Category: md-2-2

[Reading: James 1:22-27]

Be doers of the word,

Not hearers only

who deceive themselves.

For if any are hearers of the word

and not doers,

they are like those

who glance at themselves in a mirror;

walk away,

and immediately forget

what they look like.

But those who gaze into the perfect law,

the law of liberty,

and persevere,

Become not hearers who forget

but doers who act—

they will be blessed in the doing.

If anyone thinks he or she religious,

and does not bridle the tongue

that heart is deceived

that religion is worthless.

Religion ~

pure and undefiled

before God, the Father,

is this:

to care for orphans in their troubles

to take the side of widows’ in their distress

thus keeping yourself

unstained from the world.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … …

How ironic ~

to have someone like me ~

a rhetorician ~

assigned a text like this.

A rhetorician ~

who specializes in words ~

handling a pericope that claims:

• “Words are not enough”
• That “Genuine faith is . . .

. . . faith that works”

How ironic to have someone like me ~

a Church of Christ preacher ~

assigned a text like this.

A Church of Christ preacher

who cut his teeth on

• 2 Sunday sermons (AM and PM)
• Sunday School
• and mid-week classes,
• not to mention seasonal duties

with Ladies Bible Class

• and if things go well ~

“here’s another

Sunday AM sermon to deliver.”

• Which is to say ~

• I spent all my time

• talking
• or preparing to talk.

James seems to have little taste

for all that talking.

How ironic

~ for one not endowed with the “gift of gab”

~ Bothered by the odors

of hospitals and nursing homes

~ and taught from his youth up

• that city streets ~
• with their taverns and clubs ~
• were temptations to be avoided

How ironic to hand this text

to someone like me.

And, how ironic for a group like us

to be considering a text like this:

We who were part of the 1980s television studio audience

on the gospel program:

“Discovering Grace”

when Paul and James

were the last two left on the island ~

and we voted James and his “faith + works”

off the island

• for his bad theology
• and vowed never again

to preach from that book ~

• a vow every grace – oriented

Church of Christ preacher has kept.

There’s great irony

for us today

to take up this pericope.

Though I must say ~

I am not opposed to this text.

Quite the opposite ~

As a rhetorician ~ I am attracted

to this passage’s particular form ~

its arrangement ~

its dispositio

its mini chiasm ~

its useful inclusio ~

what undergrads like to call

a “sandwich.”

I’m referring, of course,

to this passage’s

A B A′ pattern:

A: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only”

B: Metaphor of mirror and forgetting

A′: “Be not hearers who forget

but doers who act”

“Doers and not hearers only” (A and A′)

are the bread in this sandwich,

the inclusio’s frame

And the mirror metaphor

in the middle

is the mesquite smoked BBQ meat

Compress the sandwich ~

and out oozes true religion:

Assisting orphans and widows

in their distress ~

thus keeping oneself

unstained from the world.

Much like the sandwich

near the end of Mark’s gospel ~

where the cursed and withering fig tree

are the framing pumpernickel

in that sandwich

while the temple’s overturned

money changers’ tables ~

the corned beef in the middle.

Compress that sandwich

and out oozes true religion for Jesus

~ prayer, faith, and forgiveness.

Rhetoricians ~

find this intriguing ~

attracted to the pericope’s form . . .

because . . . this form

so effortlessly

with such ease,

carries it’s content

and emphasizes its meaning.

You can’t miss it.

How could anybody miss it?

And the powerful little metaphor ~

~ the mirror ~

~ what’s not to like?

It stirs every homiletic mind

although James’ mirror ~

is not the Carnival mirror

that distorts:

fattens,

shortens,

or elongates,

anything to provide relief from reality.

Nor will you find James’ mirror

at Rochester Hills Mirror and Glass,

which features designs

to make the room look deeper,

or accent the finest furnishings,

or allow you to keep

an eye on the children

from any room in the home.

The mirror in James has a different purpose ~

This polished bronze

is used for personal inspection

and adornment ~

grooming,

dressing,

applying,

adjusting,

and checking ~

You glance ~

it’s momentary and fleeting.

You glance ~

it’s casual and hasty.

You glance ~

and you walk away

already forgetting what you saw ~

forgetting who you are.

James’ mirror is a useful mirror ~

meant for adjusting and applying

helpful and necessary ~

but with one fundamental problem ~

The problem of the metaphor . . .

is with us ~

we, who “catch a glimpse”

and then forget our essential identity.

Objective rhetoricians approve of this

stout,

powerful,

hard working metaphor ~

the mirror.

How it teaches,

how it instructs.

But for those of us who have

a subjective connection

to the world James envisions

A lingering worry begins to throb ~

what have we forgotten?

Some rhetoricians

(should I say, the sophists among us)

Immediately want to distract us . . . .

find another appealing element

in the metaphor ~

its potential for humor.

You look in the mirror

immediately forget what you see

Oh! Forgetting has lots

of funny possibilities.

Especially if you have a

comfortable,

middle aged

well-healed audience:

this passage has comic potential.

Captured in Billy Collins’ poem “Forgetfulness”1

which begins:

“The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title,

the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion,

the entire novel

which suddenly

becomes one you have never read,

never even heard of,

as if,

one by one,

the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire

to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village

where there are no phones. . .

with those who have forgotten how to swim,

even forgotten how to ride a bicycle.”

Which is enough to cause James

to step out of the pages

and look the sophist in the eye and say ~

“Stop dancing with this verse

Don’t use this text

as part of your stand up routine.”

James says to all of us,

“‘Forgetting’ isn’t a humorous topic.

Your light heartedness

only prevents you

from taking me seriously.

“There was nothing funny

When I asked, ‘who are you?’

and you replied,

‘I forget.’

That’s not funny!”

James is right.

Forgetting is a chronic problem in the Bible

and addressed with stern warnings

Especially troublesome

when we forget

the paradigmatic message of Scripture.

“Don’t forget that when

we were slaves to Pharaoh,

the Lord brought us out from Egypt

with a mighty hand”

“Beware, lest you forget,

and when you have eaten and are satisfied,

and move into the best neighborhoods

and build large cathedrals

and assemble attractive people

that you think,

“by Our power

and by the strength of Our hands

We have made this wealth”

Biblical forgetting

Is not the funny kind of forgetting

about which

wealthy 50-somethings

elbow one another.

So, James leads us back to the mirror

And says,

“Quit talking about how I said it,

Take a good hard look at what I said”

So we lean over and look in . . . .

Now not glancing but gazing.

The mirror

that once reflected

our ears and brows and nose ~

This mirror has changed

and now it’s become the perfect law ~

the law of liberty.

And James says, “Take a good hard look”

and we peer into the law

and the prophets

and the writings ~

James says, “Do you see your crop of Barley?”

(we nod)

“When you reap your harvest and leave a sheath

Don’t go back and get it ~

It shall be for the alien, orphan and widow.”

(We scrutinize and examine this picture)

James says, “Look at your orchard”

(we look at our olive grove)

“when you beat your olive tree

don’t go over the boughs again

It shall be for the alien, orphan and widow”

(We inspect this image)

James says, “Consider your vineyards”

(we look)

“when you gather your grapes

don’t harvest a second time

It shall be for the alien, orphan and widow”

(We contemplate, deliberate and remember)

“We were once slaves in the land of Egypt”

We mull this over. We meditate.

We say,

“This is how God treated us

this should be how

we treat the poor

and the marginalized.”

We think about it,

think it over,

think it through.

We say,

“This is our single defining characteristic ~

to be like God

who cares for

the endemically impoverished”

James says,

“You’re right!

Now, weigh it

rehearse it

start to train in it

“Until you’ve learned it by heart,

transformed in the process,

remembering and becoming, again,

Who you are:

Caring for the marginalized in their distress,

thus keeping yourselves

unstained by the world.”

This is what we’d forgotten.

And, I don’t know why.

Was it our affluence?

What created our amnesia?

With Peter Wagner, we had dreamed a church

• Where Nicodemas ~ of John 3 vintage ~

is the lead elder

• and Pilate uses his influence

to support important church projects,

• where we believe

there is a way to “win Herod” for Christ.

In this church of our dreams

• we are on a first name basis with

the Governor

• we’re asked to give the invocation

at the century club

• And we believe Billy Graham

Is having a good influence

on Richard Nixon.

But James de-constructs

this dangerous make-believe world.

James rebukes

those who favor the rich over the poor

“into your assembly struts a man

with gold rings and fine clothing

at the same time in shuffles a poor man

in shabby dress” ~

and you say to the rich man:

“have the seat of honor”

and to the poor man,

“make yourself scarce”?

James says,

“that’s not how God judges!”

[2:1-7]

James insists on helping the needy

“don’t say to the marginalized ~

Persons without clothing and food ~

‘go in peace, be warm and filled.’ ~

do something!”

[2:14-16]

Then James takes the microphone

and addresses Nicodemas and Pilate

and looks us in the eye,

taking his cue from Jesus, he says

• “your riches will rot,
• your garments will be eaten by moths,
• your gold and silver will rust!”

He asks:

“Are you paying a living wage

• to the ones who launder your clothes
• who mow your lawns?

God listens to them!

God hears their cries for justice!”

[5:1-6]

When we voted James

off the island

We were voting

Jesus off, too.

Five years ago

The Sermon on the Mount

was the theme for the 2006

Sermon Seminar2

held in this building

with plenary addresses

from the provocative

Stanley Hauerwas, Warren Carter and others.

It was a disturbing conference

because of the way we read the Sermon on the Mount

envisioned a real world

that invited us to enter ~

and live

and we were threatened.

At the close one preacher confessed,

“I need to throw away all the sermons

I’ve ever preached on the Sermon on the Mount” ~

so unsettling was our new understanding.

But the strongest comment

came during the evaluation meeting

weeks later.

Larry Stephens

one of a dozen who met

to critique logistics of the event ~

opened that meeting

with this engaging question:

“Friends, what are we to do

with the Sermon on the Mount?

Seriously.

What are we to do?

I mean, are we supposed to sell

our church buildings

and give the proceeds to the poor?”

which triggered one person

amongst the 12

to make a sound ~

interpreting Larry’s remark

as a joke.

But Larry struck again,

“I’m serious.

How does God want us to live?”

Five years ago we took Larry seriously ~

but pushed his question

into the theoretical realm.

Five years later ~

his question is only

the first in a series of sound alternatives

~ and live options

for a people

who are ready

to take seriously

the paradigmatic

narratives of Scripture

and proclaim ~

that true religion is simply this ~

care as God cares for the marginalized.

Why?

Because this is how we’ve been treated.

Because this is how God acts.

This is who we are.

But, the greatest irony of our day ~

is that everyone ~

except, it seems,

for some Christian conservatives ~

Everyone seems to know

that true religion

means to help those on the margins

• It’s the singular message of so much popular non fiction for example the New York Times decade long bestselling Nickel and Dimed
• It’s the sub plot of so much popular film, for example the gripping drama currently airing on Masterpiece Theatre
• It’s even in the caustic message of the atheist blogger in last month’s Holy week missive and a million other persons

and organizations that “know” ~

if not the exact words ~

at least the spirit

of Jesus’ damning message to the hypocrites:

• “You tithe mint, dill, and cumin,
• but neglect the weightier matters of the law . . . .
• justice, mercy, and faithfulness.”

All the world seems to know

that the essential factor

in God’s judgment of humankind

will be our answer to 1 question:

did you clothe the naked,

feed the hungry,

visit the imprisoned . . .

in a word . . .

did you care for the

marginalized?

You are your congregation’s rhetorician

You are the one with persuasive skills.

You have words, like James,

with focus and function

to describe our essential humanity

our basic identity

Or, as James phrases it: “their true religion”

You are your community’s resident theologian

Connecting identity with opportunity

To lead your people

into the world Scripture envisions

where true religion is simply this ~

Not just to say,

Not just to know,

But to care as God cares

for the marginalized.

Because this is who you are,

ready for any situation that arises:

“The courtroom walls are bare and the prisoner wears

a plastic bracelet, like in a hospital.

Jesus stands beside him.

The bailiff hands the prisoner a clipboard and he puts his thumbprint on the sheet of white paper.

The judge asks,

What is your monthly income? Hundred dollars.

How do you support yourself? Carpenter, odd jobs.

Where are you living? Friend’s garage.

What sort of vehicle do you drive? I take the bus.

How do you plead? Not guilty. The judge sets bail

and a date for the prisoner’s trial, calls for the interpreter

so he may speak to the next prisoners.

In a good month I eat, the third one tells him.

In a bad month I break the law.

The judge sighs. The prisoners

are led back to jail with a clink of chains.

Jesus goes with them. More prisoners

are brought before the judge.

Jesus returns and leans against the wall near us,

gazing around the courtroom. The interpreter reads a book.

The bailiff, weighed down by his gun, stands

with arms folded, alert and watchful.

We are only spectators, careful to speak

in low voices. We are so many. If we—make a sound,

the bailiff turns toward us, looking stern.

The judge sets bail and dates for other trials,

bringing his gavel down like a little axe.

