I came across this interesting passage in Steve Hollinghurst’s 2010 book Mission Shaped Evangelism. It’s probably not new to some of you, but to me it is…

“In the 1980s a number of charismatic church leaders were prophesying a great revival in Britain. Conferences and prayer meetings attended by people from around the world occurred in anticipation. Beyond some notable spiritual experiences and renewal of faith, people were disappointed when nothing grand came to pass. But what if God was enabling a great spiritual awakening, not in the church but outside it? David Hay records a big rise in spiritual and supernatural experience among non=churchgoers, from 48 per cent of those he surveyed to 76 per cent between 1987 and 2000. It is easy to point to the sociological reasons why people are so much more open to the spiritual, but if people are as they say actually having more spiritual experiences, where are these coming from? If God is at work in the world, might these experiences be of God? In my work I have met people who have encountered forces that I believe were spiritually evil; indeed Hay records a big rise in such experiences. But they remain much lower than the positive encounters, and among these positive experiences I have come across many Pagans and New Agers who I think are encountering the God I know through Jesus Christ. We are used to people encountering God being among those raised in the Christian faith, using Christian language to describe their experiences. People raised in a culture that has forgotten the Christian language of faith will speak of their encounters with God in a different language; we must listen for what is going on underneath. In doing so we may also learn how to communicate the Christian faith in language those not raised in the church understand.” page 59-60.

I’ve only just started the book but it is provoking some disturbing and challenging thinking.