Late last year, I shared with our church a verse I believe God placed on my heart — not just for me personally, but for us as a community. It comes from Isaiah 58:12:
“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called repairer of broken walls, restorer of streets with dwellings.”
Isaiah 58 paints a picture of a people who stop focusing inward and begin aligning their lives with God’s purposes. In doing so, they flourish. They discover deeper intimacy with God, find renewed joy, and begin to live with purpose. I believe that’s the kind of church God is calling us to be.
Not one preoccupied with survival, but one surrendered to His mission: servant-hearted, outward-facing, and full of hope.
And in many ways, we’re already living into this call. But I sense there’s more, and now is the time to press in.
The world our young people are growing up in is markedly different from the one we knew even five years ago. At a youth camp last year, I heard several teenagers express doubts that they would even make it to retirement — not because of personal circumstances, but because of the weight of global instability and uncertainty.
While every generation faces its own challenges, there is a growing sense among young people today of hopelessness, anxiety, and disillusionment. Yet in the midst of this, we’re also seeing signs of spiritual openness.
In the UK, church attendance among young adults has surged by over 50% since 2020. The fastest-growing demographic? Young men with little to no prior church background. In New Zealand, this Easter saw 350 people baptised at one Auckland church alone.
People are searching. And the research tells us they’re not looking for religion — they’re looking for hope, truth, and belonging. What’s drawing them in?
Across history, every true movement of God has followed a familiar pattern:
First: Prayer prepares the ground.
From the Book of Acts to the prayer revivals of 19th-century New York and Melbourne, history testifies that it is prayer (simple, faithful, gathered prayer) that softens hearts and opens doors for the Spirit to move.
“Prayer prepares the ground. It’s how revival begins — in quiet places, with faithful people, seeking God together.”
Second: Repentance prepares the heart.
In the 1970s, a remarkable revival swept across East Africa. It wasn’t driven by events or programming, but by honesty, confession, and reconciliation. People "walked in the light". Churches were renewed. Communities were transformed.
Isaiah 58 reminds us that true repentance isn’t a religious ritual. It’s a radical shift toward God that flows outward in love: feeding the hungry, sheltering the outcast, breaking chains of injustice.
This is what renewal (or what we sometimes call revival) looks like.
Not hype or emotion, but a sovereign move of God that awakens His people to deeper prayer, heartfelt repentance, and renewed devotion to Jesus. From there, spiritual renewal spreads: not only through the church, but into society.
“If we want to see our community transformed, it won’t be through better strategies — it will be because we prayed.”
In light of this, I want to extend a simple but profound invitation to all of us:
We can't manufacture renewal— but we can prepare for it. And the promise of Isaiah 58 is this: when we align our hearts with God’s, and turn outward in love, the Holy Spirit moves.
And the point of these two priorities (prayer & scripture + contending for our community) is not so we can see the church grow in size. That's not the point. The point is renewal. It's about seeing our own lives (both individually and communally) radically re-orientated towards Christ and from there seeing our community transformed.
Join in Prayer
There’s a special power in praying together. We meet for morning prayer at 6:30am on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Nayland St Chapel. But we also recognise that mornings aren't easy for everyone so we're establishing a Thursday evening prayer meeting at Nayland St Chapel later in May. We'll be in touch with more details soon.
As we look to the year ahead, my hope is that we’ll be a church marked by prayer and shaped by hope.
Let’s seek God together — and see what He might do in us, and through us.
NB: If you'd like to read more about the increase in church attendance in the UK you can download a report from the Bible Society here.
