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Enjoying God Blog

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In a recent blog article at the Gospel Coalition website, Justin Taylor drew attention to some shocking statistics cited by Mark Noll in his book, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (IVP Academic, 2009). I thought you would find this fascinating, as I do. Here is what Justin wrote.

It is as if the globe had been turned upside down and sideways.

A few short decades ago, Christian believers were concentrated in the global north and west, but now a rapidly swelling majority lives in the global south and east.

As [a Christian] Rip Van Winkle wiped a half-century of sleep from his eyes [after awaking this past week] and tried to locate his fellow Christian believers, he would find them in surprising places, expressing their faith in surprising ways, under surprising conditions, with surprising relationships to culture and politics, and raising surprising theological questions that would not have seemed possible when he fell asleep.

Noll observes:

The Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last fifty years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history. . . .

More than half of all Christian adherents in the whole history of the church have been alive in the last one hundred years.

Close to half of Christian believers who have ever lived are alive right now.

Noll gives us a snapshot of this past Sunday around the globe to put flesh and blood on these generalizations.

• This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called “Christian Europe.” Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China; only in 1971 did the communist regime allow for one Protestant and one Roman Catholic Church to hold public worship services, and this was mostly a concession to visiting Europeans and African students from Tanzania and Zambia.

• This past Sunday more Anglicans attended church in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Canada and Episcopalians in the United States combined—and the number of Anglicans in church in Nigeria was several times the number in those other African countries.

• This past Sunday more Presbyterians were at church in Ghana than in Scotland, and more were in congregations of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa than in the United States.

• This past Sunday the churches with the largest attendance in England and France had mostly black congregations. About half of the churchgoers in London were African or African-Caribbean. Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.

• This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia.

The simple fact is that we in the west no longer live in the center of Christian community. The world is changing, and it is essential that we adjust our understanding and our missional agendas appropriately.

1 Comment

Hi Sam I hope you get this. I hope you will email me. I just finished reading your article 10 things you should know about prophetic worship November 12th 2018. I thought you might enjoy my new YouTube video. It is my first one but I plan to do more. My channel is relaxed mommy Channel it is the singing video I think you will be interested to see. Since you seem informed on the subject this is the Old Testament Style gift of Prophecy at work through the Holy Spirit. I'm not anyone really. Just a homeschool mom in Suburbia but God and his amazing Love and grace and habit of pouring out his spirit on the most modest of people has chosen to pour it out on me and I couldn't be more joyful and thankful and humbled. God has told me I am going to be speaking for him in the same way John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus 1st coming. That's a message applies today repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near Jesus is coming soon! I do hope you email and maybe we could Skype and I can show you what God is doing. My phone number might also be my website I don't remember just now.

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