Jesus turns to us. If you won’t help them, he says

then do this for me. Dress in silks and jewels,

and then go naked. Be stoic, and then be prodigal.

Lead exemplary lives, then go down into prison

and be bound in chains. Which of us has never broken a law?

I died for you-a desperate extravagance, even for me.

If you can’t be merciful, at least be bold.

The judge gets up to leave.

The stern bailiff cries, “All rise.”3

How will we respond?

Will we have the courage

to speak like James:

to act like God?

Is there hope?

Absolutely!

For . . .

“Every good thing bestowed

and every perfect gift is from above,

Coming down from the father of lights

With whom there is no variation

and no shifting shadow.”

[Benediction: James 1:17]4

David Fleer is Professor of Bible and Communication and Special Assistant to the President at Lipscomb University and adjunct Professor for the DMin program at Abilene Christian University (annual summer cycle courses). For the last six years he has served as advisory board chair for the Christian Scholars’ Conference. His teaching focus is homiletics, and for twelve years he directed the Sermon Seminar in Rochester and Nashville and now oversees Lipscomb’s Preaching Workshop. From 1995 to 2007, Fleer was Professor of Religion and Communication at Rochester College. He has published articles in peer reviewed scholarly and popular journals and initiated extensive collaborative editing projects resulting in fifteen books and four journal issues in the last decade. He has been active on the editorial boards of Leaven (since its inception in 1990) and Restoration Quarterly. Most recently, he edited and contributed to Corageous Compassion: A Prophetic Homiletic in Service to the Church (ACU Press, 2011).

The Missional Manifesto1 is a statement from one group of Christian leaders describing themselves with the term missional. I have read works by several of the authors, for whom I have great respect. They are each thought-leaders in their own spheres of influence. The Manifesto comes as welcome clarification of what this significant group of leaders means when it uses the term missional.

The term missional can be confusing because of its similarity to the terms missions and missionary. There is much overlap and shared theology and history with overseas missions. Both, for example, see Christians as entering a non-Christian culture to spread the Word of God. But overseas missions is not the focus of the Missional Manifesto.

Those aligning with the Missional Manifesto do see themselves entering a non-Christian environment, but that environment is North America as much as any place else. Whereas overseas missionaries are sent abroad, the Missional Manifesto says Christians are sent on a mission from God wherever that leads, whether in one’s home country or abroad as a missionary.

The key phrase in the Manifesto, but not original to it, is this:

Although it is frequently stated “God’s church has a mission,” according to missional theology, a more accurate expression is “God’s mission has a church.”

By inverting the relationship between God’s mission and God’s church, mission is larger than the church. God’s mission includes his work in the world outside the church, such as nature itself. The church is a tool for achieving God’s mission.

For those from the heritage of the Restoration Movement, such an inversion is both startling and welcome.

We may find the Manifesto startling because Restoration Movement thinkers, ministers, and members have often equated the kingdom of God with God’s church. If one is in the kingdom, one is in the church; and vice versa. The church for us—and the restoration of church worship and organization to what is seen in the primitive church of the First Century—was the climax of the story. Our goal was to restore the church.

Now the Missional Manifesto challenges us to think that God’s purposes are larger than the church. Which, if true, means our vision has been narrower than we thought. We thought our focus on matters of ecclesiology were all encompassing. The Missional Manifesto suggests our focus was important but not ultimate.

But even with its challenges the Missional Manifesto can still be refreshing to those of Restoration Movement heritage. It roots its theology in God and his work in Christ. It is a clarion call to seek the truth in the Bible, not in our experience alone. These have been flagship doctrines of Restoration churches, and the Manifesto affirms them clearly.

The Manifesto also affirms what we have typically called evangelism, a notion that has always played a vital role in our self-understanding. The missional view of evangelism is broader than mere baptizing of individuals. This, too, should be welcome to Restoration churches because we have (with notable exceptions) typically sought to grow members in their faith after their initial conversion.

And I think the Restoration Movement has a word of advice for the authors of Missional Manifesto. Our heritage has been anti-creedal. For good reason. We expect every individual to explore the Bible to find God’s will. Creeds, in our experience, typically begin as rallying cries around a noble cause (read: manifesto). However, creeds over time exclude as much as they include. Creeds, by their very nature, can be used to draw people together or push people away. As long as the Manifesto remains an attempt to clarify, it has great value. If and when it becomes a measure of faithfulness, then it has become something it does not currently want to be.

Mark Parker is the Director of Admissions of Harding School of Theology. He was a missionary to Zagreb, Croatia from 1991-1996. Mark has completed an MDiv and an DMin (ABD) at Harding School of Theology. He is married and is currently raising two dozen rose bushes and two boys. His personal website is http://realspirituality.org. Follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/themarkparker.

Dyron B. Daughrity. The Changing World of Christianity: The Global History of a Borderless Religion. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. 302 pp. $34.95.

Ever since I started teaching a class called “Global Christianity,” I have wished for a single-volume, comprehensive, summary textbook. The volume edited by Adrian Hastings (A World History of Christianity, Eerdmans, 2000) is a valuable resource, but I was hoping to find the unified production of a single author. For this reason, I was glad to discover Dyron Daughrity’s new book, and I was eager to evaluate it. Could it be the textbook that I had been seeking? I wondered how he would tackle this enormous, variegated subject. Would he approach it region by region, or would he attempt to weave every region into a single chronological narrative? I was also curious to see if he would broach the thorny issues of contextualization and syncretism. Would he define the limits of Christian doctrinal flexibility, or would he merely pose the questions?

Daughrity’s approach is clear from the beginning, as he introduces his readers to eight different “cultural blocks”: the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. One might quibble with his decision to treat China and India together, or with his inclusion of Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco with the nations of sub-Saharan Africa; his arrangements, however, are thoughtful and calculated, and they take history, politics, and language into account. Each cultural block is treated in a separate chapter, and the coverage begins with an encyclopedic narration of statistics: populations, birth rates, percentages of religious adherents, and life expectancies are among the details. These, in turn, are used to introduce regional overviews that place Christian developments in a larger historical framework. Each chapter concludes, then, with brief nation-by-nation summaries that provide information pertaining to the current state of Christianity. These sections offer a mixed and unpredictable bag of details: Italy seems to be secularizing (but not as quickly as France); Zimbabwe has criminalized witch hunts; and unemployment has reached 90% in Nauru.

The encyclopedic sections can make for tedious reading, and statistics can be misleading. To his credit, Daughrity calls our attention to the most significant data, and he is willing to call the numbers into question. He has noted, for instance, the imprecision of the Dalit census in India, which directly influences the reported percentage of Christian adherents. There are other contexts, however, where the distortions are more serious: to cite one important example, Daughrity says that African Indigenous Religions are losing statistical ground to Christianity. Those numbers, however, cannot reflect the ways in which Christianity has been blended with the African Indigenous Religions, making it difficult, at times, to ascertain which faith is gaining and which faith is declining.

The most fascinating discussions are the ones that seek to interpret the events that are being examined. This can be seen when Daughrity muses about the secular future of Europe and North America. He is well-informed about the theories and trends, and his observations deserve careful attention. He is also quite honest with the sordid history of European colonialism, and he is refreshingly fair-minded when he discusses the missionaries who worked in that context. He asks some crucial (and difficult) questions: Why did conquered peoples adopt the religion of their oppressors? Is there something innately imperialistic about religious missions? He does not define the limits of Christian doctrine, but he calls attention to problems of translation, contextualization, and syncretism. Which elements of doctrine must a person embrace (and which ones must be rejected) before that person can be counted as a Christian?

With a citation from the Kenyan John Mbiti, Daughrity implies that the traditions of the Western Christian heritage have handled Christianity “as they wished” (211). Indeed, until we recognize the way our own theologies have been determined by our own circumstances, we will struggle to think responsibly about the way foreign cultures have defined the Christian faith. This kind of self-examination will be essential as the global church attempts to evaluate Chinese interpretations of the cross, Indian definitions of God, or African perspectives on marriage and family. This book is not designed to investigate the problems of historical contingency, but it certainly points the reader toward a lively discussion of that issue.

One might question some of the statements in this book: Ramadan, for instance, is a lunar month and does not occur “roughly in September and October” (11). Also, there were no Nestorian missionaries in the fourth century (172). The Changing World of Christianity, however, is laden with good information from many diverse sources, and it represents a striking achievement. Daughrity should be congratulated for creating an informative, provocative introduction that brings some order to this bewildering new frontier in the study of Christian history. In the coming semester, my students will need to order this book!

Keith B. Huey

Professor of Religion

Rochester College

Rochester Hills, Michigan, USA

In the postcolonial era, with the new emphasis on globalization and interdependence, the author reminds readers that dependency from colonialism still exists and hampers the completion of the Great Commission. While interdependence is held to be the solution to global poverty and world evangelization, the legacy of dependency remains powerful. The author examines how dependency works and suggests ways to overcome it in postcolonial missions.

When my wife, baby daughter, and I moved to Zimbabwe to be church-planting missionaries in 1981, we were looking forward to working in the postcolonial period. As the child of missionaries to Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was formerly called), I knew how colonialism operated. We white people were firmly in control, and we represented Christendom, the alliance of state power with the worship of Jesus Christ. In Rhodesia (named for a British imperialist), we prayed at school assemblies for the queen of England in an Anglican worship service using the same prayer book and hymnal as school children in England. Even though I am an American, I knew the sun never set on the British Empire.

When Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, Africans were euphoric. As we arrived and settled in, we assumed that the previous century of white domination would fade away and dependency would be a thing of the past. After all, dignity was restored to Africans with independence. This was visible on their faces as they contemplated being in charge of their own country. The future seemed bright, and we thought we had entered a new era in missions where white, black, and brown would see each other as equals at last. But it was not possible to erase so much history overnight. The issue of dependency is still a major problem in Western missions long after the British Empire collapsed.

With the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalization, new opportunities have opened for people from all parts of the globe to become involved in world missions. In fact, postcolonial missions can become much more biblical and therefore suitable, if dependency left over from the colonial era can be eradicated. Sadly, dependency has not disappeared, but has grown even worse.

In this article, I would like to address the issue of dependency in the postcolonial period, to understand why it still plagues missions and undermines local initiative. Then I would like to offer some suggestions for overcoming dependency so that Christians in former colonies may rise to their full potential in Christ. In other words, it is time for true postcolonial mission models to take the place of colonial ones.

What is Dependency?

Briefly, dependency is the unhealthy reliance on foreign resources for funding, decisions, ideas, and personnel. It is waiting for someone else to do for you what you could be doing for yourself. As I have implied, dependency is a natural by-product of colonial attitudes. Colonial missions assumed the dominance of Western missionaries, which in turn ensured that indigenous Christians in mission-established churches would be dependent on them, perhaps forever.

The dependency syndrome developed out of the era of high imperialism1 at the end of the nineteenth century. This coincided with an unrealistic optimism connected with the idea of Western progress. Western Christians made the faulty assumption that their culture had absorbed so much Christian faith that Western civilization was predestined to dominate the world. Events on the ground seemed to bear out this assumption as European nations, which formed the heart of Christendom, carved out colonies around the globe. The United States participated in the spirit of the age by taking the Philippines during the Spanish American War in 1898.

The philosophical foundation for this excessive optimism came not from the Bible but from the Enlightenment. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment was a European reaction to centuries of the domination of society by the church. This reaction hoped to end traditions, superstition, and tyranny, becoming the impetus for the French and American Revolutions.

The Enlightenment upheld human reason as the power capable of unlocking all the secrets of the universe. This led to the scientific revolution with the development of new technology. As humans gained mastery over nature, there seemed to be less need for religious faith. Indeed, faith became a private matter while facts belonged to the realm of science. Secularism was on the rise in Christendom.

Lesslie Newbigin summarized this phase of Western history:

In the eighteenth-century Enlightenment this biblical framework was gradually replaced by one that, continuing the biblical idea of an ongoing purpose and a real end of the human story, replaced God by humans as the bearers of the meaning of history. The “Idea of Progress” was born. . . . The people of the Enlightenment, modern Western Europeans living in the Age of Reason, were the leaders of human progress.2

Despite the fact that the Enlightenment relegated the Christian faith to the realm of opinion rather than fact, Christians participated in the mood of optimism. Missionaries adopted “The White Man’s Burden”3 as a noble task of bringing Western civilization to the rest of the world. They joined forces with secularism to bring Western education and health services to the colonized peoples. In addition, they imported foreign systems of leadership, institutions, architecture, and worship to the churches they planted. All of this combined to create dependency among mission-established churches, because local people had to rely on foreign missionaries to operate these foreign systems.

Missions in the Age of Imperialism

The result of the White Man’s Burden was a legacy of dependency among mission-established churches and institutions. Missionaries widely assumed that Western culture was so influenced by Christianity that it was necessary to transplant it to pagan cultures. Civilization would precede evangelism, because the gospel and Western culture were seen as one package. But by making Christianity seem foreign in the places it was planted, this ensured long-term dependency would be the result.

