May 2024

Blog: Revival is an Exceptional Work of the Holy Spirit. Part 5 of the series “What is Revival?”. Final part.


October 2023

New page: Revival and the Bible. Links to sermons on revival

Blog: Revival Involves the Presence of God. Part 4 of the series “What is Revival?”

June 2023

What Does Pentecost Mean For You? A sermon from Pentecost Sunday with implications for church growth and revival.


December 2022

Blog: Revival is God’s way of advancing his Kingdom. Part 3 of the series on “What is Revival?”

Blog: British Religious Identity: Unpacking The 2021 Census. The 2021 census is analysed for religious identity. Christianity has fallen, and those with no religion have risen. What are the dynamics?

October 2022

Limited Enthusiasm Model with Activists. An additional class of church members who are active in church life but not in conversion.

Blog: Help! My Church is Heading for Extinction. Suggestions for churches fearful that their decline may end up with congregational or denominational extinction.

July 2022

Blog: Revival is a Work of God. Part 2 of the series – What is Revival?

May 2022

New Post: UK Church Decline and Progressive Ideology. Continued examination of membership statistics of UK denominations in connection with same-sex marriage.

New Post: Growth, Decline and Extinction of UK Churches. Examination of statistics of UK denominations 2000-2020.

Data fits for the Limited Enthusiasm Model with Reversion to the:

April 2022

Data fits for the Limited Enthusiasm Model with Reversion to the:

March 2022

Data fits for the Limited Enthusiasm Model with Reversion to the:

New page: Limited Enthusiasm Model with Reversion. A cut down version of the Demographics Model that assumes births and deaths are balanced.

January 2022

New Post: What is Revival? Introduction. Part 1 of a 5 part series on the nature of revival in the Christian church.


December 2021

Evangelistic Purity page added. A metaphorical model, illustrating limits to church growth.

Modelling secularisation with the Limited Enthusiasm model added.

November 2021

New page: Spiritual Life in Dynamic Modelling.

Reorganised Limited Enthusiasm model pages.

October 2021

New post: Church Growth Modelling – The State of the Art. A review of church growth modelling work from 1995 to the present, with a way forward for the future.

July 2021

Re-organised Limits to church growth models.


November 2020

Revised website uploaded. Mobile friendly.


April 2019


March 2018

February 2018


November 2017

September 2017

June 2017

May 2017

January 2017


November 2016

October 2016

September 2016

August 2016

July 2016

June 2016

  • Blog post: Conversion to the Diversity Ideology. Part 2 – Justification of Hypotheses. Examples are drawn from the public space of organisational and individual conversion to Diversity.
  • Blog post: The New Ideology: Part 1, Model Construction. An attempt to understand the competition in the public space between Christianity and the “Diversity Ideology”, which is the current manifestation of humanism including LGBTQ+ issues.

May 2016

  • Blog post: Where to Plant a Church. Uses three system dynamics models of church growth to help inform the best location to plant a church in the UK.

April 2016

  • Blog post: Rewriting History. What happens when a secular age, with an atheistic ideology, misunderstands past church growth.

March 2016

February 2016

January 2016


December 2015

November 2015

  • Added a section on Modelling to the web site. Including the model fidelity, theory and methodology as applied to the church growth models. Also added an initial selection of guides to SD software Stella and agent-based software NetLogo.
  • Blog post: Church Decline Caused by Lack of Conversions. Investigations using data from the Presbyterian Church of Wales to show how 20th-century church decline is caused by a fall in conversion rate.

October 2015

  • Blog post: Closing Rural Churches. A response to a proposal by Giles Fraser that the resources released from closing rural churches could fund centres to regrow the church in the future.
  • Blog post: Communicating the Gospel. How much does the gospel need to be understood to be communicated? Lessons from street preachers in Boston.
  • Anglican Church Decline in the West. A report based on the two blogs written in July and August.

September 2015

  • The Bounded Resource Model. A metaphorical model of church growth to illustrate the limits to growth imposed by the church generating resources to facilitate growth.

August 2015

July 2015

June 2015

  • Blog post: Limits to Church Growth – Part 2. Explores the limit to church growth brought about by lack of enthusiasts – their inability to keep reproducing themselves.

May 2015

April 2015

  • Revised website for Church Growth Modelling uploaded.
  • Blog post: Institutionalism and Church Decline. A system dynamics model to illustrate the article by Gillan Scott: Church of England Mistakes Mission for the Management of Decline. Archbishop Cranmer Blog, 23/04/15.
  • Blog post: The Nagaland revival of 1976-1982. An example of the Limited Enthusiasm principle.

