by Alan Langstaff

Odds & Ends are letters covering important topics that do not require a whole article.

IS AMERICA EXPERIENCING A REVIVAL?

Here are a few reports regarding Revival in the United States of America. Particularly from the Ministry Watch.

Firstly, a report about church attendance:

“The past 25 years have been rough for American churches and other houses of worship. The median worship attendance dropped by more than half. Church closures and the rise of the nones — those who claim no religion — have grabbed all the headlines. And faith in institutions like organized religion has plummeted.

Yet a new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows signs of a shift — for the first time in two decades, attendance is up. More people are volunteering, and there also seems to be a renewed sense of optimism among pastors and other clergy…

Median in-person attendance, which dropped from 137 in 2000 to 45 during COVID-19, is now at 70 adults, which is higher than the 2020 Faith Communities Today survey from the Hartford Center for Religious Research. That report found that the median attendance was 65.

Researchers said the attendance growth, which is self-reported by the surveyed congregations, is not enough to reverse years of decline. Still, said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, it has been a long time since there has been any uptick.

Thumma said researchers had expected to see continued decline and withdrawal. “We were pretty surprised when we saw the 2025 data.” He added that for many congregations, this might be the first sign that the trajectory of decline might be shifted. As the report noted, “this is the first positive gain in median attendance in 25 years.” (By Bob Smietana, MinistryWatch.com)

Secondly, a report about revival in the USA:

“No, the United States is not in a revival. Not as of the summer of 2026, not by the standard the Christian tradition has historically used and not by any standard the data can support.

But something is happening. The 20-year slide stopped. Young men came back. Interest in faith went up — way up. But spiritual formation did not follow. Half the public argument about revival is not an argument about evidence at all. It is semantics.

The historic evangelical distinction is three-tiered. Renewal happens in an individual. Revival happens in a community of believers — the Church wakes up. Awakening happens in the wider society — the culture itself is altered.” (By Arnie Cole, ChristianPost.com)

Thirdly, other reports:

“Evangelical Christians should earnestly hope for, pray for, and work for revival. Maybe that’s why we’re always looking for and too often declaring, with only limited evidence, that revival has broken out. We want it to be true, so we declare it to be true with just the slightest encouragement…

And while we do not want to quench the spirit (to use biblical language), we should be clear-eyed and discerning when we hear people talk of revival. And we’ve been hearing a lot lately that America is experiencing revival. Kenneth Copeland has repeatedly declared that America is entering a season of revival. On his broadcasts and at ministers’ conferences, he has described the nation as being on the verge of “the greatest awakening” and has tied it to his own prophetic announcements.

Mario Murillo has been one of the strongest proponents of the “America is in revival” narrative. He argues that mass tent meetings, conversions in California and elsewhere, and openness among young people indicate that the country is already experiencing a “Third Great Awakening.” Lance Wallnau has likewise said that America is experiencing a spiritual awakening, often linking it with political developments and what he describes as a national “reformation.”” (By MinistryWatch.com)

GLOBAL METHODIST CHURCH

The Global Methodist Church held its 2nd general conference in South Africa. 

“The GMC formed in 2022 as a traditionalist offshoot of the United Methodist Church (UMC). While the GMC remains significantly smaller than the UMC, growth has been rapid. According to the GMC website, when the denomination launched on May 1, 2022, it consisted of “approximately two dozen local churches in the Bulgaria Provisional Annual Conference, and a newly forming church plant in the Philippines.”

Since its 2024 conference, the church has grown from 36 to 55 Annual Conferences, and from 4,700 congregations to 7,252. A GMC spokesperson told MinistryWatch she was “unable to pull membership numbers,” so it is unclear how many individual members those churches represent. The UMC, officially created in 1968, says it has more than 11 million members across more than 40,000 churches worldwide.” (By Neva Piombino, MinistryWatch.com)

VULGARITY

“Why does seemingly everybody have to be using the F-word these days?

