Why We Need Good News People

 In this guest post, Phil Knox, co-author of Good News People, reflects on the importance of being good news people in a world full of bad news.

By Phil Knox

We thought something had shifted.

Almost every Sunday Gavin and I speak in a different church across the UK.  We go where invited and preach across almost every denomination, to handfuls and hundreds, across the whole spectrum of society.  And every week for the last few years we have texted each other with enthusiastic encouragement reporting seeing God doing something extraordinary in the places we have been.  From this vantage point we believed we had a story to tell.

And then the statistics began to reflect what we were seeing.

For most of us, for most of our lives, any news report about church attendance has been bleak reading.  In November 2022 the census revealed that for the first time fewer than half the people in England and Wales identified as Christian.[1]  We have become accustomed to headlines predicting the imminent extinction of the church in our nations.

And yet in 2025 there has been a wave of research and headlines that have told a different story and caused those in the church and the media to listen up and take notice. 

1. In January a survey of 10,000 people conducted Onepoll found that Gen Z are half as likely to be atheists as their parents or grandparents and revealed that just 13% of under 25s identified as atheists.[2]
2. Then in March, amongst other national newspapers, The Times reported that Bible sales increased by 87% between 2019 and 2024.[3]
3. In April, another study was published, this time from Savanta, who surveyed over 2000 UK students about their attitude towards the Bible. This piece of research found that 29% of all students read the Bible every week and 33% of non-Christian students are interested in reading the Bible with a Christian friend if asked.[4]
4. Then a couple of weeks later came a research piece called The Quiet Revival. YouGov surveyed over 13,000 UK adults and found that over 2 million more people are going to church now than in 2018.  What was once referred to as a ‘missing generation’ of young adults in the church is now anything but.  33% of all churchgoers are aged 18-34.  In 2018, 4% of 18-24 year olds were monthly churchgoers.  That figure is now 16%.[5]

So far, so encouraging.  If taken on their own, one of these studies could arguably be labelled as an outlier.  But taken together, each is a useful marker point that things have changed and there has been a change in the spiritual climate.  The numbers of people Gavin and I were seeing come to faith, and the mood shift in many of the church leaders we were speaking to seemed to be part of something far bigger.

The two of us have been trying to work out how it feels.  We are both avid football fans and once played for the same football team.  We know what it’s like to lose every week.  In fact, we both once broke the Guinness world record for the longest ever 5-a-side football match.  After 48 hours we had lost by over 300 goals.  But we also know what it’s like to be a part of teams that win every week.  The fact that the tide has turned, the increase in spiritual temperature and the rising number of people in churches feels like we are all now playing on the winning team.  It’s a huge boost and mentality shift.

But what does this mean for us?  I want to suggest three implications of the changing climate.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63792408

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gen-z-religion-spritual-atheist-b2687395.html

[3] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/religion/article/spiritual-gen-z-drive-increase-in-bible-sales-vnphxfjn5

[4] https://www.fusionmovement.org/savanta

[5] https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival

Firstly, we need to make the most of the opportunities.  Colossians 4:2-6 encourages us to be devoted to prayer, pray that a door may open for the message and make the most of every opportunity.  We must continue to pray, but we must also take hold of the moment that God has given us.  This is the role of good news people.

We both serve on the team at the Evangelical Alliance and one of the things that God has called us to do as a movement is to understand how people become Christians and encourage the UK church to make the most of those pathways.  We recently published a report which asked almost 300 new Christians how they came to faith as adults. One of the questions we asked was who helped you most on the journey.  Here’s what people said: ‘A person or people from church (35%)’, ‘A close friend (33%)’ and ‘A small group of Christians (28%)’. People repeatedly particularly mentioned that friends gave them time, patient discussion, hospitality and demonstrated an authentic example.  Evangelism is a team game.  It is too important and too big a task to be left to the professionals.

In this moment, we all get to play a part.  If you have friends that don’t yet know Jesus, they may be more open than before to an invitation to church, a course exploring faith, an evangelistic event or a chat about the Bible.  Don’t say their ‘no’ for them.

Whenever you see the words ‘gospel’ or ‘good news’ in the New Testament, the root word behind them is the Greek, ‘evangel’.  It’s where we get the ‘evangelist’, ‘evangelistic’ and ‘evangelical’ from.  And one piece of work that Gavin and I have done in recent months is to try and define and redeem what we mean when we say we are ‘evangelicals.’  And we think a really good retranslation is ‘good news people.’

To be evangelicals, or a good news people, is to build our lives on four compelling foundations.  First, we are rooted in the Bible.  We need to trust its authority in the midst of rapid cultural and societal change.  Second, to be centred on Jesus.  We believe that his life, death and resurrection are the most important moments in the whole of human history.  Third, to be transformed by conversion.  The most important decision every one of us has to make is whether to follow Jesus or not.  It really is a matter of life and death.  And fourth, we are inspired to activism.  We desire to see the world become more like the Kingdom so we aim to make a difference with our lives.

In this season of spiritual openness, people are not just being drawn to the Christian faith.  All kinds of spirituality are being explored.  What we have in Jesus is the firmest of foundations and the only way to real and everlasting life.  We need to stand firm on its truth and, as the ground shakes beneath the world’s feet, invite others to plant their feet on solid rock.

As Gavin and I have written ‘Good News People’, we have been convinced that there are some important tensions for us to hold as Christians at this time.  One of those is being both hopeful and realistic.  We need to trust that in the end Jesus wins and that we can have an unswerving hope in how the story finishes, but we have to be real and honest about the battle we are in.

But one of the implications of being hopeful in this time of renewal is that we need to tell the story of what God is doing in the UK.  Where people are coming to faith, may we celebrate and share the news.  In the last few months, multiple media outlets have reported a mass baptism on Bournemouth beach, a national newspaper’s headline was ‘Global crises sending Gen Z to church’, a leading political podcast reported from a Christian festival trying to explain the renewal of interest in faith amongst younger generations.  If there was ever a time to be hopeful, it is now.

GK Chesterton wrote, ‘Five times in history, the church has gone to the dogs and each time it was the dogs that died.’  In a world where people are drowning under and doomscrolling through a world of bad news, let’s be people who change the narrative and tell a different, more hopeful story.

The Collins Dictionary word of the year for 2022 was ‘permacrisis.’  It refers to an extended period of instability or insecurity, brought on by a series of catastrophic events.  Many of those in our streets, workplaces and communities are feeling its weight.  But we are not people of the permacrisis, we are gospel people who know a good news God.  May we rediscover our identity as Bible-rooted, Jesus-centred, life-transformed and activism-inspired Christians.  May we make the most of the moment in front of us, go for it with the gospel, stand firm on the rock and tell the story to a world crying out for hope.  We are good news people in a bad news world.