For example, missionaries to India found that the most receptive group to the gospel were the lowest castes. Converts from these groups would often remain dependent on the missionaries and have little influence on the higher castes. Some thought that the solution was to reach higher castes through Western education. Alexander Duff was such an educator missionary from the Church of Scotland. By incorporating the study of the Bible with secular subjects in a school for elite Indian students, he hoped to succeed where others had failed in evangelizing the higher castes. In the end, however, students were more attracted to the secularism that accompanied Enlightenment ideals than to Christianity.

Ruth Tucker summarised the results of Alexander Duff’s educational mission with these words: “The major criticism of Duff’s work was that the vast majority of his students came to his school only for the secular education, and of these thousands there were only thirty-three recorded converts during Duff’s lifetime.”4 While Tucker noted that these few converts became highly influential in Indian Christianity, Duff became more famous as a missionary statesman who effectively spread his method to Christian missions worldwide. Western education and medicine were seen as indispensable to the spread of the gospel throughout the colonial period and beyond.

Graham Houghton was critical of mission methods in India that produced so much dependency on the missionaries. He claimed that God’s blessing was withheld from the Indian Church because of missionary paternalism, and that some of the best candidates for ministry did not put themselves forward for Christian work for fear that “they would be patronized by the Missionary.”5 Houghton suggested that some Indian Christians would have approved of the idea of a missionary moratorium as early as 1908, quoting one pastor as saying, “If by some providential catastrophe all the foreign missionaries had to leave the country for good, it would prove to be a blessing in disguise.”6

It is possible to make a claim that Indian church history is the history of people movements among the lower castes. In fact, there were so many “mass movements” to Christ in the early twentieth century that the National Christian Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon became alarmed, since it was assumed that salvation is valid for individuals only. The Council appointed J. Waskom Pickett to investigate ten such mass movements; his findings are in his classic book, Christian Mass Movements in India, published in 1933. Pickett discovered that these movements occurred away from missionary presence among the lowest castes who preferred to make communal decisions. Although the new converts were extremely poor, they were not dependent on outside funding at first. Significantly, all ten movements became dependent on mission aid once the missionaries began to reach them.7

Pickett noted that those movements that succeeded in supporting their own pastors became significantly stronger: “When these mass-movement groups support their pastors, great benefits accrue to them. The result is most stimulating. Their self-respect gains, and they value the ministry of their pastor more highly. This is not mere theory.”8 Pickett estimated that 80 percent of all Indian Christians were the product of such mass movements at that time,9 so he concluded that this was “the most natural way of approach to Christ.”10 He cautioned, however, that these movements could easily be retarded by rapid economic rise or by social shifts that broke the converts’ connections with their groups.11 He urged missions to cease activities that created dependency: “Missions should take special care to discontinue or revise all of their processes of work that have interfered with the development of initiative.”12

Much later in that century, J. P. Masih characterized Indian church history as “the history of ‘people movements,’” but noted that three current people movements were halted by “a silent game of money bargaining” by new converts with the heads of different denominations in a quest to receive relief aid.13 It is clear that foreign funds can derail promising movements to Christ.

The Effects of Globalization

With the end of colonialism came the new phase of globalization. Briefly, globalization is the shift toward a single global economy, with the added components of a single superpower since the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and greater connectivity due to the Internet. Tom Sine refers to globalization as “McWorld”14 because of the rapid spread of American ideas and values along with capitalism, as epitomized by the McDonald’s Corporation. Thus, globalization is primarily economic, but also cultural.

Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who advises the United Nations for its Millennium Development Goals, as well as governments of nations in many parts of the world, sees globalization as a continuation of a movement that began with colonialism. He believes that prosperity spread because of technological advances that came in various waves and accompanied European colonialists as they moved out to occupy foreign lands.

Sachs classifies the colonial period as “globalization under European domination.”15 He links the “white man’s burden” to this phase of globalization, and defines it as “the right and obligation of European and European-descended whites to rule the lives of others around the world, which they blithely did with a contradictory mix of naïveté, compassion, and brutality.”16 He also readily admits that globalization has led to some parts of the globe growing dramatically in wealth while other areas become poorer. The last two centuries have produced “vast income inequalities.”17

With all this negative history in the process of globalization, what does Sachs recommend for the future? He advocates “Enlightened Globalization” as the remedy for the excesses of the past, by which he means, “the kind of globalization championed by the Enlightenment—a globalization of democracies, multilateralism, science and technology, and a global economic system designed to meet human needs.”18 In other words, he wants more of the same with the simple removal of past injustices. The underlying ideology would continue to be the Enlightenment with human reason as the highest power to achieve global stability and prosperity. The ideals of Western civilization would continue to drive the agenda.

Tom Sine, writing from a Christian perspective about globalization, warns: “The aspirations and values driving globalization are a product of the Enlightenment and modernity and are in many ways directly counter to the aspirations and values of God’s new global order.”19 Nevertheless, many Christians take the era of globalization as heaven-sent for missions. This is because of the increased connectivity and interaction taking place between Christians from many nations. This would seem to herald a new era of cooperation between churches around the world. The problem lies, however, in the long-term dependency that remains as a legacy of colonialism.

Globalization, Poverty, and Interdependence

In an interview with Christianity Today, Jayakumar Christian, the head of World Vision in India, made the following statement about poverty: “My assumption is that the poor are poor because someone else is trying to play God in their lives. Human beings were designed to submit their spirit only to the Creator. Any attempt to take the place of the Creator leads to poverty.”20 It is certainly tempting to play God in the lives of the poor, as many think they know best what the poor need and that the poor have no ideas themselves. The era of globalization is also the era of extreme global inequalities.

No one epitomizes globalization more than Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who with his wife formed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in order to combat disease and poverty with science, technology, and Western wealth. On one occasion, Bill and Melinda Gates toured a New Delhi slum called Meera Bagh, and a reporter for Time magazine later interviewed a woman named Sushila whom the Gates chose to visit on that tour. The reporter wrote:

I asked Sushila whether she knew the names of the people who had visited that morning. She said that she did not but that they were very nice. I told her the man in the khaki pants was the richest man in the world. Sushila smiled and said it didn’t matter that he was the richest. All foreigners were rich compared with her, she said.21

This illustrates two aspects of globalization. On the one side, wealthy Western people are seeking technological solutions for poverty, while on the other side the gap between rich and poor is so vast that to the poor all foreigners seem rich.

Western Christian missions have joined this wave of philanthropy, forming alliances with people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeffrey Sachs, and the rock star Bono to rid the world of poverty and disease. One might even be tempted to say that the focus of missions has shifted from outreach through the gospel to eradicating poverty. Certainly there is an emphasis on wealthy Western Christians assisting poorer Christians and non-Christians elsewhere.

In the global war on poverty, Jeffrey Sachs advocates a renewal of the Marshall Plan instituted by the United States to rebuild economies shattered in World War II. This would be done in the form of grants rather than loans.22 Similarly, a recent book on missions suggests that American churches should institute a “Missionary Marshall Plan” for the twenty-first century. John Rowell says, “[The] Marshall Plan offers a valuable model for modern mission involvement. I am proposing that Western Christians should adopt the general format of this historical philanthropic milestone as a guide for giving today.”23 Rowell does not distinguish between Christian and non-Christian poverty in his advocacy of giving. He emphasizes that Christian evangelists in the developing world are generally poor as are the unreached people in the same places. All would benefit from a radical new level of Christian giving from America: “America is uniquely poised to serve the kingdom of God and the lost world as the War Chest for World Missions!”24

Rowell’s solution to the dependency issue is for Western giving to be without conditions:

As a premise, I am suggesting that dependency need not be a problem, even when outside funding predominates, if Western contributions are made without strings being attached and if national leaders are able to assert themselves by taking their rightful role in casting vision and initiating ministry.25

In other words, if Western giving can come without depriving non-Western Christians of their leadership roles, then it will be helpful.

Others have sounded the same call to change the role of American missions from sending missionaries to funding non-Western evangelists. Perhaps the best known of these is K. P. Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia. He called on North American Christians to sponsor Asian evangelists for as little as $30 to $50 per month per evangelist, citing this as “a wise investment of our resources because the native missionary works more economically than foreigners can.”26 Furthermore, the native evangelists already understand the local languages and cultures, and therefore can communicate more effectively than Westerners. Yohannan called for Western support of one million Asian evangelists at a cost of $600 million per year.27 He claimed that such a strategy would complete world evangelization in the shortest time, and it would prove to be “the quickest way to help Asian churches become self-supporting.”28

Similarly, Paul (Bobby) Gupta understands the era of globalization to be a time of interdependence in the worldwide body of Christ, as it is in business. While colonialism represented the era of dependency, and nationalism represented the era of independence, viewed as autonomy, now globalization represents international cooperation at its best. He cites the actions taken by the Ford Motor Company in India as an illustration of this evolution. Ford was first a foreign company that took advantage of colonialism to sell its products in India, and then was expelled during the period of extreme Indian nationalism. But “under the current paradigm of globalization, they chose to partner with Mahindra, a national automobile manufacturing company,” so benefiting both.29 Gupta challenges Christians to follow this example: “If the Ford Motor Company can do it for profit, surely Christians, called by the Holy Spirit, can partner together to fulfil the mission of God.”30

Ultimately, the goal of Gupta and Sherwood Lingenfelter is to champion the same kind of Western giving to non-Western evangelists as Yohannan and Rowell. Lingenfelter indicates that Western Christians often think nothing of spending several hundred dollars for such things as car payments, credit card purchases, cellphone bills, cable television and Internet use, but “they do not comprehend that they could fully support seven Indian missionaries or trainers of trainers with those same dollars. . . . The Lord is waiting for the rich to partner with the poor to make disciples of the nations.”31 Gupta even claims that the work his organization in India has done in planting churches could not have succeeded without foreign partners.32

Continuation of Dependency

Some important questions remain to be answered. Does the shift from colonialism to globalization mean that the issue of dependency has faded away? Does this shift inaugurate a new era of beneficial international cooperation and interdependence? Is the role of Western missions now to cease sending missionaries in order to fund non-Western evangelists? Is placing Western missions in the role of providing the funds needed for missions the new paradigm for postcolonial missions, as its proponents claim? Is the gap between the rich and poor so great that mission has become essentially the eradication of poverty?

While missionaries have often taken advantage of historical movements in order to spread the gospel, this has never meant that these historical movements were somehow sacred history. On the contrary, attaching mission methods to human movements comes at a price. For instance, attaching the gospel to colonialism insinuated that racial superiority and military power helped to spread the gospel, yet the gospel itself teaches the exact opposite of both. It is for such reasons that many have misunderstood the gospel message.

In particular, globalization is a movement that comes from the same kind of mindset stemming from the Enlightenment that produced colonialism. Globalization is not only about international cooperation and interdependence; many of the same attitudes from colonialism that fueled dependency remain. Even a champion of globalization like Thomas Friedman acknowledges that it can be likened to the pursuits of those who built the Tower of Babel:

What was the problem with the Tower of Babel? Isn’t it what globalizers dream about today—a world in which we all speak the same language, have the same currency, follow the same accounting practices? It was precisely their sameness that allowed the people of the world in biblical times to cooperate and build that Tower of Babel.33

The Tower of Babel is in essence the story of humanity trying to build a city without assistance from God, so in this respect it is similar to Enlightenment thinking. The attainment of global unity in order to rise up toward the heavens to make a name for humanity is also part of the agenda of globalization. Lesslie Newbigin adds that the story of Babel is

the sad story of the effort of the nations to create their own unity. It is the archetype of all imperial adventures, for “imperialism” is the name we give to programs for human unity other than those initiated by ourselves. Its name is Babel—archetype of megalopolis, of Nineveh and Rome.34

We should therefore carry no illusions that globalization is neutral or that Christians can simply join missions to globalization without diluting the gospel. Nor should we think that globalization represents a new phase of world cooperation when the world will become interdependent instead of promoting national interests above all else. No, the history of the world will continue to be a sordid story of nations dominating other nations for profit. And Scripture’s message of the kingdom of God will continue to demand our sole allegiance to the Lord who will demolish all earthly kingdoms to replace them with his own in due course, as prophesied in Dan 2:44.

In the meantime, dependency has not gone away but has increased during the period of globalization. Even in nations like India that have benefited from globalization, churches remain dependent on outside help although their members are becoming more prosperous. The only reason can be that attitudes spawned during colonialism have not changed. The infusion of outside wealth does not automatically produce self-supporting churches, but it can certainly retard the move to self-support. What then is the solution for dependency?

Toward a True Postcolonial Mission Methodology

First of all, we should be clear that the need for missions has not diminished at all, despite past successes. Many regions of the globe remain without an effective witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ. In the postcolonial period, mission is changing from the preserve of the wealthy to a shared obligation by all segments of the world Christian movement. In some ways, mission is returning toward a similarity with the first three centuries of Christian expansion, when ordinary Christians from multiple ways of life and cultures joined in spreading the faith, even in the face of opposition and official persecution. Then, as now, there was a single world superpower, but the gospel then was spread not by those at the apex of political power so much as by the weak and marginalized in the world system. We have a unique opportunity to return to this method of missions in the postcolonial period, but only if we can move beyond the dependency syndrome.

