Two days in May

After two unforgettable days at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Major Tara McGuigan received a powerful glimpse of renewal stirring across the global Church 

Imagine an auditorium of 5,000 passionate Jesus followers, from every corner of the world, from every denomination imaginable, gathered in worship, raising their voices with one single anthem: 

Praise the Father, praise the Son 

Praise the Spirit, three in one 

God of glory, Majesty 

Praise forever to the King of Kings! 

(King of Kings, Hillsong Worship) 

Complete unity of spirit, heart and soul.  

This was my experience over two days in May when I found myself in the Royal Albert Hall, London, UK attending the Leadership Conference 2025, organised by the now global Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) churches conglomerate.  

HTB is the home of Alpha, an 11-week programme that explores faith in Jesus. Alpha began in 1977 at HTB as an in-house discipleship course focused on new believers. It was repositioned in 1990 as a faith discovery course for non-churchgoers and is now engaging people in countries as disparate as China and Saudi Arabia. 

Millions have been impacted throughout Europe, North America, the Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America. Alpha has found itself crossing denominational and generational boundaries with the uptake being strong across Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal churches. It is now surging among youth with the Youth Alpha programme being taught by school students in their schools. 

What was the most profoundly exciting news to me was that the fastest growing age-group of Christians in the world is now Gen Z (those born between 1997-2012) and Gen Alpha (those born between 2010-2024). If anyone tells you the church is dying, youth are leaving in droves, there is no place for Christ in their world anymore, please tell them this is no longer true. This move of God is now known as ‘The Quiet Revival’, also the title of an extensive report published by The Bible Society. 

Evidence shared at the conference shows that Christianity is growing in waves that are rising higher and higher with greater frequency than we have seen in decades. What is equally exciting is that denominational silos are crumbling and young people are finding freedom and salvation in Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit and sharing their experiences with friends and family irrespective of which church they may worship in.  

One 17-year-old guy who spoke at the conference (note that some of the fastest growth is among young men! Fantastic news!) ran Alpha in his school with 100-plus students between the ages of 15 and 18 participating. He shared how as the course progressed people were finding new life in Jesus and needed to be connected with local churches. His biggest challenge was identifying churches close to these youth that would embrace them and continue to disciple them. He said local churches have suddenly found their youth numbers growing rapidly and this has been so exciting and encouraging for church leaders and their congregations.  

For me, personally, there were many moments when I cried holy tears as the Holy Spirit moved throughout the beautiful hall, touching and transforming lives over and over again. The music and worship itself transcended time and space, with young musicians so in tune with the heart of God, sharing their gift of music uninhibitedly and sensitively. I loved that they didn’t simply rush from one song to the next but allowed space and silence for the Holy Spirit to move unhurried and unrestricted. We were taken deep into the heart of God and allowed to linger in that place. 

There were interviews and talks by a range of carefully chosen speakers who were outstanding first for their personal experience of life and faith and then their Spirit-gifted eloquence. These talks and testimonies cut through to the 5,000 in so many different ways with God reaching for God’s people wherever the openings appeared. 

Breakthrough 

My most profound moments at the conference were probably when Pastor Andrés Spyker, Senior Pastor (along with his wife Kellie) of Másvida Church in Mexico City, talked about insecurities affecting leadership quality. ‘There is a difference between having insecurities and being an insecure leader!’, he said, but both need to be addressed. 

Unresolved insecurities can lead to insecure leadership, and he named insecurities of origin, insecurities of position and insecurities of success as making leaders and churches particularly vulnerable to forces that work against them rather than for them. 

Pastor Andrés used the example of David who needed healing from the wounds of origin. David’s father singled him out to spend his time caring for the family’s sheep. He was the youngest and was mostly ignored as a son by his father. David learnt how to heal himself of his insecurities of origin only when he learnt who his heavenly Father was and, therefore, whose he really was.  

Insecurities of position can weaken Christian leaders when things like title, rank and hierarchy become disproportionately important. When such trappings are removed, unholy aspiration that blurs the truth of who we are at the core is exposed – as we stand in all our nakedness before Jesus. ‘Insecurities of position lead to self-promotion over God-promotion, with our ministries becoming about me, me, me,’ he said!  

Thirdly, leaders can become over-focused on the boast of larger numbers in church, or positions they might aspire to in denominational contexts or even the boast of acquired buildings and wealth as a sign of success. These insecurities distract us from the reality, the truth, of what God has called us to in the here and now. They cloud the clear Christ-centred decisions we need to make and articulate.  

God’s anointing was always on David and God loved that even though David sometimes strayed from the path with insecure actions and sins, he would revert to who he really was in the eyes of Yahweh and get back to the basics of himself as a son of God. David practised repentance, sought forgiveness and continued to run the race God had called him to with new-found levels of freedom and deeper clarity of who he was in God and who God was in him. 

At Leadership Conference 2025, I found myself seeing and stripping away those layers of insecurity on all three fronts. I found these areas merged one into the other as much as they stood alongside each other. I felt a deep sense of relief and freedom rising within me as I was able to let go of weights I had been carrying connected with my own insecurities, of origin and position, particularly, that had hindered me for as long as I can remember. The relief has been immeasurable.  

What is deeply rewarding for me is that I take delight now identifying when these insecurities show up in my thoughts and reactions and being able to flick them away with a smile at myself and the warm reassurance that I am his and he is mine. 

In the zone 

I have come to realise since those two days in May how critical it is for Christians to be in the zone of what God is doing in the world, in the cut and thrust, in the flow of the Holy Spirit, the ecclesiastical ‘zeitgeist’.  

Right now, in these mid-2020s years, God’s Holy Spirit is moving powerfully throughout the world drawing people close to his heart of love and healing and freedom. An awakening is upon us, beckoning our entry into its refreshing, empowering waters, if only we can become cognisant of our place in it, if we haven’t already.  

All of us, whether we consider ourselves leaders or not, can come alive as active participants in something truly glorious for our times. For some it may take a deep dive of faith. For others, it will be a conscious next step to be ‘all in’.