Last week, the Bible Society’s Quiet Revival report was withdrawn after an issue was identified with faulty data provided by YouGov.

If you are anything like me and read the news, you probably also felt that sense of sadness and disappointment. The Bible Society has been fully transparent and handled this with great sensitivity and grace (we should keep them in prayer), but that’s difficult news to hear, especially as for many of us, the report seemed to put into words something we felt was already happening. Disappointment is a very normal, human emotion and it’s right to pause and be honest and to acknowledge the disappointment. But in our disappointment, this moment doesn’t have to steal our hope! My faith (and hopefully yours) is not built on a report or statistics (as helpful as those things can be), but it’s built on the unshakeable Word of God and the absolute confidence that He is doing something, even when we cannot see it with our own eyes.

At UCB we hear these stories nearly every single day. People write, email or ring to tell us of what God is doing in their lives. Sometimes those stories are ‘big’, such as addictions being broken and relationships being brought back together, or sometimes they are the quieter ones – God speaking to a person through the Word for Today or radio on the worst day of their lives. What we see is people finding hope again, opening a Bible for the first time, realising they are absolutely NOT alone. And we feel God at work too in our buildings: the tangible sense of God’s manifest presence, His financial provision, the way He opens doors which looked to be firmly shut.

You might be experiencing this in your own church and community too, and none of that changes because of disappointment over a report – in fact it should propel us forward knowing that God is absolutely still ‘on the move’.

For many years now, I’ve spoken about something we call the iSee vision. It comes from Jesus’ words to His disciples when He told them to lift up their eyes and look at the fields – to see what He sees. I first shared this word in 2016 at UCB, and it was a call to ‘open our eyes’ and catch a glimpse of a remarkable future, a future where young and old, every generation and nation feel and experience the power of God in their lives so that their lives are transformed. We know that in divided and turbulent times (in which we are currently living), the world needs hope and transformation more than ever. So imagine for a moment what it will look like when revival becomes an everyday experience for you, your family, your street and your workplace. What a thought!

And so, in the light of all that’s happening at the moment, I refuse to give up or to fall into disillusionment because I know that God is still powerfully at work in the UK and around the world. Data and statistics are wonderful things, but God has never needed data to do great things – He just needs willing people like you and me to be open to all that He wants to do. God is not finished with His church and with the world – He is only getting started!

P.S. Please do keep our friends at the Bible Society in prayer as they navigate this difficult time. We look forward to seeing their revised report in due course.