January 2015


November 2014

September 2014

August 2014

January 2014


November 2013

  • George Carey and Church Decline. Analysis of the advice Lord George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, gave to churches. Highlighted due to its misreporting in the secular media as “Church on the brink of extinction”. November 2013 blog.

October 2013

September 2013

  • All six blogs on Welsh Outpouring as a PDF.
  • Update on Welsh Outpouring 2013. Update after 5 months of the Outpouring and Wales for Christ conference.
  • Liberal and Conservative Churches Part 1 Use of system dynamics to explore the impact of liberal theology on church decline based on quotes by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church and Russell D. Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Additional ideas from a medievalist blogger Magistra et Mater. September 2013 Blog.

July 2013

June 2013

  • Are We in Revival – Wales 2013? A view of the Cwmbran Outpouring set in the context of 50 years of Charismatic Renewal and the nature of revival. June 2013 Blog.
  • The construction of the Spiritual Life Model which extends the Limited Enthusiasm Model of Church Growth to include the soft variable Spiritual Life. Spiritual life is generated by the enthusiasts which in turn enhances their effectiveness in conversion. With results.
  • The Spread of Humanism. Evaluating the way the spread of Humanism could be measured and modelled within the UK, in the light of the Girl Guides dropping “God” from their promise, June 2013. Blog.
  • When the Presence of God Persists … A first look at the Effective Enthusiasts Model of church growth. In this model the spiritual life of the church influences the effectiveness of the enthusiasts in their activity to convert people. In turn, they influence the spiritual life of the church through prayer, seeking God’s presence and other spiritual activities. This post investigates what happens when the presence of God persists and comes out of experiences in the current outpouring of the Spirit in Cwmbran, Wales, June 2013. Blog.

May 2013

January 2013


December 2012

November 2012

August 2012

July 2012

April 2012

  • Description and results from the migration model: an extension of the limited enthusiasm model.

March 2012

  • Added new simulations, Church of England 1978-1998, New Churches 1990-2000, from Hayward 2005. The platform is now withdrawn.

Dec 2011

Sept 2011

June 2011

  • A description of the Membership model and its results added.
  • More results from the Discipleship Model; Principles, Experiments. The construction of the model is re-organised.
  • The slides from the June Church Growth Cafe are available. The Conversionist/Discipleship model has been renamed the Discipleship model and details of the meetings updated.

December 2010

  • The first set of results from the discipleship model has its own page.
  • A version of the Discipleship model in Stella 9.1 was made available to run online. The platform is now withdrawn (2020).

November 2010

October 2010

September 2010

August 2010

June 2010

May 2010

March 2010

  • Added a Blog post, “Church Planting “
  • Added a Blog post, “Mexican Wave”
  • Started an ongoing programme of updating references in order to provide support for church growth models. Short summaries are given on papers to indicate the nature of that support.

January 2010

  • Added a Blog post, “Revival with a Smile”, on the New Mystics, a charismatic group that appears to be in the early stages of rapid growth.

August 2009

  • Added a Blog post on Mathematics and History, and its connection with church growth.

June 2009

May 2009

April 2009

  • Home page updated to give brief details of all models currently being developed.

March 2009

Feb 2009


June 2008

  • Article on the Alpha Course updated to include recent figures and an apologetic on comments made about the connection between Large Group Awareness Training and Church Growth Modelling.

May 2008

  • References updated.

May 2006


Sept 2005

April 2005

  • Added references of other work using mathematics in church growth and social diffusion.

December 2004

  • Tipping the Church into Growth. Article explaining the principles and results of the church growth models using the concept of tipping points. Aimed at pastors and other Christians with an interest in church growth but little knowledge of mathematics.

September 2004

  • Overhead slides with notes for the talk: Church Growth via Enthusiasts, presented at OR46 “The Annual Conference of the Operational Research Society”, York, 7-9 Sept 2004.

August 2004

  • To show that Church growth modelling is not just an academic work but is set in the context of the need for revival two web pages of resources used for those who wish to pray for revival: The Revival We Need, Reasons to Pray for Revival.

July 2004

June 2004


November 2003

October 2003

May 2003

  • A new page giving a summary of results. The most important results of the other web pages and papers in a form that can be read ( and hopefully understood!) in ten minutes.

March 2003

January 2003

  • Page on long-term growth (under Details of results). Explains equilibrium, revival-growth threshold, recurring growth and some application to churches in the the UK.

October 2002

July 2002

  • This new site is an extended version of the original Church Growth Modelling site which had been hosted on my university website. The original site no longer exists. This new site will be more extensive than the academic one and provide information to help churches and Christians apply the results and to view the work in a spiritual and theological context.