This past weekend we walked around the globe together as Jeff Peterson shared story after story with us about God's work in India, Mongolia, Africa, and various other places. Who would have thought that we would enter a period in time when Communist China could teach us Americans a thing or two about planting churches - no, about unleashing church planting movements. Here's a snapshot from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
"And according to China Aid Association, a Texas-based lobby group, the director of the government body that supervises all religions in China, said privately that the figure was indeed as much as 130 million in early 2008. If so, it would mean China contains more Christians than Communists (party membership is 74 million) and there may be more active Christians in China than in any other country."
Meanwhile, Christianity in Europe and most of the West is on the decline. One incredible development is that countries like South Korea have begun sending missionaries to the U.S. The fact is, while the face of Christianity may have been Europe or the United States at one point in time - this is clearly no longer the case. In fact, Mark Noll, in his book The New Shape of Global Christianity, makes this statement:
"But today - when active Christian adherence has become stronger in Africa than in Europe, when the number of practicing Christians in China may be approaching the number in the United States, when live bodies in church are far more numerous in Kenya than in Canada, when more believers worship together in church Sunday by Sunday in Nagaland than in Norway, when India is now home to the world's largest chapter of the Roman Catholic Jesuit order, and when Catholic mass is being said in more languages each Sunday in the United States than ever before in American history - with such realities defining the present situation, there is a pressing need for new historical perspectives that explore the new world situation."
The Church is not in Kansas anymore - is it? If you need any real life evidence, just jump in your car and drive to Lexington, Nebraska where the population is quickly shifting to the point that Latino immigrants are becoming a majority. The world is undergoing swift change and God is on the move in the Third World where resources are few but commitment and passion are found in abundance.
To some, these realities might be considered frightening, but if that is our response we are missing the point. For instance, these statements stand as the astounding fulfillment of Jesus' words to his disciples (who, no doubt, would be amazed by what has unfolded in the millennia since their death) in Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
The Gospel has spread to England, Canada, and the United States...and Nagaland, Kenya, Mongolia, China, and on and on we go.
Maybe you're like me, when you hit books like Leviticus and 1-2 Chronicles you get a little bogged down in the laws and in the genealogies - your eyes glaze over and you skip ahead to the next chapter. Maybe you're like me and a similar feeling sets in when stories of the Gospel's movement are told. The only person who suffers from this type of shallow thinking is myself - I miss on the opportunity to realize that these aren't just lists of names in Chronicles, they are statements of the reality that God loves people. In the same way, stories of the Gospel reaching the U.S. should remind me of the astounding power of the Gospel.
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