Do You See the Little Cloud Rising Over Your Generation?

Introduction

One Saturday morning, at the conference held at Momentum (Paris), Phil, pastor of King's Arms in Bedford (United Kingdom), takes the microphone after the youth. He opens in prayer: "The kingdom of God will spread over all the earth." And very quickly, he takes you into 1 Kings 18: Elijah bowing down to the ground, his head between his knees, while his servant goes up seven times to scan the sea. The seventh time, he sees a very small cloud "like a man's hand." Phil tells you: this little cloud, you can see it rising today over your generation. God is moving among the nations. He is moving among young people. And he asks you a very concrete question: how will you respond?

Message Outline

1. The kingdom of God is bearing fruit across the whole earth

Phil begins by telling you three true stories to pull you out of the impression that nothing is moving:

• Kenya, Africanos and Okissimo. Two years ago, his friend Africanos and his wife moved to a very poor region of Kenya to plant a church there. They meet a family whose 4-year-old daughter has been mute since birth. Africanos spends a day and a night praying for her. In the morning, as he holds the child in his arms, the little girl says her first word: "Hallelujah." The church begins there. Sixteen people are baptized. They are already looking for where to plant the next one.
• Kurdistan and Turkey, the call to sacrifice. A small Kurdish church lacks the money for its first building. The pastor of Phil's network in Turkey sells his house to help. Other members have moved to the region, left good jobs, and lived in shipping containers to live alongside the most broken.
• England, Andrew, his wife Cara's cousin. Andrew is a former music producer and professional golfer who became a chronic alcoholic. Seven bottles of wine a day, two before 9am just to function. He lost his marriage, his three children, his millions, his reputation. Cara has been praying for him for over 30 years. Three years ago, in the middle of the night, Andrew has a dream: a man dressed in white comes toward him, holding a dirty cloth soaked in wine. The man wrings out the cloth, all the "dirty wine" pours out of it, and he lifts it up white and clean. Andrew wakes up delivered from his addiction, with no withdrawal. Doctors find a perfectly healthy liver and say: "We cannot officially comment on what happened to you." In his first year, he brings ten people to Christ. He gets up at 4am every morning to walk and pray for four or five hours. He was baptized a year ago in Phil's church.

Phil pauses and tells you: "That wasn't even part of my message. But if you have been praying for 30 years for a breakthrough in your family and nothing is moving, don't give up now. This is a new day." He takes time to pray with the church for all pending breakthroughs: prodigal brothers, addictions, dreams of Jesus at night, oppression, captives. "Put your hand on your neighbor's shoulder and pray for a breakthrough in their life."

2. Elijah and the little cloud the size of a man's hand

Phil then opens 1 Kings 18:41-45. The context: three years of drought decreed by Elijah. A spiritual sign, as if God were saying: "I am closing the floodgates of the heavens to show you what is happening in your heart." Then comes the confrontation on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal. Fire falls from heaven. Hearts turn back to God. And right after this climax, Elijah does something very simple:

"Elijah went up to the top of Carmel and bent down to the ground, putting his face between his knees. Then he said to his servant, 'Go up now, look toward the sea.' So he went up and looked, and said, 'There is nothing.' Seven times he said, 'Go again.' The seventh time he said, 'There is a cloud, as small as a man's hand, rising out of the sea.'" (1 Kings 18:42-44)

Phil suggests this: today, a little cloud barely bigger than a hand's palm is rising over Europe. These are the signs of the revival that is beginning. Can you see it?

3. This little cloud : you can already see it

Phil gives you the concrete signs spotted across the nations:

• +45% increase in people wanting to be baptized in France, and the majority are professed adults.
• An increase in the number of Protestants who say they believe the Bible in France.
• A doubling of church attendance in Finland and Norway, two highly secularized nations.
• In the United Kingdom, the 18-24 age group is the one growing the most in the church, with +16%. And many young men.
• +20% increase in Bible sales in France over the past two years, +87% in the United Kingdom. Buyers are mostly young people.
• In sports: an English goalkeeper is seen with his Bible on the way to the locker room.
• A young woman from Phil's church, traveling with her volleyball team, invites her teammates to come read the Bible in her room. Ten accept. Three give their lives to Jesus a few days later.

Phil quotes French journalist Antoine Pasquier, author of Enquête sur ces jeunes qui veulent devenir chrétiens ("Investigation into the young people who want to become Christians"). His conclusion: the conversion of young people does not happen first through networks or social media. It happens in a more natural and personal way. And above all, almost all of these young people tell him the same thing: "Before every step into the church, I opened my Bible." The Bible has become essential to them again.

At his church in Bedford, Phil recounts: in ten recent days, 60 people gave their lives to Jesus, and 21 of them were under 25.

4. How should the Church respond: embracing this generation

Phil gives you four very practical avenues for your local church:

• Invest in the younger generation. Youth groups, discipleship, reading the Bible with them: make it a priority. Often the people who work with the younger generation are the lowest paid in the church. Phil thinks this should change.
• Involve them in everything you do. Your Bible study: who is beside you? Your dinner table: who is there? Your church teams: who from this generation is part of them?
• Take risks with them, as risks were taken for you. Phil remembers: "I was 20-21 years old and people took big risks with me. The question is: am I taking the same steps of faith with the younger generation? It's easy to become more risk-averse as you get older."
• Celebrate what God is doing elsewhere, even among others. Revival is coming to France notably through the Catholic Church, with thousands of new baptisms. "Maybe you don't like the Catholic Church, but God is doing something. Their blessing is also your blessing."