The problem with most proposed postcolonial mission methods is that they continue, even unintentionally, to envision Western Christians as remaining in control. Although they see non-Western Christians as providing the work force, they leave Western churches as the funding agents. This effectively continues financial domination by the same parts of the world that ruled in colonialism, so it is not really a new paradigm. In addition, it continues to see the world in the same groupings that prevailed during colonialism, the “developed” versus the “undeveloped.” There is no recognition that in Christ there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free (Col 3:11). On the contrary, the unspoken assumptions driving many mission methods today are the same as those that drive globalization, namely that every society should have the goal of resembling the Western nations.

Newbigin again forcefully rejects such notions:

The people of the world will not permanently accept a situation in which a rich minority determines what and how much knowledge, healing, and skill shall be made available to the rest. In the second place, and more fundamentally, it is by no means self-evident that the rest of the world will or should develop the kind of society that has been developed in Europe and North America during the past two hundred years.35

True postcolonial mission methods will reject domination by any one national group as the world leader in missions. A return to biblical models will insist that each part of the body of Christ has much more potential than has been previously recognized, including the potential to operate and fund its own initiatives. Not only has much of the strength of non-Western Christians been overlooked, but it also has been marginalized to the extent that accomplishing the goal of world evangelization is impossible.

Steve Saint discovered that dependency set in among the once-vibrant Waodani Indian Christians of Ecuador. His Aunt Rachel Saint and Elisabeth Elliot led these Amazonian Indians to Christ, but after several decades of well-meaning attention by North American Christians, they had become accustomed to receiving help instead of initiating their own work for Christ. Saint called this sidelining of people such as the Waodani “the Great Omission,”36 meaning that dependent people groups are no longer available to help fulfill the Great Commission. In that case, Saint says, the completion of that commission is no longer possible, since it requires committed believers from all cultural backgrounds and languages.37

The first requirement, therefore, for a true postcolonial mission method is to treat all Christians as equals both in terms of brotherhood and sisterhood in the body of Christ as well as in potential for initiative in the Lord’s work. Furthermore, Western standards for operations will no longer be the criterion for work, as each locale may set standards based on local resources, history, and culture. Technology will be what is locally appropriate and easily maintained. Local ownership of the operations will be essential, in terms of legal, financial, and psychological ownership. With local initiative comes local accountability, something usually missing in current mission models based on the Enlightenment, which assume that Western leadership is essential for progress.

The second requirement, then, is local solutions to local problems. This has been a major failure of globalization, as global initiatives often undermine local initiative and global campaigns often ignore local contexts. Speaking about official government-to-government aid, William Easterly, a former World Bank official, estimates:

The West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families.38

Easterly’s recommendation is to change from global planning done primarily by Western nations to an emphasis on local solutions to thorny problems. He contrasts the utopian planner who typifies Western aid at present with what he calls the “Searcher” approach to problems: “A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown.”39 Although Easterly comes from the secular world, he demonstrates a frustration with what are considered normal practices there. Translating his ideas into missiology, his concerns are nothing more than a stress on contextualized methods.

We see this same concern in Scripture repeatedly. God’s election of the human race begins with an obscure man from Ur of the Chaldees, whom he simply commands to move to an obscure part of the planet, Canaan. God does not launch global plans to all parts of the world simultaneously, but he begins in a manger in the poor city of Bethlehem. Jesus is not immediately the obvious Saviour of the whole world, but he begins with the lost sheep of Israel. The worldwide mission to the Gentiles begins with the Holy Spirit selecting one centurion, Cornelius, and persuading Peter to go and meet him. Paul does not typically write theological treatises for all places and times, but he writes highly contextualized letters to specific churches with specific issues. Even the apocalyptic themes of John’s Revelation have specific messages for the seven churches of Asia in their local context. Apparently God is also concerned about local solutions to local problems.

A third requirement for postcolonial missions is that spiritual renewal should take precedence over human ingenuity. Mission models from the Enlightenment rely heavily on human strength and intellect instead of on the power of the Holy Spirit. Western and Westernized missiologists readily adopt the latest ideas from the secular world and adapt them to missions. A return to biblical models will emphasize that God has always worked through those who completely dedicate themselves to him in prayer and faith.

The East African Revival provides a contemporary example. This spiritual renewal produced a remarkable increase in evangelism together with the use of local resources that had previously been assumed to be nonexistent. Describing the effects of the revival that started in 1929 and continues to have an impact around the world, Richard K. MacMaster and Donald R. Jacobs stated:

The East African Revival had been financially self-reliant. When “the saved ones” felt that God was calling them to do something locally or on a broader scale, they simply announced the need and received the funds from the local fellowships. What they could not afford they did not undertake. When they commenced huge projects, like the stratified evangelization of an entire town or city, they did so with their own finances.40

When John Gatu, general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa from 1964-79, declared a famous moratorium on missionary personnel and funds, it was not because of liberal theology or anti-Western bias, and it was not intended to signal the end of missions.41 Rather it was due to the influence of the East African Revival. Gatu was aware that revival fellowships offered an alternative to remaining dependent on foreign funding and personnel. He sought a hiatus in foreign oversight of his church’s work in order to give African leaders time to decide their own priorities. MacMaster and Jacobs report that within twenty years, Gatu’s moratorium steered his denomination from receiving 85 percent of church funds from abroad to receiving 85 percent locally.42

Looking at Scripture, the entire Book of Acts is a treatise on the driving force of the Holy Spirit in missions, regardless of human plans or ingenuity. When Peter was reluctant to evangelize Gentiles, God intervened with visions of unclean food and a command to Peter to kill and eat them (Acts 10:11-13). While Peter was preaching to Cornelius as a result of this vision, the Holy Spirit intervened to create a Gentile Pentecost. Peter then, and only then, acknowledged that Gentiles also had the right to be baptized (Acts 10:44-47). Repeatedly in Acts, the Holy Spirit overcomes deep-seated human prejudice to assert divine wisdom in the new age of Christ. Missions was pushed forward even through persecution (Acts 8:1-4). When human strength seems small, and resources seem few, the Holy Spirit can still find a way for the gospel to progress.

The fourth requirement for true postcolonial missions is that the mission will proceed out of apparent weakness rather than strength. Scripture is replete with examples of how God chose lowly people to bring him glory. Barren women like Hannah, who turned to God in ardent prayer, become the mothers of important leaders. Cowardly individuals like Gideon become heroes of faith once they submit to God. Despised men, like Joseph, become the deliverers of Israel, even when they must go through years of misfortune first. A shepherd becomes the most famous king of Israel. A poor family that can only afford to offer the Lord two pigeons as a sacrifice on behalf of their firstborn son is chosen to raise the Son of God. Fishermen become the first apostles who follow Jesus. Tax collectors and prostitutes are invited into the kingdom of heaven ahead of the religious leaders. A formerly demonized woman is the one who first sees the risen Savior. Even the great missionary apostle, Paul, is given a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble. The Lord announces to Paul this fundamental principle, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). God’s plan involves using human weakness to show his glory.

As Jesus emptied himself of his divine prerogatives in order to engage in missions in this world, so missionaries who come from backgrounds of human strength will necessarily empty themselves of that prerogative in order to minister like Jesus out of weakness. Since that is so difficult for us to do effectively, it means that we can expect postcolonial missions to be led by the most unlikely people, namely, the poor and despised. God’s glory will be seen best when such people are empowered by the Holy Spirit to go forth in missions without being told to by other people. When the Holy Spirit initiates mission, then the financial conundrums we often find ourselves in disappear. Spirit-filled Christians find themselves going forward to spread the gospel without outside help as it was in the early churches. Indeed, the way the early churches went about missions becomes the paradigm for postcolonial missions.

The fifth requirement is that we should return to Paul’s mission methods, as they satisfy all four requirements mentioned so far. Even though Paul lived in the time of a superpower that controlled life in the territory where he lived and worked, Paul did not use the same methods that the Roman Empire used to spread its influence. Rather, he rejected the tactics that the empire approved of: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor 10:3-4). Paul saw the battle as spiritual, and designed his methods of mission accordingly. Too often, Western missions have seen the battle as technical and designed engineering solutions. These solutions are so foreign to the context that they create dependency on expatriates to implement and maintain their systems. Paul, however, never created dependency because he trusted his converts to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to think for themselves.

In comparing Paul’s methods with more recent missionary paradigms, Roland Allen comments:

The first duty of a teacher is not to solve all difficulties for the pupil, and to present him with the ready-made answer, but to awaken the spirit, to teach the pupil to realize his own powers. . . . As the converts exercise that power, as they yield themselves to the indwelling Spirit, they discover the greatness of the power and the grace of the Spirit, and in so doing they reveal it to their teacher. But we are like teachers who cannot resist telling their pupils the answer the moment a difficulty arises.43

In other words, Allen is accusing missionaries of being paternalists. This flaw is still alive in some popular paradigms that create dependency today. Paul avoided paternalism by moving on quite soon and by expecting converts to learn through their mistakes. Indeed, much of the New Testament is a result of the mistakes that Paul’s converts made. He gave them enough space to make their own decisions, and then interacted with them about the consequences by letter.

Avoiding Dependency

In order to avoid dependency, indigenous churches and Christian institutions must be consciously contextualized to their local situation. Their own leaders should have thought through what it means to be the body of Jesus Christ in the context, taking into account the unique history, culture, and customs of the society in which they minister, and studying what God’s word has to say about these issues. Once a group of churches or Christian institutions has a clear picture of God’s call for them, they will not be so tempted to accept partnerships that create dependency, for they will know what they stand for. They will avoid importing foreign systems and technology that are difficult for them to operate or fund by themselves. They will assess foreign ideas about what their task consists of in the light of God’s revelation to them in Scripture. They will refuse to undertake projects that they cannot sustain, and will seek to empower their own people to develop the skills needed for their own work. They will agree to let no one do for them what they can do for themselves.

Robert Reese is Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Ministry at Mid-Atlantic Christian University. He was part of a church planting team in Zimbabwe from1981 to 2002. Robert was Director of the World Mission Resource Center operated by World Mission Associates in Lancaster, Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2008. His role was primarily educational, in order to foster sound mission principles that would not create unhealthy dependency on foreign resources in the developing world. In addition to various articles published in academic journals, Robert is the author of Roots and Remedies of the Dependency Syndrome in World Missions (William Carey Library, 2010). He can be contacted at robert.reese@macuniversity.edu.

Bibliography

Allen, Roland. Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962.

Crouch, Andy. “Powering Down: Interview by Andy Crouch.” Christianity Today 51, no. 9 (September 2007): 38-42.

Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Friedman, Thomas L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.

Gupta, Paul R. and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter. Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision: Training Leaders for a Church-Planting Movement. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2006.

MacMaster, Richard K., with Donald R. Jacobs. A Gentle Wind of God: The Influence of the East African Revival. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 2006.

Masih, J. P. “‘People Movement’ Problems.” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 22, no. 3 (July 1986): 300-2.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Revised edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

Pickett, J. Waskom. Christian Mass Movements in India. New York: Abingdon Press, 1933.

Reese, Robert. Roots and Remedies of the Dependency Syndrome in World Missions. Pasadena, CA: William Carey, 2010.

Ripley, Amanda. “From Riches to Rags.” Time, December 26, 2005–January 2, 2006, 72-88.

Rowell, John. To Give or Not To Give? Rethinking Dependency, Restoring Generosity, and Redefining Sustainability. Tyrone, GA: Authentic, 2006.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. New York: Penguin, 2005.

Saint, Steve. The Great Omission: Fulfilling Christ’s Commission Completely. Seattle: YWAM Publishing, 2001.

Sine, Tom. Mustard Seed versus McWorld: Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999.

Tucker, Ruth. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.

Yohannan, K. P. The Coming Revolution in World Missions. Altamonte Springs, FL: Creation House, 1986.

Certain African stories suggest that outside “aid” received by African people today is fulfilling ancient utopian ideals. It is the actualization of a means of running an economy and society through friendship and relationship—including with the departed. The fiends in these ideals are evil spirits. The utopian ideals being based on “magical” beliefs means that English in Africa is a language of magic. The continuity of this dependency-based self-benefitting system is frequently maintained by the ignorance of Westerners. Creation of dependency on the West is often not a perceived problem for African people. One key to grasping the misunderstandings going on is the realization that, contrary to popular perception, words do not carry meanings. In the present study, for example, English adjusts to local African meanings, which the original purveyors of English then misunderstand. This article advocates that some Western missionaries should attempt to develop a reputation in Africa other than that of donor. They could imitate the ministry of Jesus, who did not function as a “donor.” Otherwise, the African church may continue to find that Western money is the bottleneck in all its projects, and the Western church’s role in places like Africa may never extend beyond that which it funds.

Part of the ancient mythology of the Luo people in East Africa depicts mankind as receiving daily needs without exerting difficult physical effort.  The current system of aid and donations in Africa appears to actualize this historic utopian ideal.

