The “death of secularism” and search for meaning are fueling revival, according to Pastor Matt Chandler of The Village Church, a megachurch in Flower Mound, Texas.
“We are in the middle of something,” he says. “I hope it’s the beginning, not the middle. The last three years here have been just marked by supernatural activity.”
Chandler said his church has prayed that God would bring the same movement they’ve been witnessing in other communities across the nation and around the world to their congregation. This prayer, he said, was answered last year when The Village Church experienced a record number of baptisms.
“We don’t want to watch it play out on YouTube — we want to avail ourselves to the Lord and ask him to do it here,” he said according to Crosswalk Headlines. “And he has honored that prayer here in really stunning ways. It’s been among all ages — certainly our students and young adults have kind of led the charge in it. But it has spread.”
Chandler pointed to the Unite US gatherings on college campuses, which have sparked thousands of salvations since launching in 2023, saying church leaders have wondered whether that spiritual fire eventually would spread into local congregations. He says it has. “By the grace of God, it seems to be doing just that. We’re humbled and thrilled,” he said.
Chandler believes the current spiritual movement has been fueled in part by the collapse of secular influence.
“We have watched the death of secularism,” he said. “I think it crested and crashed. And you have a whole generation that watched the generation before them go at it, and they’re like, ‘No, thank you.’ I think secularism is dead. I don’t think it’s dying; I think it’s dead. And so, what’s going to take its place?”
Church leaders, he said, should not assume Christianity will automatically fill this void, warning that neopaganism and other spiritual alternatives are rising as well. He described a recent encounter with a stranger who said he and his wife worship a Celtic god and that she identifies as a witch.
“And so that stuff’s growing, too,” Chandler said. “Why? Because secularism is dead. So they’re looking for the transcendent. People are going to go towards the new age paganism, demonic stuff, if we don’t get them to see and marvel at the beauty of Jesus by the grace of God.”
–Alan Goforth
