Something is stirring among young people in Britain, and the United Reformed Church wants the church to be ready to receive it. The ecumenical conference hosted by the URC this week — titled 'Are We Ready?: Co-creating a response to the quiet revival' — brought together church leaders to wrestle with a question that is both urgent and hopeful.

Generation Z is spiritually curious in ways that confound the secularisation narrative. Young people are asking questions about meaning, identity, and transcendence with an intensity that previous generations might have directed elsewhere. But they are also deeply frustrated — by the climate crisis, by economic precarity, and by institutions that seem to speak past their actual concerns.

The conference's key message was disarmingly simple: listen. Not programme, not recruit, not manage — listen. Young people can tell the difference between a church that wants to understand them and one that wants to absorb them into an existing structure. The former creates disciples; the latter creates alumni.

For church leaders across all denominations, this gathering is a timely challenge. The quiet revival the conference describes is not a guaranteed outcome — it is an invitation. Whether the church is ready to receive it depends on whether it is willing to be changed by the encounter.