A Luo story tells of a miaha (newly married lady) being sent to take a hoe to a field.1 Had she simply left the hoe there, it would have dug the field by itself overnight, we are told.  Instead, because she was determined to please her new family, the miaha swung the hoe and began turning the soil using her own strength. Unfortunately this act broke the spell.  From that day on the Luo people have had to work by the sweat of their brow. But the existence of the story tells us that the Luo people have not forgotten their utopian ideals.

Utopia, Magic, and African History

The story of the miaha has striking parallels with the biblical account in which Eve’s listening to the serpent resulted in the “fall” of humankind to a state of having to work hard for daily bread (Gen 3).  The notion of a prior era of close fellowship with “god” and “easy living” followed by a fall seems to be widespread in human societies. But how consequential is this utopian view for contemporary life?  If Max Weber was right in identifying a “Protestant work ethic” arising from European Christianity, this utopia has taken backseat in Europe.2 But has it elsewhere?

“When an American needs money, he works for it. When an African needs money, he talks for it,” says David Maranz.3 These seem to be radically different approaches to economics.  If Maranz is correct, then money for an African comes from a person and not from a process designed to effect its generation. The title of Maranz’s book, African Friends and Money Matters, as well as its content, suggest that economics and friendship are particularly closely integrated in Africa. Maranz goes so far as to say that in Africa “a disinterested friendship is something without sense.”4

Whereas some of my specific examples and illustrations are drawn from the Kenya Luo people, with whom I have lived since 1993, I suggest that insights acquired in this essay apply more widely to sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.  While acknowledging local and regional differences, I agree with Maranz,5 Laurenti Magesa,6 and others that the culture of the people of sub-Saharan Africa has many similarities. Hence what applies specifically to Luoland in Kenya certainly in broad outline also applies much more widely across the continent.

Africa’s worldview being holistic, as is widely supposed, impacts the nature of economics in Africa. Whereas in the West many people are overtly oriented to economic activity as a category of life, economics in Africa is simply a part of a more complex whole. As a result, economic success in Africa may be seen as arising more from pleasing one’s ancestors than from following particular economic strategies. Hence, Robert Blunt found investment and savings advice columns adjacent to articles on how to avoid witches in a Kenyan periodical.7 Blunt’s research into what is going on under the surface of Kenyan society finds a preoccupation with chasing away devils. This is in line with my own findings that the good life is in much of Africa known to come by default, while people’s energies are expended in removing untoward spiritual influences.8

Such spiritual influences are thought to arise from people; dead or alive.9 Africa is deeply oriented to subjects. The so-called “objective” is seen as being a part of, and subsumed under, subjects. In that sense, in traditional Africa, there is no objectivity. African photographers, I discovered while in Zambia some years ago, unless deeply influenced by the West, will only take pictures of people, never of scenes, views, flowers, or other things. It is difficult for Westerners to understand that “The Negro African does not draw a line between himself and the object.”10 Human physical, social, and spiritual existence, all arising from the (metaphorical) heart of a person, are the sum of people’s attention and interest. Things are seen as extensions of hearts.

Anthropologists have extensively studied the link perceived in parts of Africa between one’s heart and one’s environment or surroundings. They have thrown some light onto this understanding for the benefit of Westerners in their work on African magic. Seminal work was done by classic researchers like E. E. Evans-Pritchard in his book Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.11 Witchbound Africa, on the Kaonde people in Zambia, was first published in 1923.12 More recently, Christopher O. Davis articulates the blurred (for Westerners) relationship between things, forces, and, human subjects in her Death in Abeyance: Illness and Therapy Among the Tabwa of Central Africa.13 Unfortunately for scholars using English, we find a paucity of terms in English to help us to understand this area of life, because the English language has (in its mother-tongue use) been monopolized by science.  Recognizing that I am unable to overcome such language difficulties, perhaps the best I can do while asking for the reader’s considered understanding is to say that much in life, and in some senses the whole of life, in Africa is governed by magic.14

We have made a few hypotheses so far.  One is that there is a sense in which African people are seeking for a utopian life that could be theirs if only they would succeed in deterring the evil (or bad) forces that threaten it. African people seek this ideal through the development of relationship, and the target relationships are with those who are seen as having succeeded economically (once considered in terms of wives, children, and land; but nowadays also in terms of Western measures of prosperity).  Hence, African people search for patrons, this being to them the way to progress in life.15 The means of acquisition of desired wealth can be described by the term magic.

In this sense; aid to Africa is magical and mystical. African people can easily find foreign aid to be a confirmation of the above-mentioned utopian ideal(s).  In Africa today, aid flows are incessant.  While they may change from one form to another, they never stop.  They are not earned or achieved in any rational way; their source is clearly rooted in the “subjective;” the whim of other people, as directed by spiritual forces. They seem to vindicate and confirm ancient African beliefs about the acquisition of wealth through non-rational, “magical” means.16

As a result of these perceptions, the current socio-economic climate in Africa is proving to be an enormous boost to traditional religious ideals.  The dreams of many prior generations are being fulfilled in the present.  Careful negotiations with the “the West” can release enormous supplies of all kinds of material wealth.  A traditional attitude of helplessness and dependence on others once focused on the dead but now on Westerners is paying dividends. As the influx of aid continues, the African is careful to remain on guard; protective measures against bad magic, life’s fundamental orientation to pleasing the dead, and ambiguity in life that prevents evil forces from taking a hold continue.17

The position and identity of the white man as a patron is frequently reconfirmed.  Millions of African children spend seven, eight, twelve, or more of the prime years of their youth learning European languages and European ways.  These have proved to be the great languages of magic in the current era. “Talking for money” is more and more effective, and the addition of extensive and widespread communication media such as the internet further enables the finding of Western people with whom to communicate.

To this point, we have outlined some very serious barriers to social and economic advance (I write as a Westerner and not as an African, for whom the above are often seen not as problems but benefits) that require urgent attention. At the moment most Western aid workers do not even recognize their impact in confirming and strengthening traditional religious beliefs. Not recognizing this impact, they cannot be expected to be addressing and resolving problems arising from it. Westerners do not perceive what is happening—as the issues concerned disappear in the process of translation. The ever-growing identification of whites as wealthy patrons is constantly reaffirmed. Because the current understanding of whites is lucrative for Africans, it is hardly in the interest of Africans to inform them of the way their actions are fulfilling ancient religious ideals. In a sense it can be said that it is in the interest of African people to maintain the ignorance of outsiders with regard to what goes on in their own communities. This raises and reinforces barriers to the gaining of mutual understanding, which means that when Westerners take the reigns, power in Africa is more and more in the hands of the ignorant.

My allusion above to keeping whites “in ignorance” is in part an outcome of something articulated in detail by Maranz. Maranz puts it like this: “Africans readily share space and things but are possessive of knowledge. . . . Westerners readily share their knowledge but are possessive of things and space.”18 Whereas Western libraries contain numerous books written by people spilling the contents of their heart onto paper, for many African people, so opening one’s heart can invite spiritual attack. It follows that concealing issues can bring blessing, and indeed in practice this is often found to be the case with respect to white donors; new or short-term visitors from the West are frequently much more inclined to material generosity than those who are more au fait about what is happening on the African scene. That is, the most lucrative contacts with Europeans are often with those who remain ignorant of local realities.

It sometimes seems in Africa today that the indigenous black population takes all whites as patrons or potential patrons. A relationship with a patron is a particular kind of relationship, with deeply ingrained expectations and conventions.  It is certainly a relationship of respect, for which read (it is hard to get this into English): distance, a sort of formality, and a degree of concealment of truth.  I wonder whether such a universal “standoff,” which I guess in British English one might call racism (in reverse), is very healthy?

Patrons and Language

If I am correct so far, then (almost) the only type of language used by African people and communities in relation to whites is the language that is appropriate to patrons.

A problem arises if Western missionaries do not realize this dynamic.  I suspect that few African people are unaware of this dependence-communication.19 I suspect also that few whites are fully aware of it—how can they be, as it is generated by cultures foreign to them?

African people are on the whole perfectly competent at forming words, sentences, paragraphs and more in the language(s) that have been exported to them—for example, English.  What Western missionaries do not fully realize is that someone sharing words and sentences of a particular language that they have been obliged to learn in the course of formal schooling since childhood does not amount to their having grasped the meaning that the originators of that language might have in mind.

There seems to be an easy deceitfulness in all of this.  If someone says “I have seen an elephant” then we assume that they know what an elephant looks like, when actually it is quite possible (and easy) to say “I have seen an elephant” without ever having seen one.  The ability to say “sustainable development” does not in itself show that someone has understood what a British or American person means by such a term. To say “Tanzania is modern” will mean something different if said by an African, who has not been able to experience whatever it is to “be modern” in America, than if it is said by an American.  A Tanzanian saying that “Tanzania is modern” is frankly an insufficient basis for an American to conclude that Tanzania is modern, because the latter’s idea of what is modern will be vastly different from that of a Tanzanian.  Some words have “false friends”—for example, what in the UK could be called a “shack” in which you can get a cup of tea is in East African English boldly and routinely called a “hotel”.

The expectation that a word can move across a vast cultural divide and not change fundamentally in nature and content is frankly not rational but magical. Thus it seems to me that one might accuse Western missionaries who base their actions on what they hear nationals say to them in English by interpreting according to the rules of Western English, of believing in “magic.” It can be said, in a sense, that every word someone uses assumes their whole culture, and every expression is correctly understood only in the light of that culture.  An adult person cannot know a word without implicitly attaching vast amounts of context and background to it. Try saying any word to yourself.  Then think of different parts of your particular history and context that link to that word.  Much of that is specific, individual knowledge.  This applies even to scientific terms.  If someone says, “methane is CH4,” my mind goes back to a particular chemistry lab in a particular place where a particular person taught me while of a particular age—and so on.  My hearing a word itself, such as “methane,” brings to the fore many links and associations in my mind. The same applies to any word.

The potential for miscommunication becomes vast when someone, or even whole communities, learns someone else’s language without sharing in the culture from which the language arises. There is a (vast!) difference between a French person learning to speak English while at a French school, and another French person learning English by interacting with people on the streets of Oxford. The former will, by default, apply a French-person’s life context to the English words that they are using. This happens more and more with the current global usage of English, and the possibility of English spreading almost totally devoid of its culture, as enabled by widespread print and electronic media, is great.

Foreign words in and of themselves, I suggest, usually do not challenge an environment that they enter if shorn of their foreign content, as words of course are!  Rather, foreign words are appropriated into the new context.  How, after all, can foreign words effectively challenge a strange cultural situation, when on account of the fact that the situation is strange, the words in the process of cross-cultural transfer loose the contextual component of their meaning that I suggest is invariably vital to their original anticipated function?

Going back to the case of patronage above can easily furnish us with examples.  “I love you” said to a patron on whom one is dependent for one’s daily existence is clearly different from “I love you” said to a beautiful girl one happened to meet. “Yes, I will” in a context in which “no, I won’t” would endanger my life is different from “yes, I will” to someone who offered for me to join them for supper. The realization that a client is speaking to a patron will affect one’s understanding of the words spoken. In other words, someone listening to or even participating in a patron/client conversation while ignorant of its patron/client nature can easily miss the whole plot and will certainly misunderstand. Therefore, the meaning of words, sentences, and even whole conversations or books differs according to the context in which they are understood.

What then are the implications of having a patronage system dominate a community? Institutions set up in an environment of patronage may be established and maintained not through the heart-will of the people, but as a result of particular patronage offered.  So someone will work as a nurse in a hospital, not because that is how in their own mind the sick should be tended, but because there is a salary on offer for doing it.  Someone will teach in a school, not because they value the insights that they are imparting, but because that is the way they know to make a living. Housekeepers, UN employees, even Bible school teachers and indigenous “missionaries” operating in a patron-client system (being paid for their services and having the perimeters of their roles dictated to them) are all doing that which may be contrary to their deeper heart-felt orientations, because they are in need of an income.  All these people are fulfilling particular rituals in pursuance of a fundamental objective—receiving finance. They are all going to be careful to conceal whatever may run contrary to the required ongoing flow of funds.  That is, they will be careful not to tell the truth to their donor(s) whenever this appears to contradict the donor’s primary aim(s).

The solution to this shroud of secrecy surrounding every patronage situation is simple, if also complex: that some Western workers in sub-Saharan Africa stop playing the role of patron, for at least a part of what they do.

A prominent feature of African society today is that while people have been taught how to spend money, they have not necessarily learned how to generate it, except through the sale of poverty in the form of sad stories designed to beget “guilt” in Westerners. This is producing a society in which foreign funding fuels all initiatives. The potential material benefit arising from foreign alternatives results in locally based thinking being increasingly squashed. Misunderstandings arising can generate and perpetuate so-called corruption.

