Podcast Summary:

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast – CNLP 774
Episode Title: "You're Not Ready for Revival: Dom Ruso on a New Kind of Secularism and Reaching UnReachable People"
Date: December 18, 2025
Host: Carey Nieuwhof (Art of Leadership Network)
Guest: Dom Ruso (Lead Pastor, Church Planter, Author, Theologian)

Overview

This episode dives deep into the challenges of Christian leadership, evangelism, and church growth in one of North America's hardest spiritual contexts: post-Christian, highly secularized Quebec, Canada. Carey Nieuwhof interviews Dom Ruso, who shares candidly from his experience planting a church in Montreal, discussing why established models fail in secular cultures, what a "new kind of secularism" looks like, and how the church must seriously rethink preparation for revival, leadership development, and the intellectual vibrancy of Christian witness. Together, they tackle the obstacles to genuine evangelism, the limitations of transfer growth, and the urgent need for robust theological education and cultural fluency.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Uniqueness of Quebec's Secularism

• The landscape: Most churches are now museums or repurposed buildings; Christian faith has become a faint cultural memory (02:25).
• Religious identity vs. practice: Many call themselves Christian but lack church attendance, biblical worldview, or spiritual formation (05:14).
  • Quote (Dom, 04:29): “They don’t have a category [for church planting]. They’re not even against it. They just don’t know what it is.”
• Secularism is not anti-spirituality but often a blending of religious and non-religious ideas—a ‘haunting’ of spiritual curiosity rather than outright opposition (06:14).

2. The Rise of Spiritual Curiosity

• Barna and Dom both note a rise in "spiritually curious" people, especially those with no church background.
• Quebec's younger generations no longer inherit deep anti-Catholic or anti-religious sentiment—they're curious, open, but without categories for traditional church expressions (09:58).
  • Quote (Dom, 10:00): “We've kind of gone through the anti-religious 'I hate you' stage—now we're in the second or third generation of people who grew up without church, and they're open, they're curious.”

3. Failure of Old Evangelistic Models

• Old methods often don’t translate; “Quebec is the place where all of your evangelistic ideas come to die.” (03:20)
• Evangelism isn’t met with hostility—it’s often just regarded as irrelevant or incomprehensible.

4. Obstacles to Church Growth and the "Mega-church Barrier"

• In Quebec, even mid-sized churches are seen as "too institutional" or suspect (16:23).
• Growth triggers anxiety about institutions and control; suspicion and anti-institutionalism run deep (17:09).

5. The Limits (and Dangers) of Transfer Growth

• Most initial church growth is transfer from other Christians, which brings embedded expectations and can disrupt church DNA (25:20).
  • Quote (Dom, 25:21): “All those people who come from within the church have expectations they're not willing to change, and they're going to impose those on your church.”
• Real conversion growth takes more time, investment, and relational trust.

6. Leadership, Preaching, and Discipleship Shifts

• In early church plants, every person is known; in larger settings, layers of trust and access change (12:26).
• Preaching must move from pop-evangelism to deepening discipleship; relationship is critical.
• Canadian and Quebecois culture is wary of large personalities and celebrity pastors; trust must be earned and guarded (24:01).

7. Robust Theological Education is Crucial

• Churches are unprepared for revival because there aren’t enough trained leaders; current theological education often doesn’t fit practical leadership needs, and many churches are led by gifted but theologically untrained people (28:46–37:31).
  • Quote (Dom, 29:00): “Secular is going to be the most robust critique of the Christian story we've ever seen. … Unless we have a better way of articulating the Christian story that is rooted in a theological story, we will not have answers for people in a secular culture.”
• Urgency culture (end-times focus, rapid growth) has left little room for deep training.
• The intellectual reputation of Christianity is at risk—believers must reclaim the importance of loving God with their minds as well as hearts (30:13).

8. Church and Technology: Online, But Embodied

• Technology offers opportunities and risks. While online access is essential, real spiritual life must be rooted in embodied communities (43:23–48:56).
  • Quote (Dom, 43:24): “If you can pause a sermon at any point, you're not listening to the Bible the way it's meant to be heard.”
• The sacraments (communion, baptism) and practices of gathering can't be fully replicated online.

