Inside the fastest growing – and shrinking – churches in the UK

00:00 09:21

Dan Hitchens has narrated this article for you to listen to.

The Pentecostal preacher is in full flow – his voice raised to near-deafening volume, his gestures expansive but exact, the congregation murmuring back a chorus of ‘Amens’ – when he receives an unexpected interruption. ‘A woman asked me at the barbecue last week,’ he is telling us, ‘“Pastor, if I won the Lottery…”’

A voice somewhere to his right intervenes. ‘A-MEN!’

A wave of laughter from the congregation. The preacher rides it. ‘No! Don’t Amen that! We don’t believe in lotteries, we believe in work. Hard work. So, she asked me, “Pastor, if I won the Lottery, and I gave the money to the church repair fund, would you accept it?” And I said…’

The congregation is quiet again. We’re in the realm of moral theology.

‘Of course I would! Does that mean I want you to play the Lottery? Of course not!’

Communities which make serious demands are more likely to inspire serious commitment

It’s Sunday morning at an Elim Pentecostal church in London, and the place feels alive – fittingly for perhaps the fastest-growing Christian community in the UK. Over the past 25 years, Elim’s membership has risen from 50,000 to 75,000, according to the statistician Peter Brierley. The figure is striking when you consider the overall picture of Christianity in the UK. The census revealed that, for the first time, less than half of the country identified as Christian, a fall of seven million people over a decade.

Yet while certain kinds of Christian practice are fading, it seems, others are very much not. In recent decades, thousands of new churches of all varieties have sprung up across the country; London’s Sunday attendance is 10 per cent higher than 40 years ago. Vast congregations have flourished if you know where to look.