UK Churches Spend Less Than 5 Percent on Evangelism, Canon J John Warns

Out of 1,000 evangelical churches, only 36 bothered to train anyone to share their faith in ten years.

That number landed like a thunderclap at the Church Resources Exhibition this week, where Canon J John — one of Britain's best-known evangelists — stood before church leaders and delivered a diagnosis nobody wanted to hear. British churches, he said, pour "over 95% of all of our time, energy, money, resources and manpower" into worship and the wellbeing of people who already believe. The slice left for actually telling anyone else? Less than five percent.

The numbers come from research by the Philo Trust, the evangelistic ministry J John founded, which surveyed 1,000 evangelical churches. Only 36 — barely three and a half percent — had provided any evangelism training at all in the previous decade. J John's challenge to the leaders in the room was blunt: make evangelism training a regular, annual part of church life, and "lead the church as if you were an evangelist." In a country where church attendance has finally started climbing again, his warning is that the Church could waste its moment.

The 95-5 Imbalance Nobody Talks About

J John's arithmetic is simple and devastating. Walk into almost any British church budget and you will find the money going to buildings, staff, Sunday services, pastoral care, youth work, and community programs — all of it directed at people already in the room. Nothing wrong with any of that. But the share devoted to equipping ordinary Christians to share the Gospel with friends, neighbors, and coworkers is vanishingly small.

"Research indicates that we spend over 95% of all of our time, energy, money, resources and manpower on worship and wellbeing. We spend less than 5% on witness," J John said. "Do you not agree there's a slight imbalance there?" The understatement was deliberate. A slight imbalance is a wobbly table. This, his research suggests, is a church that has forgotten its first job.

The Philo Trust findings back him up with uncomfortable precision. Evangelism training — the simple act of teaching believers how to talk about Jesus — happened in 36 out of 1,000 churches over a decade. That is not a decline. That is an absence. An entire generation of British Christains has grown up in churches that never once equipped them to share their faith.

Why It Stings: The Revival Is Already Starting

Here is what makes J John's timing so pointed. Britain's churches are experiencing something they have not seen in generations: real, measurable growth. Reports in recent years have shown church attendance rising for five straight years, Gen Z flocking to services, and hundreds being baptized in events like the North Sea baptisms. Young people are coming through the doors uninvited, curious, hungry.

And the Church's response, according to J John, is to spend its energy on the people already inside. It is like a hospital hiring more administrators while the emergency room overflows. The seekers are arriving. The Church is not ready for them — not because it lacks buildings or bands, but because it has stopped training its own people to do the one thing Jesus commanded.

This is the paradox of the British revival story. The growth is real, but it is fragile. If the new attenders never learn to share their faith, the growth stays shallow — a wave that crashes instead of a tide that rises. J John is warning that the Church has a once-in-a-generation opening and is at risk of filling it with committee meetings.

"Research indicates that we spend over 95% of all of our time, energy, money, resources and manpower on worship and wellbeing. We spend less than 5% on witness. Do you not agree there's a slight imbalance there?" — Canon J John, Church Resources Exhibition

What "Lead as If You Were an Evangelist" Means

J John's prescription is refreshingly concrete. He is not asking churches to hire evangelists or launch campaigns. He is asking every church leader to do two things: make evangelism training a regular, annual part of church life — not a one-off event, but a rhythm — and personally model the life of someone trying to reach the lost.

"Lead the church as if you were an evangelist" is a direct challenge to pastoral culture. Many church leaders are shepherds by gifting and temperament: they care for the flock, teach the Word, manage the programs. Evangelism feels like someone else's department. J John is saying there is no one else's department. If the leader does not evangelize, the congregation will not evangelize, and the church will slowly become a club for the convinced.

The Philo Trust exists precisely to fill this gap — providing evangelism training resources for churches that have never run one. But J John's deeper point is cultural: training is not a product you buy. It is a priority you keep.

The Numbers Behind the Warning

It is worth sitting with the 36-out-of-1,000 figure for a moment, because it explains so much about modern British church life. For every church that trained its people in evangelism over the last decade, roughly 27 did not. That means the average British Christian has a 96% chance of belonging to a church that never equipped them to share their faith — and then being told, from pulpits and podcasts, that Britain needs revival.

Revival without evangelism is a contradiction. The great awakenings of church history were not built on better worship experiences. They were built on ordinary people telling other ordinary people about Jesus — trained, equipped, and sent. J John's warning is that Britain is trying to have the awakening without the sending.

The good news hiding inside the bad numbers is how fixable this is. Moving from 3.6% to even 30% of churches training their people annually would transform the evangelistic capacity of the British Church within a few years. No new buildings required. No new staff. Just a decision, repeated every year, that reaching the lost matters more than entertaining the found.

Will the Church Listen?

J John has been saying versions of this for decades, and the British Church has mostly nodded politely and changed nothing. The difference this time is the data — hard numbers from 1,000 churches that make the imbalance impossible to dismiss — and the timing, with growth finally returning to British pews.

The question now sits with every church leader who heard the warning or reads this report. The resources are finite. The 95% will always feel more urgent — the leaky roof, the pastoral crisis, the Sunday service that has to happen this week. Evangelism will always feel like something for later. That is exactly the trap J John is naming.

Britain's churches stand at a fork in the road. One path leads to comfortable, well-resourced congregations that slowly shrink as the culture forgets them. The other leads to churches that train their people, send them out, and watch the revival everyone is talking about become something real. The choice costs less than five percent. Whether the Church makes it is the open question of the next decade — and J John, for one, is not done asking.

Read about Britain's church growth in "Full-Fat Faith": UK Church Leaders Gather as Gen Z Fuels Five Years of Church Growth and UK Church Attendance Rises for Fifth Straight Year as Bishops Gather. For Christians facing pressure to stay silent, see UK Church Fights Street Preaching Ban as 27,000 Sign Petition.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.