9. Evangelism in a World That Isn’t Asking Religious Questions

• Leaders must learn to build relationships and serve communities on others’ terms, not assume spiritual interest or church attendance (49:41).
  • Quote (Dom, 50:08): “[Jesus said] I'm sending you. You're going to have to go. … There’s going to be seasons where they’re actually never going to come this way.”
• Presence as witness: Participating in community events (not running their own) builds credibility and opens doors for connection (54:49).
• Conversion growth happens through honest hospitality, making space for doubts, and gentle invitations to participate in community life—even before full belief (55:33–57:47).

10. Rethinking “Secularism,” Leadership Crisis, and Readiness for Revival

• The old assumption of an atheist-dominated secularism isn’t holding; instead, it’s a culture open to spiritual language but disconnected from Christian practices or meaning (58:21).
  • Quote (Dom, 58:49): “While we were expecting atheism, what we really got is Gnosticism.”
• The church is not ready for large-scale revival—not enough leaders, insufficient discipleship systems, and not enough intellectual preparation (61:29).
  • Quote (Dom, 61:29): “If God did a revival and brought us a thousand new people in our church, we'd be dead. ... There’s no way we’d be ready.”
• Preparing for revival means investing as much energy into leader development, discipleship, and church systems as into praying for growth (61:44).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On spiritual curiosity in secular culture:
  “It's not even anti-expressions of spirituality; but it is a morphing of stories of faith and religion into something else that moves us further and further away from what the Bible says Christianity is.” (Dom, 06:14)

• On the awkwardness of growth in a suspicious culture:
  “The minute something gets big or bigger, there's this invisible trigger that happens ... it becomes institutional and controlling.” (Dom, 16:23)

• On the need for theological education:
  “We have to get so serious about the fact that we can't just let anyone practice leadership or unrooted theology on God's people.” (Dom, 34:43)

• On evangelism in post-Christian settings:
  “Nobody's coming to you. Good lesson. I'm sending you. You're going to have to go. ... There's going to be seasons where they're actually never going to come this way.” (Dom, 50:06–50:08)

• On what really happens when the church isn’t ready for revival:
  “If God did a revival and brought us a thousand new people in our church, we'd be dead. ... There's no way we'd be ready. So anybody who's praying for revival should be just as aggressively preparing new leaders for the future.” (Dom, 61:29–61:45)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:14 – Introduction to Dom Ruso & Montreal’s secular context
• 02:25 – Church planting and “hard soil” in Quebec
• 06:14 – Spiritual curiosity & new secularism
• 12:26 – Differences in church growth: Ontario vs. Quebec
• 16:23 – Anti-institutionalism and suspicion of growth
• 25:20 – The dangers and challenges of transfer growth
• 28:46 – Why robust theological education is more urgent than ever
• 43:23 – Technology and the embodiment of faith
• 49:41 – Evangelism when few ask spiritual questions
• 54:49 – Community presence as evangelism, not just events
• 58:21 – Misdiagnosing secularism: It’s not atheism, it’s Gnosticism
• 61:29 – The leadership crisis: Why churches aren’t ready for revival
• 62:23 – Leadership development as the critical next step

Takeaways for Church Leaders

• Prepare for revival: Pray AND build systems, develop leaders, and deepen theological roots.
• Intellectual rigor matters: Be ready for robust dialogue with secular culture, and foster “love God with your mind.”
• Embrace spiritual curiosity: Many aren’t hostile—just disconnected from traditional categories.
• Get out of the building: Evangelism now requires presence, credibility, partnership with the community.
• Be hospitable to doubts: Let people belong before they believe; safe exploration leads to genuine conversion.
• Model real discipleship: Transfer growth is easy but hollow—don’t chase vanity metrics.
• Technology is a tool, not a substitute: Real faith needs real embodied community.
• Reject easy answers and root out celebrity culture: Value depth, authenticity, and servanthood in leadership.

Further Resources

• Dom Ruso’s book: The Bible in a Shifting Secular Age
• Find Dom: DomRusso.com, the180.ca, Instagram, Facebook

This episode is essential listening for anyone confronting the hard realities of ministry in post-Christian spaces and looking for hope, wisdom, and a way forward rooted in both theological depth and practical leadership.