Can anything be made out of African roots that is not a little-understood copy of what is foreign? Does the West have anything to offer that is not money that only they know how to generate? The disjunction between indigenous understanding and increasingly widespread every day proceedings is growing dangerously wide.20 The chances of bringing indigenous thinking up to speed with what is happening seem to be getting slimmer and slimmer.  I could share my own experience as a Westerner who came to this continent as a missionary in 1988 with the hope that I might understand and encourage the African people in their godly walk.  Over two decades on, the system of patronage has only gained ground. The only role for a foreigner in my home (Kenyan) community often seems to be that of patron. Maranz tells us: “The Westerners are people who appear to have ample resources that many Africans would like to have them share but lack most other qualifications for meaningful relationship.”21 One’s influence rarely goes further than one’s money.  Even local knowledge acquired over years of exposure to a people appears to be of little help. For reasons explained above, ignorance on the part of Westerners may be preferable to understanding in the frenzy of activity pursuing aid money.

The Apostasy of the Church?

Christ had ample opportunity to be a “patron.”  His temptations included that of turning the very stones around him into bread (Luke 4:3). He refused.  He did at times feed thousands (Mark 6:30-44; 8:1-21), but then it seems he almost regretted having taken such actions (John 6:15). He is certainly not recorded as having solicited major funds from governments or wealthy businessmen.  He was, it seems, very careful to ensure that those who followed him were true followers and not only after food or money.

Is this a contrast with the church of today?  God’s servants who seek to put themselves at the hub of numerous donor projects can become as prone to accusations of corruption as anyone else. Donors attach strings, which at times restrict the church in its options in approaching people with the Christian message.

What can one say about the church in the West?  Have Western Christians become so addicted to their comfortable lifestyle as to have abdicated their charitable responsibility to the problems faced by people around the globe?  Or is it that they have swallowed whole the materialistic solutions that the media’s presentation of world issues proposes to them?  Are they right in expressing Christian love in a way that is devoid of relationship—by acting as donors to those whose cultures and walk they cannot begin to comprehend?  Is money a sufficient alternative to a living, breathing, crying, feeling, minister of God’s word?

Someone holding the purse-strings usually cannot help having a say. What they say and how they say it becomes rather consequential.  Westerners used to using money advocate remedies and solutions that require money, even when other alternatives are available.  When these money-solutions are adopted, they frequently result in a rise in costs out of proportion to the increase in benefit from a given project.  Hence, projects are always short of money.  The pressure is always on the donor to give more, while local managers are waiting, sometimes twiddling their thumbs, in expectation.  The bottleneck is funding, so the pressure is on the distant donor while the local person sits pretty.

Impact on the West

Globalization these days results in Western churches paying more attention to issues pertaining to distant countries.  “Extreme need over there” can result in people being absorbed in the foreign, to the neglect of local issues that they understand and really could resolve.  The secular media’s domination of global communication affects local churches’ perception of global issues. This in turn orients people’s understanding to the perception that money is the solution to all problems—from prostitution to hunger to Satanism to earthquakes—you name it! Is this reduction of the churches’ role to fundraising appropriate? Is it really Christian? Is it scriptural? Is it even godly?

I have suggested above that for a Western missionary to be in the role of patron easily acts to re-affirm tradition rather than to advocate change. Shutting off the role for a patron in mission opens up numerous alternative and (I suggest) much more challenging and certainly more Christian avenues of service for foreign missionaries: nurses will be needed to nurse and not diagnose and treat only as far as their budget can stretch.  Teachers of the Word will be needed but will not use their mother tongue when thousands of miles from home.  Pastors can pastor instead of being expected to fundraise.  Evangelists will not have to promise cars, PA systems, and English classes in order to draw their congregations.  The above roles will leave the missionaries concerned free to learn from the people they are reaching.  Thus they will be free to draw nearer to them.  They will be able to relate to them socially as well as professionally.  They will be able to integrate with them instead of only to “oversee” what they are doing.  They will be able to recognize and interact with the deep spiritual issues that will make God’s Word come alive.

It is the latter revival of spirituality that can bring deep, heart-felt changes, which can be a foundation for healthy life-style changes around the world.  The re-realization of the importance of spirituality in human existence is bound to have a kick-back effect on the West, which has in recent decades been so heavily influenced by historical materialism: the belief that “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”22 A revival of the church is as vital in Western nations as in other parts of the world, after all.

Conclusion

Living in such a way as to be vulnerable to a foreign people being reached by the gospel is not an optional privilege for a few eccentrics.  It is a necessary prior step to gaining an understanding that one can acquire in no other way.   More specifically, the Western missionary must carefully examine and overcome the institution of the patron in order to play a part in rescuing African societies from their demise at the onslaught of Westernization on their communities. Today’s missionary force unfortunately all too often supports and confirms the patron orientation—as foreign missionaries plant themselves on the top of the African pile, and gain a hearing in proportion to the size of their budget. There is a desperate need for ‘vulnerable missionaries’ from the West to ‘poor’ places in the world such as Africa; that is, for some Western missionaries to be ready to minister using only the languages and resources of the people they are reaching.

Jim Harries (PhD) served for three years amongst the Kaonde people in Zambia. Since 1993 he has lived in a Luo village in western Kenya. In that time he has been teaching Theological Education by Extension at Yala Theological Centre and Siaya Theological Centre in western Kenya. He lectures part time at Kima International School of Theology. He has learned the languages of the Kaonde, Luo and Swahili people. Harries is the chairman of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission and serves as adjunct faculty at William Carey International University and Global University, both in the USA. He can be contacted at jimoharries@gmail.com.

Bibliography

Blunt, Robert. “Satan Is An Imitator: Kenya’s Recent Cosmology of Corruption.” In Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a New Liberal Age, edited by Brad Weiss, 294-328. Boston: Brill, 2004.

Davis, Christopher O. Death in Abeyance: Illness and Therapy Among the Tabwa of Central Africa. London: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. New York: Clarendon.

Harries, Jim. “Pragmatic Theory Applied to Christian Mission in Africa: With Special Reference to Luo Responses to ‘Bad’ in Gem, Kenya.” PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/15.

________. “Good-by-Default and Evil in Africa.” Missiology: An International Review 34, no. 2 (April 2006): 151-164.

________. “The Magical Worldview in the African Church: What Is Going On?” Missiology: An International Review 24, no. 4 (October 2000): 487-502.

Magesa, Laurenti. African religion: The moral traditions of abundant life. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa, 1997.

Maranz, David. African Friends and Money Matters: Observations from Africa. Dallas: SIL International, 2001.

Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977 [1859]. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/index.htm.

Melland, Frank H. In Witch-Bound Africa: An Account of the Primitive Kaonde Tribe and Their Beliefs. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1923.

Ogot, Grace. Miaha. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983.

Senghor, Léopold Sédar. On African Socialism. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1930.

When does a church plant transition from missions-receiver to missions-sender? Sadly, some churches never do. Others struggle to do so, but get sidetracked by the desire for bigger buildings, more members, and greater influence. This article is the story of one congregation in Brazil that faced the same challenges and temptations, but in the power of God’s Spirit made a commitment to make God’s worldwide mission a first priority. The Igreja de Cristo Norte de Goiânia has kept that commitment—in 25 years they have sent 13 of their members as transcultural missionaries, and counting. We narrate their journey so that other churches may find encouragement and practical ideas to make a similar commitment and a similar transition.

When Tom and Libby Fife arrived in Goiânia, Brazil in 1966 with the Brazil Christian Mission, the initial tasks set before Tom were to teach at the Christian Institute of Goiânia (Instituto Cristão de Goiânia) and to serve as pastor for one of the churches in Goiânia. They visited the four congregations of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (4Cs) and settled in at Igreja de Cristo da Vila Fama, soon to be renamed Igreja de Cristo—Norte de Goiânia (ICNG). Tom had great hopes for the congregation: that it would become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating.1 God, however, had even more in mind.

Forty-five years later, the city has grown to a population of over 1.3 million,2 and there are nearly eighty churches of the 4Cs movement in its metropolitan area. This, however, is not a story of church multiplication in a specific area. Rather, it is a story of the worldwide mission of the church. It is a success story about a church that developed from being a missionary recipient to becoming a missionary sender.

Missions on four continents, hundreds of churches planted, and countless people brought to Christ: this is the work that God has accomplished through one small congregation in Brazil. It was simply a congregation with a heart willing to be shaped by God. I share this story in the hope that it may help other congregations to open their heart to the transforming power of God’s mission so that this story may be repeated around the globe.

I should admit from the start that there were also many frustrations and some tragic misdirection over the years when the Holy Spirit’s leading was not heeded. I will refer to some of them briefly. In the end, however, this story revolves around neither the plans nor the failures of the people involved, but around the grace, mercy, and incredible sovereignty of God.3

Laying the Foundation

Tom and Libby worked closely with ICNG from 1966 until 1991. Though their strategy was not written on paper, five consistent elements formed the foundation upon which the congregation would build.

First, there was never to be a mission station.4 Following the example of earlier missionaries David and Ruth Sanders,5 the Fifes moved into a Brazilian-style home to live among the people. More than just a housing solution, this decision emerged from Tom’s missional mindset. During an earlier ministry equipping Mexican leaders for Mexican churches,6 Tom had received a letter asking whether he could cite an example of any Mexican capable of operating a “complete mission station.” Tom replied: “No, but we are not teaching people to operate mission stations; we are teaching them to build churches. Our goal is not a complete mission station anywhere. Our goal is preparing Mexican leaders to plant and lead self-supporting churches.”7 He continued with the same mentality from the beginning of his work in Brazil: he sought to equip Brazilians who would lead the Brazilian church.

Second, with basically only enough support for his wife and five small children,8 pouring money into mission work was never an option for Tom and Libby. Missiologist Jonathan Bonk highlights well the problematic effects that financial arrangements can have on the relations between missionaries and those whom they serve. Missionary prosperity has “an inherent tendency to isolate missionaries from the cutting edge of missionary endeavor, rendering much of their effort either unproductive or counterproductive, or sometimes both.”9 In the case of the Fifes, funds were not plentiful either for the missionary family or for the church—a small congregation in a poor neighborhood. In the sixties and early seventies, few people in the church were literate, and no one had a car. For some time, even the Fifes had no car and used public transportation to get to church. Over time it became evident that whatever resources were given by Tom, Libby, and their children, whether time, money, or energy, they were given as sacrificially as anybody else’s.

The Fifes did indeed give sacrificially of themselves. Tom made repeated church planting trips into the rural areas in the north of the state of Goiás, often taking one or more of his children along. The lasting fruit of these arduous trips would only be seen decades later. In 1969 Libby got the church involved in a benevolence ministry called Diaconia, which provided valuable job skills and language training for those in low economic brackets. Beginning in 1967, Tom also worked with the Association for Christian Literature (Associação Pró-Literatura Cristã) editing Christian books, Sunday School literature, and leadership training materials in Portuguese. As a result of this ministry, some US supporters withdrew their support because they did not consider the publication of Christian literature vital “church work.” When ICNG needed to build a new church building in 1968, the contributions and volunteer labor came from the ICNG members, including the Fife family.

Third, Tom and Libby were convinced that in order to have any impact, they would have to contact Brazilians in their own culture: they would tell about Jesus Christ without implying that it had anything to do with becoming Americanized. The children were enrolled in Brazilian schools and grew up speaking the Portuguese language. Four of them eventually married Brazilians. Brazil became home. Tom and Libby eventually moved back to the US to care for Libby’s aging parents, but to this day they continue to travel and teach in Portuguese-speaking countries. Their incarnational influence would provide an example for future generations of missionaries sent out by ICNG to diverse cultures on four continents.

Fourth, Tom refused to assume pastoral leadership of the church whenever possible. While he was willing to teach and preach regularly, he believed the church should come up with its own leaders. It was only after a sequence of bad experiences with ill-equipped Brazilian leaders that he reluctantly accepted the function of pastor of the congregation during the years 1977–1986. After that time he turned the pastoral leadership of the congregation over to local leadership, while he turned his attention increasingly to Theological Education by Extension (TEE) and other training ministries.

Fifth, Tom and Libby learned from experience that, while they sought to change people’s misconceptions about Jesus, there was no need to change their cultural orientation. This brings to mind Asian missionary thinker Kosuke Koyama’s reflections:

Isn’t it a basic rule of life that one cannot make a contribution unless one is ready to accept another’s contribution in return? Otherwise, “making a contribution” may become only a convenient expression for an egoistic “keeping our contributions to ourselves.” . . . “Giving” is a dynamic theological process which influences both the giver and the given. A tradition cannot “give” something without “receiving” something from others. It belongs to the wonder of the mystery of the Body of Christ, the church.10

Thus the Fifes engaged the Brazilian church in a true process of give and take, and the sense grew that they really belonged to each other as family. Once again the words of Christ were realized in the experience of his disciples:

Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:29–30)11

Beginning in 1972, Tom started working with what would become his passion and his main effort until today: Theological Education by Extension (TEE). He began teaching TEE in the facilities of the Christian Institute of Education and Culture (Instituto Cristão de Educação e Cultura) in Goiânia. The following year, however, he started going to the then six Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Goiânia, including ICNG, teaching all who expressed an interest in theological education. Leaders belonging to other Christian groups in Goiânia became interested in the TEE program as well.

