Joseph Ola on the "Quiet Revival"

And a plea for prayers for the world.

Jun 13, 2025

Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined.” You get a glimpse here of the kind of work that I do both at Church Mission Society and Missio Africanus where I help students of all levels (from unaccredited courses to PhD) explore the theological (and missiological) implications of the rise of World Christianity. In the newsletter, I focus on the subject of global witness in the twenty-first-century context. In these newsletters, I share a thought that has spoken to me in the week, one or two resources that I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission to give you something to think about as you go through your day. I pray one of these will energise you.

1. Thought I Can’t Shake Off

There is much unfolding across the globe today—unrest in Los Angeles, a tragic plane crash in India, ongoing conflicts in the Congo and Ukraine, and tensions across the Middle East, including Iran. Even here in the UK, uncertainty persists. For those who take seriously the call to be peacemakers, these global events present both a challenge and an invitation to deeper engagement with God’s mission. As followers of Christ, we are called to make disciples of all nations. Yet in practice, our prayers often focus narrowly on our own missionaries—their safety, ministries, and outcomes. Occasionally, we pray for the communities they serve. Rarely, however, do we intentionally intercede for the nations themselves—their political systems, histories, spiritual hunger, and need for justice. This limited view restricts our missional imagination.

Mission communities, shaped by years of global engagement, carry a unique and informed perspective. We know what it means to live between cultures and witness firsthand the complexities of global realities. This knowledge is a gift that should stir us to deeper prayer, broader concern, and a more prophetic witness. Our intercession must move beyond maps and missionary portraits on church noticeboards to embrace the nations in all their depth and complexity. Praying for the nations is not a peripheral duty—it is central to our vocation. Intercession is an act of solidarity, a refusal to forget those caught in cycles of violence, despair, and injustice. In a world marked by division and suffering, what is most needed is faithful, sustained prayer: prayer that is global in scope, generous in spirit, and grounded in the hope that God’s kingdom is coming—even in the storm.

Could you please take a few minutes to pray for the world this weekend?

2. Resources I am Enjoying

Newsletter: The ACTS 11 Newsletter with Joseph Ola reflecting on the Quiet Revival

The recent "Quiet Revival" report by the Bible Society offers much-needed encouragement about the spiritual currents shifting in contemporary Britain. The headline that particularly caught the media's attention was the surprising openness to Christianity among young adults – especially men – in an otherwise secularising nation. Yet, beneath these numbers lies a deeper, underexplored story: the profound influence of migration on the spiritual renewal happening in the UK today.

The Bible Society acknowledges the growing ethnic diversity of the Church, with one in three 18–34 year-old churchgoers now from an ethnic minority. However, they argue that the rise in attendance cannot be “solely” attributed to immigration. As someone who has pastored a Pentecostal diaspora congregation since 2016, I respectfully propose that migration is not a side note – it is central to this revival.

Between 2018 and 2024, our church’s consistent Sunday attendance more than tripled– from 55 to over 170. Our children's and youth ministries grew even more significantly, driven almost entirely by new arrivals. The demographic engine powering this surge was unmistakably recent immigration, especially post-pandemic.

The correlation is clear: while some traditional churches struggled to recover after COVID lockdowns, migrant churches, buoyed by a surge of newcomers, flourished both online and offline. When we returned to physical gatherings in late 2021, our virtual growth translated seamlessly into tangible, in-person community. It’s no coincidence that this momentum plateaued in 2024 – the same year immigration rules started getting tightened.

Nationally, the scale of migrant-driven faith activity is striking. Just at the end of May over 1 June, Apostle Joshua Selman from Nigeria held his third UK "Sound of Revival" event, this time in Glasgow, with thousands attending in person and over a million joining online. The dominant presence at such gatherings? Migrants – especially from Africa.

Critics have rightly warned against conflating demographic change with revival. But even if many newcomers were already Christians, the vibrancy they bring – through worship, mission, and evangelism – is renewing the British church in practice, if not always in origin. Migrants are not just numerically boosting churches; they are reshaping what the church looks like, sounds like, and prioritises. The Quiet Revival is real. But to understand its contours fully, we must include migration in the centre of the conversation.

- Joseph Ola is a colleague of mine at CMS. He is a key player in the ACTS 11 Project.

- We send out the ACTS 11 Newsletter once a month. Its focus is on the Christian discourse at the intersection between mission and migration. You are welcome to subscribe here. You may also want to check out our webinars.

3. Quotes I am Pondering

The church is itself a reservoir of intellectual power. This can be harnessed to mount a structured, peaceful assault on largely outdated economic, business and political philosophies and practices that violate human dignity. But this would require some ideological shift within the church, from the more conservative view that regards salvation of human souls as the only mandate of its mission to a more progressive approach that seeks to promote human welfare in all its forms. — Laurenti Magesa and Michael C. Kirwen. Exploring the Future of Mission in Africa: In Celebration of Maryknoll’s 100 Years in Mission. Mias Books, 2012, p. 26.
The moment theology becomes the property of a small group of people, be they priests, pharisees, university professors and students, or the church hierarchy, it becomes a dying theology; for it is no longer nurtured by the life experience of the totality of God’s people. — Musimbi Kanyoro, "The Meaning of the Story: Theology as Experience." In Culture, Women, and Theology. ed. John Pobee, ISPCK, 1994, p. 24.
Mission must be at once people-conscious and subject/content-conscious. To be people conscious is to let the Word of God speak to people as they are: Africans, for example, with particular identities, fears and hopes, cultures, language, etc. Never may one group of people be turned into another cultural or racial group. That is the error of the well-known missionary practice of the tabularasa which was a religious version of Eurocentricism, a misunderstanding of true mission. — John S. Pobee, A.D. 2000 and After: The Future of God’s Mission in Africa. Asempa, 1991.

I pray that you will be faithful to the work God has for you this week.