You hear it almost everywhere. It pours from television, movies, music, podcasts, social media, sporting events, workplaces, restaurants, and everyday conversations. People who would once have been embarrassed to say it in public now use it repeatedly, sometimes almost unconsciously…

It is, in my estimation, the foulest and most vulgar word in the English language. Yet what was once considered almost unspeakable has become a conversational commonplace.

How did this happen?

The word itself is quite old. Its precise origin is uncertain, though etymologists generally link it to Germanic words associated with sexual intercourse or breeding…

For centuries, however, the word remained socially taboo. Respectable writers, publishers, broadcasters, and ordinary people generally avoided it. Samuel Johnson omitted it from his famous dictionary, and from 1795 until 1965, the word did not appear in a single English-language dictionary. That very restraint gave the word enormous rhetorical force…

The Bible does not provide a catalog of forbidden English words. Instead, it repeatedly addresses the character of our speech.

The apostle Paul wrote: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying” (Ephesians 4:29). He warned against “filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient” (Ephesians 5:4). He told the Colossians to put away “anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth” (Colossians 3:8).

The late Phil Robertson, founder of Duck Commander and patriarch of the television show, “Duck Dynasty,” once told of a sound man on the filming crew who had listened to the Robertson family for long stretches while they were miked.

Eventually, the man approached Robertson and said he had noticed something unusual — he never heard them curse. He wanted to know why. That question opened the door for Robertson to talk with him about Christ, and according to Robertson, the man was eventually converted.” (By Mark Creech, ChristianPost.com)

MEGA CHURCHES

A discussion is happening today regarding the place of the Mega Churches.

“Lots of church leaders, even those in the church growth movement, are growing tired of the megachurch and multisite model. Here at MinistryWatch, we have written about Watermark Church, which abandoned its multisite model in 2021. Most of those sites became independent churches, and they are now thriving. Some of these independent churches have themselves planted churches.

Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., is someone who has never embraced either the megachurch or the multisite model. His church has intentionally stayed relatively small, less than 1,000 in weekly attendance, and it has been equally intentional about planting churches in the D.C. area. So far, CHBC has helped plant or revitalize more than a dozen churches in the surrounding area.

Secondly, it is important to note that the megachurch is at least as much a cultural phenomenon as it is a spiritual phenomenon. Megachurches are the brainchild of Baby Boomers and the post-World War II industrialization of America and the world. That is why I often refer to the “Evangelical Industrial Complex” to describe what has happened to religious life since the 1970s. The industrial model, with its features of scale and mass production, has proven damaging to the mission of the church, and it has lost its appeal to subsequent generations, who value community and relationships. We can now see that evangelicalism’s industrial model is good at empire building, but not as good at kingdom building.

So, to return to the question that started this conversation: Is the Age of the Megachurch over? The answer to that question may be that it really never was. The sturm und drang of the megachurch movement has turned out to be just what Goethe’s famous expression suggests: overwrought, full of passion, but fleeting. Megachurches will not disappear, but after a half-century of observation, we can say that the legacy of the megachurch is mixed, and includes scandal, spiritual deconstruction, and cynicism.

In short, becoming a megachurch is no longer the goal to which even church growth advocates aspire. Many faithful Christians are discovering the wisdom found along the Old Paths, and they can say with conviction E.F Schumacher might admire: “small is beautiful.” (By MinistryWatch.com)

NATIONAL DEBT

I read an article recently about the National Debt facing Americans. This is something that Christians should be concerned about.

“National Debt Tops $40 Trillion. If you believe “thou shalt not steal,” then you should be distressed by this milestone, passed this week. When you borrow money that you have no ability or intention to pay back, that’s stealing. We are stealing from our children and grandchildren. This behavior will not “make America great again” — it will hasten its demise.

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813) reportedly said, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” He’s right.” (By Warren Cole Smith, MinistryWatch.com)