By 1983, at the invitations of missionary Wayne Long in São Paulo and of one of the first graduates from the Christian Institute, Ozório Rodrigues, who was working in Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, Tom began traveling every three weeks from Goiânia to Brasília, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte to teach TEE courses. This eighteen-hundred-mile (2,880 km) circuit was continued for four years, and it was during this time that he participated in the Evangelical Association of Theological Training by Extension (Associação Evangélica para Treinamento Teológico por Extensão). There Tom served alongside Jonathan Santos, founder of the Antioch Mission (Missão Antioquia),12 a connection that would play a vital part in the missional awakening to come. As for the churches in Goiânia, local tutors were assigned to keep up with the classes while Tom was away. To this day many ICNG’s members credit their higher academic achievements to Tom’s passion for education and leadership training.

In 1981–1982, Tom and Libby spent a one year furlough in the United States for the first time. The three older children stayed in Brazil. By then two of the children, Robert and Elena, were married to Brazilians and had Brazilian children. Elena lived with her family in Belo Horizonte, and Robert and his wife Derlani were active leaders at ICNG.

During that year, Robert Fife and Gerson Sousa,13 who were elders in the church, carried out the pastoral responsibilities without Tom’s help for the first time. This new generation of leadership had been TEE students since 1973, and their wives had joined in the studies. Thus, the foundation was laid for leadership based on sound biblical teaching in an atmosphere of Christian love and unity—which is a hallmark of the congregation to this day.

Missions Awakening in Brazil

While the new leadership began to find their footing at ICNG, the Holy Spirit was awakening a new consciousness in churches all across Brazil: a world mission awakening. Increasingly, churches began to recognize the Spirit’s continuing role in holistic missions:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19)

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Both the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37–39) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20a) constituted the mission of the Church. ICNG had long displayed its love for God and neighbor, but something was still lacking: “Go into all the world.” So Robert and Gerson decided to attend a world mission conference in July 1985. It was sponsored by the Baptist Church recently planted in Morumbi, São Paulo.

At the same time, news started to spread about Missão Antioquia and about the innovative mission program of the First Baptist Church in Santo André. The testimony of the latter, following the renowned model of Oswald J. Smith and the People’s Church of Toronto, was especially encouraging. Their lead pastor, Édison Queiroz,14 spoke enthusiastically about the Christian Education building they had built with what was “left over” after they had first given both to the Brazilian Baptist Missionary Board and to other missionaries they were directly involved in equipping, sending, and supporting through their faith-promise program. World mission awareness was maintained by means of their annual mission rallies, which involved the whole church in their organization.

Far from an isolated example, this innovative congregation was part of a burgeoning missionary movement.15 In a lecture in 2005, veteran missionary Bertil Ekström affirmed that in the eighties “a new kind of mission structure was seen among the mission movements in Brazil. Local churches, following a North American trend, started sending out missionaries and creating their own sending body.” And he added, “This coincided with a decreasing confidence in traditional structures and a criticism against organizational models, especially in the denominations.”16

The most significant demonstration of the breadth and depth of this missionary awakening was the first Iberian-American Missionary Congress (Congresso Missionário Íbero-Americano—COMIBAM) in 1987.17 The conference attracted over 3,000 delegates from Latin America, Portugal, Spain, and other countries for sessions in both Portuguese and Spanish. Robert Fife and Valdecy DaSilva from ICNG were among the one thousand delegates representing the Brazilian churches.

Two mission-minded churches sponsored the COMIBAM: the First Baptist Church in Santo André and the nearby Presbyterian Church in Ipiranga (IPI). The lead pastor at IPI, Oswaldo Prado,18 described COMIBAM with these words:

This missionary encounter was a watershed moment, in my opinion, for the beginning of this “boom” of Brazilian missions. Until then several missionary encounters had taken place, but Comibam established its defining mark in the opening worship when its President, Luis Bush, affirmed in his talk: “From a mission field[,] Latin America has become a mission force.” This phrase that [sic] might seem to be merely rhetorical but it truly caused an awakening of the three thousand delegates.19

It is undoubtedly true that “within the last century there has been a massive southward shift of the center of gravity of the Christian world, so that the representative Christian lands now appear to be in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and other parts of southern continents.”20 However, there hardly could have been a more economically unfavorable time in the history of Brazil for an outburst of world-mission related activities than the eighties and early nineties. While facing an average inflation of forty percent each month for over ten years, there were many who strongly opposed the idea of sending out and supporting cross-cultural missionaries. Finally, in 1994, the government brought inflation under control, but Brazil continues to be a nation with huge socio-economic distortions and inequalities.

Prado recalls that as time passed he repeatedly heard comments from Brazilian leaders and pastors that implied that “this new [missional] experience had nothing to do with our [economic] reality. However, at the same time, the Brazilian missionary advance was incredible and even uncontrollable.”21 It is further noteworthy that most of the churches that have faithfully supported cross-cultural endeavors to the present are medium-sized or even relatively small ones. Although there are evidently exceptions, most of these are by no means wealthy churches.22 The Spirit’s leading did not depend on the economy.

These winds of missional change brought a new level of leadership to the nation. In his lecture “Mission in and from Brazil,” Ekström pointed out:

The national leadership of the mission movement was formed in the 1970s through the mission conferences, the participation of a new generation of foreign missionaries and their emphasis on mission, the arrival of international missions to Brazil and a new awareness of the Evangelical churches of their potential for reaching out to other nations with the Gospel.23

The same influences would shape the local leadership of ICNG in the 1980s.

Mission Awakening at ICNG

ICNG began to send their own members farther afield for ministry training, and two of these had a significant effect on the congregation’s missional perspective. The first was Tom’s protégé, Valdecy DaSilva. After seeing other Brazilian leaders go to Bible colleges in the United States and not come back, the leadership was very reluctant to approve the wishes of DaSilva to do the same. But DaSilva was determined, and it was finally arranged for him to go to Colegio Biblico24 on the Mexican border in 1983. He agreed to work his own way through college, with the condition that he would come back and work with ICNG for at least two years after graduation—bringing his cross-cultural experience of Mexico back to ICNG.

The first member that ICNG sent with financial support was Maria Avanilde Silva, sent to the Word of Life Bible Institute (Instituto Bíblico Palavra da Vida)25 in São Paulo in 1985 for a Christian Education degree. She returned after graduation three years later to implement a Christian Education program.26 Her hard work recruiting and training volunteers and putting together a full curriculum for the youth department would have a long-lasting impact upon ICNG and would be followed up by other members. At least once a month, Children’s Church at ICNG focused on the world mission of the Church. Children regularly heard about cross-cultural experiences and prayer requests, and they participated in the mission rallies both several weeks prior to the event and during its occurrence. In this way world mission became a part of the DNA of the church.

Meanwhile, because of an invitation from the Church of Christ (Igreja de Cristo)27 in Angola, Tom Fife visited, taught, and preached in Angola’s capital city of Luanda in 1985. In 1986, Angolan pastor Arão Canda visited Brazil and shared concerning the situation of the growing church in Angola despite the communist oppression they were still experiencing a decade after independence from Portugal. Initially unplanned by ICNG, Arão was present at what would be ICNG’s very first world mission rally. Tom’s visit to Angola and Arão’s visit to Brazil were just the starting points of a long-lasting relationship between the churches in Brazil and Angola. A highlight of such interaction has been three different students who have subsequently come to the Christian Theological College (Faculdade Teológica Cristã do Brasil) in order to be further equipped for Christian ministry: Lutumba João Pedro, Afonso Teca, and Afonso’s wife Bibiane.28

Mission fervor at ICNG was also growing in relation to local evangelism. Partly as a result of a short-term mission team that came from Word of Life Bible Institute (Instituto Bíblico Palavra da Vida) with Avanilde Silva in 1986, the church emphasized evangelistic activities both in the neighborhood and beyond, even seeking opportunities to plant a new church. The church reflected Wilbert Shenk’s observation:

There is no biblical or theological basis for the territorial distinction between mission and evangelization. To accede to this dichotomy is to invite the church to “settle in” and be at home. The church is most at risk where it has been present in a culture for a long period of time so that it no longer conceives its relation to culture in terms of missionary encounter. The church remains socially and salvifically relevant only so long as it is in redemptive tension with culture.29

Ed Stetzer adds that the territorial distinction between mission and evangelism has been assumed since Gustav Warneck (1834–1910), but “their separation has caused harm to the church. . . . In an attempt to promote the importance of missions, missiologists have often undermined the church by removing missional thinking from its rightful place.”30 Thus, a church “conformed, and conforming to the will of God is one that lives in consciousness of its missional nature. Mission is the motor that drives the church in obedient response to the reign of God in the world.”31 Or, as 1 Pet 2:9 puts it, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

ICNG was growing in its “consciousness of its missional nature,” but that consciousness would soon be tested by a difficult decision.

A Conversion and a Commitment

Igreja de Cristo—Norte de Goiânia (ICNG) had been growing, so they bought a property in order to build a larger facility. The groundbreaking ceremony was on October 5, 1986. The church made plans for a building that could eventually hold five hundred people because they wanted to have room to continue to grow. However, after they laid the foundation and the walls were going up, all the resources had been drained. It did not take long for the congregation to find themselves putting all their time, money, and energy into the building project.

Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World had been published in Portuguese, so ICNG used prayer cards to pray for different nations during each midweek prayer meeting. Some started dreaming of developing a local world mission program. However, due primarily to the construction needs, it was becoming absolutely impossible to think about financing evangelistic efforts of any kind. And to make things worse, even basic needs of people in the church were being neglected.

Thus during the following year an important decision became inevitable. After much prayer, Gerson Sousa and Robert Fife approached the church in repentance and asked the people to follow. Some resisted the change, feeling that they had invested too much in the building to turn back. But despite this resistance, a change of mind actually took hold in the congregation. From that time on, people and the mission of the church took priority over buildings and projects.

The construction proceeded very slowly as permitted by available finances. Meanwhile, the church sent support promptly to the missionaries on the field. The congregation moved into the unfinished building in 1989, but it took nine more years before the building was completely finished. The church continued to grow but there were also some setbacks. At times the unfinished building was an embarrassment. Other times, inflation and the rapid devaluation of the Brazilian currency made it seemingly impossible to keep up with commitments to missionaries on the field.

Nevertheless, this turning point had a great influence upon the people of ICNG. Moreover, the decisions made by one congregation in this decisive stage have affected countless individuals, many churches, an amazing number of people groups, and even several countries in different parts of the world. From that point on, the congregation has fully acknowledged and affirmed its missionary posture. Stetzer’s comments describe their outlook: “God is a missionary God in this culture and in every culture. His nature does not change with location. Therefore, a missionary posture should be the normal expression of the church in all times and places.”32 And Shenk affirms that the Great Commission “institutionalizes mission as the raison d’être, the controlling norm, of the church. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a member of his body is to live a missionary existence in the world. There is no doubt that this was how the earliest Christians understood their calling.”33 The Christians at ICNG came to understand their calling in the same way.

The congregation put together a mission team, which rehearsed a play depicting different people groups in need of hearing the gospel, such as those represented by Mexico, Portugal, India, Japan, Arabic nations, and Brazilian Indians. The play also featured major religions such as Hinduism, Islam, and Communism. This play was widely presented to churches related to the 4Cs movement and to other churches in Goiânia as well as in the nearby cities of Anápolis and Brasília. Not only people who watched it but especially those who played a part in it received the impact of its message: the urgent need to do something to make the good news accessible to all peoples who have not yet heard it.

Besides planning monthly services with a mission emphasis at ICNG, the team made itself available to preach, teach, and participate in church services, rallies, and conferences focusing on world mission whenever and wherever possible. ICNG had a thirty-minute radio program twice a week on a Christian radio station at that time. Eventually the program became solely dedicated to mission awareness, something completely unheard of as far as radio programs were concerned. Nevertheless, it had quite an impact. Listeners from diverse backgrounds would learn of the training offered at ICNG and the group study of the correspondence courses created by Missão Antioquia. These courses about the world mission of the church followed the TEE model that the leadership was so familiar with by then. Required textbooks, along with these first lessons, were The Cry of the World and The Challenge of Missions, both by Oswald J. Smith; Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World, and a self-study book published by CEIBEL called Beyond Brazil: An Introduction to Missions (Além do Brasil: Introdução a Missões). Don Richardson’s Peace Child and Bruce Olson’s For this Cross I’ll Kill You were suggested readings. Édison Queiroz’s The Local Church and Missions (A Igreja Local e Missões) on how to set up a mission program in the local church also quickly became a must-read for anyone interested in the subject. At the same time, students were required to begin learning a foreign language of their choice.

Weekly classes on Saturday evenings were followed up with tests and homework, and students were encouraged to take what they were learning to their own communities of faith and try to initiate mission teams in their midst. Some of them not only became supportive of the cause but they also became missionaries after attending Missão Antioquia or other emerging training centers in order to be further equipped. Some of the people who received this kind of training were Marilourdes Linhares, João Santos, Neuza Alves, Kléber Ribeiro, Suzeth, Fátima Silva, Goreth Silva (not related), and Josimar and Maria Helena Coelho, among others. Most of these students of world mission at ICNG will be featured in some way in the rest of this story.

