Reflecting on Connect Conference 2025
John McGinley, Myriad & The Send UK & Ireland lead, was the keynote speaker at the Connect Conference. He shares his thoughts about refounding the church on Jesus Christ.
At the Counties Conference in October, I shared my conviction that the renewing and reforming work God is taking us through is a re-founding of the church on Jesus Christ. Decades of secularism in our nation, with its relentless assault on the Christian faith, have weakened our confidence in Jesus. Yet as we recognise this, I sense our Heavenly Father thanking us for remaining faithful in a difficult and confusing time.
When Jesus speaks to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, He both commends and challenges them. Our faithfulness has meant standing firm amid a spiritual battle. But now, as the dominance of secularism wanes, I sense the Lord calling us to repent and return to Him.
I see this “return to Jesus” in two aspects — our discipleship and our mission. Jesus always calls us first to Himself and then sends us to the world, as He said to his first disciples: “Come and follow me, and I will teach you how to fish for people.” Mark 1:17
It is easy to continue following Jesus’ teachings, basing our lives on the cross and practising rhythms of church life, yet lose the simple joy of knowing Him. The story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) captures this so vividly.
My interpretation of this passage is that Martha represents a church preoccupied with doing things the right way — meeting others’ expectations and making sure everything is presented perfectly — yet losing our awareness of Jesus’ presence. Mary, meanwhile, models the response to which Jesus is calling us: choosing what is better, sitting at His feet in devotion and surrender to Him.
For the church to be re-founded on Jesus, He must become the deepest affection of our hearts, displacing all other idols, even good ones, and I am seeing this happen. Across the church, people are sensing the call to pray. Churches hosting 24/7 prayer rooms for the first time are discovering a deep hunger in God’s people. Groups gather online every morning to pray; young adults worship and intercede all night. We are living in a time when Jesus is calling us back to devotion and surrender.
Simplicity in Discipleship
Alongside this, patterns of discipleship are changing. There is a desire for the church to return to the simplicity of authentic community, sharing our lives with Jesus at the centre. He must be Lord of His Church, yet we have often referenced ourselves and created our own metrics of what a good church looks like. A. W. Tozer captured this powerfully:
“Jesus Christ has today almost no authority among the groups that call themselves by his name. In these times, we have measured ourselves by ourselves until the figure of Jesus no longer presides over the church as its Lord and Master.” (1)
In practice, this new simplicity looks like people gathering to eat, worship, pray, read Scripture, and obey Jesus together.
When we strip away the layers of organisation – whether formal liturgy or high-production worship — following Jesus becomes about loving and obeying him and loving one another.
A story from one church illustrates this beautifully. A non-Christian friend joined their evening of food and worship. Afterwards, she said she had felt something she couldn’t explain. Beyond the welcome, inclusion, and deep care she had seen as people prayed and supported one another, she explained that she felt “an atmosphere of love,” something greater than herself was loving her. She had encountered the presence of Jesus being poured out by the Holy Spirit in that place.
Restoring Jesus to the Centre of Mission
This leads us to the restoration of the person of Jesus to the centre of mission. The Finding Jesus (2) and Quiet Revival (3) reports reveal a growing spiritual openness in our nation, especially among younger generations. More people are speaking of encounters with Jesus through dreams, Scripture, and worship. Stephen Foster, Rector of St Aldates Church in Oxford, recently shared about a group of young people, with no Christian background, who came into church after having a dream from God.
One young woman dreamed of an open Bible and a voice saying, “You must read Luke’s Gospel about Jesus.” She woke up distressed because she didn’t own a Bible, then turned on her bedside lamp — and on the table, a Bible was open at the book of Luke.
Stories like this show that Jesus is pursuing people, awakening spiritual hunger, and revealing himself. As we listen, Jesus calls us to recover our confidence in speaking about him. All we have ever had to offer the world is Jesus Christ. Too often, we have substituted other things because we lost confidence in the Good News. But today, our culture is ready to receive an invitation to meet Him.
When we reread the New Testament through this lens, we see that the apostles simply spoke about Jesus. Peter – on the day of Pentecost, and John – in his Gospel and letters. Both testified to what they had seen and touched: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes… this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” 1 John 1:1
It is all about Jesus. The church must recover the joy of speaking His name, sharing testimonies, and offering prayer to others.
Working with young adults through The Send UK & Ireland, I have observed a new boldness in Christian witness. At one event, 200 young people took to Oxford Street to share the Gospel. An hour later, we gathered at McDonald’s, filled with stories of people healed and responding to Jesus. Then a young man stood up and delivered a simple Gospel message to the whole restaurant. Two people came to faith in Jesus. There is a joy and courage in this younger generation that I believe will reignite a confidence to share Jesus throughout the entire church.
A Slow Awakening
In my recent book with Anne Calver, Awaken: The Lord is Doing a New Thing (4), we explore how to engage with what God is doing in His Church. We begin with the words:
“My beloved spoke and said to me, ‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come.’” Song of Songs 2:10–12
We are entering a new season where God is moving in fresh ways. As our friend Rish Wilson says, “We are in the grip of a slow awakening.” God is calling us to return to Him with the promise of His empowering presence. We don’t need new techniques, products, or goals. Instead, we need to align our hearts in repentance and surrender—to let Jesus renew and transform us from the inside out.
1. A.W. Tozer “The Dangers of a Shallow Faith” in The Best of A W Tozer comp. Warren. Wiersbe Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1995, p.93)
2 Finding Jesus. https://www.eauk.org/resources/our-resources/reports/finding-jesus
3 The Quiet Revival. https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research
4 A Calver & J McGinley, Awaken: the Lord is Doing a New Thing, Influence Resources, United Kingdom, 2025