend to create informed attenders rather than apprenticed followers of Jesus.
Howard Webb’s critique in Redemptive Family sharpens the point by examining not just what churches teach, but how they are structured. Webb argues that Sunday morning, as commonly configured, unintentionally communicates a lack of seriousness about discipleship. Sitting in rows, listening silently, and dispersing without expectation trains people to consume faith rather than practise it. The sermon carries no relational accountability, no shared response, and no visible consequences. In such a system, doing nothing becomes the normal and socially reinforced outcome.
This brings us to the crux. If the rebirth of belief turns out to be a flash in the pan, then getting clearer about how we grow disciples is still time well spent. The work remains the same: attend carefully to the people you already have. Given limited time, energy, and resources, where might clarity allow you to stop doing less-formative things and focus more intentionally on practices that actually shape lives?
And if curious, open, and searching people really are coming out of the woodwork on Sunday, that is genuinely good news. Praise God! But now the question sharpens: how will they be formed? Let’s not leave it to Sunday attendance alone. We already know it’s not enough. Without clear pathways and serious communal structures, interest will quickly thin into nominal affiliation.
Whether the moment is favourable or fragile, the task before the Church is unchanged: grow disciples, on purpose.
If this all feels confronting, it’s worth saying this clearly: none of us chose the model we inherited. Most pastors are doing the very best they can with structures that were never designed to produce deep, resilient disciples. As Edwards Deming notes, “A system produces what it was designed to produce”.
This is the work I spend my time on: helping pastors and churches think clearly about discipleship, given their real constraints, real people, and real context. If you’d like to reflect on what you’ve inherited, what’s serving you, and what small, faithful shifts might be possible, I’d love to have that conversation with you.
Sources: Ken Morgan Hirsch, Pathways: Local Mission for All Kinds of Churches; Howard Webb, Redemptive Family.
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