5. What this generation is really looking for

Phil identifies three shifts in what the younger generation expects from a church:

• Less performance, more presence. The mega-church model with its big lights, its perfectly polished worship videos, immaculate hair, flawless makeup: this generation is no longer looking for that. It is looking for churches full of the presence of God, with real substance. It is increasingly skeptical of anything too polished, too perfect. It wants something less embellished and more real.
• Less production, more participation. Worship is not something I attend, it's something I take part in.
• Less noise, more space. We often want to fill every moment of silence with noise. This generation, on the contrary, is looking for spaces of silence for introspection. This is one of the reasons why many young people today are turning to Catholic or Anglican churches.

6. A broader cultural shift: the return of Christian values in intellectual circles

Phil gives you a few markers of the shift underway in academic and philosophical circles:

• The "new atheism" movement led by Richard Dawkins and his three companions (the famous "four horsemen"), scattered within less than a year after their anti-God bus advertising campaign in London.
• Paul Davies, a highly influential British physicist (not a Christian himself), argues in academic circles that creation reveals a Creator. He speaks of a "cosmic jackpot" and a "gold-lock puzzle." His argument: there is no proof for the non-existence of God.
• A leading academic feminist publishes a book against the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and states that we must return to the true sexual revolution: the one brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus, which gave women a dignity they never had in Greco-Roman culture.
• A former Muslim, once a global feminist figure, was baptized last year with her wife. She wrote: "I turned to Christianity because I finally found that life devoid of all spiritual comfort was unbearable, even almost self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?"
• French philosopher Guillaume Bignon, a former atheist, wrote Confession of an Atheist Who Became a Christian. He recounts how, while trying to convince a Christian woman that her faith was false, he ended up praying "God, if you are real, reveal yourself." God reactivated his conscience. One evening in his apartment in Paris, the room "fell on him," and he met Jesus.

Phil repeats: "It's not everything we want to see, but it is something. I would much rather be optimistic than pessimistic."

7. Three marks of a Church that will be able to carry this generation

• Creativity. C. S. Lewis, the author of Narnia, wrote these stories to give people the feeling of wanting it to be true. If you are creative in your church, you have a crucial role to play: telling and giving this hope that Jesus is here, in a way that draws people in.
• Owning Christian strangeness. Phil quotes a British journalist: "If someone has a faith worth following, I believe their convictions should make me uncomfortable that I'm not doing the same. If this person shares 90% of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing particularly inspiring about them. Strangeness is not always a reason for aversion; it can be a source of aspiration." Don't try to be normal, neither in your morality, nor in your conviction that God still comes to meet people in the middle of the night, as he did for Andrew.
• Community. A friend of Phil's recently walked out of San Francisco airport and got into a driverless taxi to his hotel. No human interaction the whole trip. It is possible today to live in the world without meeting anyone. But everyone is still looking for connections, relationships. And this is one of the things the church does best: communities that let themselves be known and know one another.

Key Takeaways

• A little cloud "like a man's hand" is rising today over the nations. It's not everything, but it is the beginning of a revival.
• If you have been praying for a breakthrough for 30 years in your family, don't give up. This is a new day.
• The concrete signs: a massive rise in baptisms and Bible sales in France and the United Kingdom, a visible revival among 18-24 year-olds, even among young men historically absent.
• This generation is looking for less performance and more presence, less production and more participation, less noise and more space.
• The church that will carry this generation will be creative, unashamedly different, and centered on real community.

Personal Application

• What is the breakthrough you have been praying for a long time without seeing an answer? What would happen if you started praying again this week as if it were "a new day"?
• Around you, who is that person between 11 and 24 years old that God is placing on your heart? How can you concretely invite them into your spiritual life: a Bible study, a dinner, a team?
• Are you ready to celebrate what God is doing even "around the corner," in a church you would not normally attend? What would that change in how you see things?
• In your church or your group, where can you remove a little noise to make more space for silence and the presence of God?
• Have you become "risk-averse" with your faith, compared to ten years ago? What could you step out into again?

Scriptures Cited

• 1 Kings 18:41-45 · Elijah, the servant, and the little cloud the size of a man's hand.
• Psalm 22:4-6 · "Our fathers trusted in you... and they were not put to shame." (read by Kylian in the opening)
• Psalm 100 · "Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth." (read at the opening of the service)

Further reading

• Internal Church Communication: A Practical Guide
• Church Organizational Chart: Creating a Simple Template
• How to Set Priorities for a Local Church

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "a little cloud the size of a man's hand" mean in 1 Kings 18?

After three years of drought and Elijah's victory over the prophets of Baal on Carmel, the prophet begins praying for rain. His servant goes up to scan the sea seven times. The seventh time, he spots a very small cloud. This tiny cloud is in fact the first visible sign of the great storm that is coming. Phil draws on this image: today, the signs of revival are still modest in Europe, but they announce something much greater. The question is not whether the cloud is big, but whether you see it.

What does Phil rely on to speak of revival in France?

On concrete data he cites in his message: a 45% increase in the number of adults requesting baptism, a 20% increase in Bible sales in France over the past two years, and the fact that the majority of these new baptisms are professed adults. He also mentions Antoine Pasquier's book Enquête sur ces jeunes qui veulent devenir chrétiens, as well as the thousands of new baptisms in the Catholic Church, while insisting: their blessing is also ours.

What needs to change in our churches to welcome this generation?

Phil identifies three shifts: less performance and more presence, less production and more participation, less noise and more space. Concretely, this means investing in discipling young people, better compensating those who serve them, involving them in teams, taking risks with them, and cultivating three distinctive marks in our assemblies: creativity, owning Christian strangeness, and real community.