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Interview: Rev Steve Hollinghurst, Church Army’s Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture

Rev Steve Hollinghurst, who is Church Army’s Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture, explains the potential for evangelism into the new spiritual society that is rising up in Britain.

A new tour by the Group for Evangelisation, a coordinating group of Churches Together in England, has revealed how despite the continuous reporting of Church decline and falling numbers in church congregations, people in the country are becoming more aware of the spiritual nature of the world.

The tour, entitled ‘Equipping your Church in a Spiritual Age’, explained that in 2000 a survey revealed how 70 per cent of the population testified they prayed, as well as 76 per cent saying that they have had a religious experience, compared with just 48 per cent in 1987. However, instead of turning to the Church to find explanations for their spiritual experiences, many are moving to New Age movements and ‘Mind, Body and Soul’ initiatives.

Addressing these facts, and looking to find ways in which the Church can make people realise that the Church is in fact spiritual, Rev Steve Hollinghurst, who is Church Army’s Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture, and is heading the tour, spoke to Christian Today.

The full text of the interview, held at the Salvation Army’s UK Headquarters in London on Nov. 14, 2005, can be read below:

CT: Please tell us what you want to achieve from this tour?

SH: I think for me what I want to achieve is to make people more aware of what is going on in culture with regards to spirituality. So that people realise that rather than necessarily feeling with a world in which people aren’t religious and where people are un-spiritual, that actually that there are a lot of spiritual things happening out there.

Also I want people to have an awareness of how spiritual people in our culture think that Christians are not spiritual, and from there get people to start thinking about what this means for ambition in evangelism and how we can interact with people.

CT: People say that the church are only on the cusp of this issue and have not grasped it – would you agree with this?

SH: Well some have grasped it, as we have gone around on the tour we have met with some that are already doing things, but it is true that probably these are only a handful of people, so I think it is true that there are many others that need this message to come to them, and that we need to engage with these people.

CT: So how does the Church go about engaging with these spiritual people, but in a way that does not compromise the church?

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