From the article titled the same, found here.
- The geographical point at which an equal number of Christians lives to the north, south, east and west is now found in Timbuktu in the largely Muslim country of Mali.
- In theory, Europe's churches, including those in Russia, still have 531 million worshippers. Yet only about 10 per cent regularly attend services and in Britain, the figure falls to seven per cent. Moreover, Europe's Christians are ageing and their population is expected to shrink by 17 million over the next two decades.
- In Africa, by contrast, the Christian congregation has grown by more than 4,300 per cent since 1900, when it had fewer than 9 million worshippers. This rate of expansion is unparalleled since the early years of the Church.
What does this mean for the Western evangelical culture? I'm sure many things, but the first thing that comes to mind is that we had better be preparing the next generation of leaders in the movement of Jesus for a landscape of global Kingdom minded people that may look very different than our sterotype of a Christian. We also must, absolutely, engage the next generation in ways where they experience the global Church, not just church the way we think it needs to be done here in America.
For more info, check out the Center for the Study of Global Christianity and The Next Christendom.
No comments:
Post a Comment