Beginning in 1986, ICNG held world mission rallies annually and sometimes even twice a year. During the first few years, besides the main annual mission rally, smaller week-long events called Vacation Missionary Week (Semana Missionária de Férias) were held during the mid-year school vacation period in July. Together with such rallies, the faith-promise program was also initiated. Alcides Piantola, who was planting a new church in Brasília, was among the first to be supported in this way. Even though the facilities were extremely rustic for several years as the new building continued under construction, some of the most prominent mission leaders in Brazil such as Ken Kudo,34 Josué Martins,35 Wilbur “Gilberto” Pickering,36 Jonathan Santos,37 Waldemar Carvalho,38 and Édison Queiroz, among others, were featured speakers at ICNG during those years. As a result, these rallies became an important and much anticipated event in Goiânia.

Besides the keynote speakers, the rallies also included teams representing mission organizations such as the recently formed South-America Project (Projeto América do Sul),39 Operation Mobilization (Operação Mobilização—OM)40 and their Logos I ship, the YWAM (Jovens Com Uma Missão—JOCUM)41 ministry King’s Kids, Missionary Aviation Fellowship (Asas de Socorro),42 and the team from Word of Life (IBPV), among others. As a result, several members often went, at their own expense, to world mission conferences at Missão Antioquia, First Baptist Church in Santo André over six hundred miles (1,000 km) away in the state of São Paulo, and Wycliffe/SIL (Missão ALEM) in Brasília, among others. This further spurred their interest in joining teams and taking short term cross-cultural mission trips with some of the above organizations.

Patrícia (Almeida) Leroy, for example, who was a key member of the mission team at ICNG during the first several years, joined the OM campaign in Argentina in July 1988 shortly after their Logos I ship had run aground on rocks in the Strait of Magellan. Two years later, she took a ten-day course on Islam, Proyecto Magreb, organized by COMIBAM in Orlando, Florida. And in 1991, after graduating in Nursing and Obstetrics from the Catholic University (Universidade Católica de Goiás),43 she went to Rio de Janeiro for another OM campaign while their Logos II ship was anchored there.

The ICNG members, especially the women, found many creative solutions to offset the cost of the mission rallies. Cakes were baked to be sold on the campus of the State University, homemade jam, snacks and meals were prepared for a fee; yard sales, house cleaning, and car washes organized by the teens were all ways to gather needed funds for such events.

The dedication of the handful of people on the mission team during the first several years was tremendous. Beside their regular involvement in the life of the church, they often spent many hours not only planning and organizing these mission awareness events but also hosting those who came from out of town, preparing meals, participating on the praise and worship team, and whatever else was necessary. At the time of these small beginnings, not everyone in the church shared the vision, let alone the burden, but those who did were definitely willing to go the “second mile.” In later years, several additional teams formed that shared the load.

It is also well worth mentioning that regular prayer played an important role in these activities. By this time the prayer cards for different nations were used as an integral part of practically every church activity, including Sunday services, Sunday school classes for all ages, mid-week services, and, of course, prayer meetings that focused specifically on missionaries and the world mission of the church. People often came half an hour before the main gathering on Sunday just for that purpose.

Through this culture of prayer God raised up several Christians with a heart to support missionaries. For example, praying for missionaries became a strong emphasis of the small group that gathered in Getúlio and Lielcinha Magalhães’s home. Affectionately called cultinho (little worship service), these mid-week meetings were geared toward children in the neighborhood and lasted five years (1987–1991). Djenane Cortez Santos and her whole family were eventually baptized at ICNG as a result of the cultinho. In her own words, focusing on world mission was part and parcel of her spiritual upbringing.44 During that same period, her future husband João Santos began participating in the mission training sessions at ICNG and eventually found his way to Missão Antioquia. João and Djenane did not intend to become missionaries to a foreign culture but rather to send and support missionaries. It was through their influence, for example, that the WestGate Church in San José City, California, sent a short-term mission team to work with Missão Antioquia in July 2005.

In 1996, João Márcio, who had just joined the pastoral team at ICNG, led the church to be involved in REVER,45 a ministry which trains “restoration teams” with the objective of helping people overcome emotional and relational trauma through Jesus Christ. Through the work of the Holy Spirit this ministry brought health to the church and further enabled the church to follow its missionary vocation.

And during the most difficult crises, whether in the national economy or in the local leadership, it was Gerson Sousa who kept the church always accountable to the missionaries they supported, so that those who had been sent out would never be let down. Near the end of 1999, João Márcio became the lead pastor of ICNG, relieving Gerson Sousa of that responsibility; nevertheless, Gerson continues to serve voluntarily on the pastoral team.

Unfortunately, along with all the excitement about world mission, there were always some people in the church who wanted to see the building finished and the church experiencing the same kind of numerical growth and visibility that other churches in Goiânia were enjoying. As a result, several leaders and people who were being equipped for the ministry gradually left the congregation in frustration, especially between 1993 and 1996. They joined other churches in town that were seemingly more dynamic and whose successes in the Christian ministry were more readily apparent. In contrast, João Márcio and his wife Gorete determined to remain active members of the congregation. They believed that God certainly had good plans for this community of faith and they wanted to play their part in those plans.

This transition period was extremely difficult. There were often no more than fifty people present at the main worship services. There were those who even doubted that the doors of the church would remain open much longer. They argued that the emphasis on cross-cultural ministries was extremely exaggerated while the building remained uncared for. It is true that the great efforts to put the finishing touches on the floor, ceiling, and walls during 1995–1997 brought a great boost to the local dynamics of the congregation. However, it is also well recognized now that many of the great accomplishments both locally and beyond are due to ICNG’s faithfulness to its world mission vocation, which never allowed the vision to die out, even during the hardest times.

“They laid their hands on them
and sent them off . . .”46

For more than 25 years now, the church’s faithfulness has borne fruit in the long succession of members that it has sent out as transcultural missionaries. Their individual stories deserve a book of their own; here I will give only the briefest of introductions in order to show the extent to which God’s word has spread around the globe as a result of the Spirit’s work at ICNG. For years the Holy Spirit had been preparing a powerful swell of mission fervor at ICNG, and that swell crested and broke into a wave in August 1985, when Robert and Derlani Fife were called to work with Portugal Christian Mission at the southern end of Europe.

. . . to Portugal

The Holy Spirit had prepared Robert’s and Derlani’s hearts to make such a decision through the church’s search for a full-time minister. Through prayer, they had decided they were willing to leave Robert’s well-paid job at a private school to fill this need for the church, which meant living on only ten percent of Robert’s previous salary. While the church board prayed about it, missionaries Dick and Sarah Robison wrote inviting the couple to help with the new work in Portugal. By this time, their hearts were ready for that kind of a challenge, and both were absolutely sure the Lord was calling them to full time cross-cultural ministry.

This call was surprisingly unexpected at first, but the church quickly showed its support for the Fife’s decision. The congregation believed that world mission deserves the best we have to answer God’s call. Robert and Derlani were among the main leaders at ICNG at that time, and the church dedicated them to God’s mission in another corner of the globe.

Of course, God began to provide in different and often unexpected ways. For example, in January 1987 former missionary Stan Wohlenhaus challenged all present at the American missionary gathering of the 4Cs in Cuibá to adopt the Fife mission to Portugal as a joint project. Each family gave increments of $25 every month. Those contributions continued for several years thereafter, some even to the present day.

However, Robert and Derlani understood it was part of their call to raise support first and foremost among Brazilian churches. Their main goal was a world mission awakening. So, the family visited many churches to share their vision and raise prayer warriors for the mission. Some of those congregations were small and poor at the time. To this day, however, many report that they continue to pray for the Fifes in Portugal every single day, according to the verse imprinted on the very first prayer card which the Fifes used to promote the mission: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in earnest prayer to God on my behalf” (Romans 15:30). During the first few years in Portugal, as much as two-thirds of their support came from Brazil.47

Robert, Derlani, and their four children became the first missionaries formally sent out by the 4Cs churches in Brazil. They arrived in Portugal early on Sunday, March 20, 1988. Dick Robison met them at the port of Santos in Lisbon and drove them to Carcavelos where they were able to meet the church gathered to worship that morning. As the children grew, every member of the family had ample opportunities to serve in this small but growing community of faith. This joint effort of Brazilian and American churches and individuals has lasted 23 years.

Robert and Derlani have been active as initiators and/or leaders for a variety of ministries in Portugal and around the Portuguese-speaking world, such as the Support Ministry for Pastors and Churches (Ministério de Apoio a Pastores e Igrejas); a women’s prayer fellowship, Lydia Fellowship International;48 the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance;49 and most recently, a new ministry, Bridges to Life, with the purpose of promoting the unity of the Body of Christ and providing “networking relationships and/or pastoral care for missionaries among the Portuguese-speaking peoples so that the unreached might be reached in their own countries and in the world, through healthy ministers, healthy missionaries, and healthy churches.”50 While based in Portugal, their ministry and experience will continue to extend beyond borders according to their discernment of God’s direction.

. . . to Spain and Mexico

When Valdecy DaSilva dropped his course in Physics and Math at the Catholic University (Universidade Católica de Goiás) to go to Colegio Biblico in Eagle Pass, Texas, in 1983, his intention was to receive a theological education in order to return and serve his own people in pastoral ministry. But while working on the Mexican side of the border, the experience of learning a new language and the exposure to a new culture made world mission an integral part of his vocation to reach people for Christ. His zeal for missions grew during his evangelistic endeavors upon his return to ICNG in the summer of 1984.51 Through his short-term mission trips, but especially through the invitation of missionaries to Spain, Bill and Ginny Loft, DaSilva felt drawn to mission work in Spain. But he first needed to fulfill his commitment to return to ICNG.

DaSilva graduated in 1987 and married Mirna Salazar in Eagle Pass that May. In July, they moved to Goiânia. Representing Mexico, Mirna was soon integrated into the play that focused on unreached peoples and world religions. Meanwhile, DaSilva immediately began picking up Robert’s responsibilities at ICNG as Robert and his family prepared to move to Portugal. During 1988, DaSilva put his efforts toward the resumed building project as well as teaching at the Theological School of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (Escola Teológica das Igrejas de Cristo). But in April 1989, when missionary Bill Loft passed away unexpectedly, DaSilva and his family received an urgent call to aid the widow Ginny Loft in the continuing work in Murcia, Spain. Gerson Sousa and DaSilva went into the recently covered but still very unfinished church building that day and had an “Acts 13 experience.” This further convinced Gerson that ICNG should be like the church in Antioch that obediently sent out their most capable leaders as missionaries:

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the ruler, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13:1–3)

In response to the pressing need, Valdecy, Mirna, and their first child traveled to Spain only a month later. They spent their first month on the Iberian Peninsula with the church in Carcavelos, Portugal, where Robert and Derlani Fife were serving with the Portugal Christian Mission team. This was the beginning of a long and mutually encouraging partnership between the works in Portugal and Spain. Valdecy and Mirna helped plant a church in Murcia during their first two years, then returned to Spain for a second term from 1995 to 1998. Since 1999 they have served as missionaries among the Mexican churches, helping to equip their leadership and spur their interest in supporting and sending out missionaries of their own. Valdecy also completed master’s degrees from Johnson Bible College and Emmanuel School of Religion and serves on the faculty of Colegio Biblico. The family continues to lend their support to the church in Spain by traveling there every other summer. In addition, the DaSilvas continue to make their house in Goiânia available to any minister of the congregation who is in most need at any given time in order to free up funds for the mission budget.

. . . to Mozambique

Former professional soccer player Kléber Ribeiro was baptized in 1988 at ICNG while he was playing on one of the top teams in Goiânia. Supported by ICNG, he decided to go to Missão Antioquia for mission training, then on to plant a church in his hometown, Dianópolis. The he met, baptized, and married Juracema Gomes Araújo. The dream and determination of Geraldo Borges to send a 4Cs mission team from Brazil to the Makhuwa people in Mozambique, then considered the largest unreached people group in the world, soon captured Kléber and Juracema. They spent the next months preparing through internships and the Linguistics and Missiology Course at Wycliffe/SIL (Missão ALEM).

Borges’s own story is inspiring. His awakening to the world mission of the church came through the influence of missionary David Sanders and through a visit to ICNG in the mid-eighties, where Borges was impressed that even the children spoke of how the world mission came before the building project at ICNG.52 Soon thereafter he began praying about doing mission work in Mozambique because of the shared Portuguese language. In 1991 Borges and his wife Sebastiana “Tianinha” took a shipment of typewriters, sewing machines, and fabric to Tete, Mozambique, in the middle of the long-lasting civil war. While there, they visited the Churches of Christ (a cappella) in the Nampula region. They found out that these churches were among the Lomwe people but that there were none among the Makhuwa people. Unfortunately, Tianinha fell ill during this trip to Africa. She never recovered, but encouraged Borges until her last breath to keep on preaching the gospel.

Thus began the dream that would take Kléber and Juracema to the Makhuwa people in October 1996. Borges had done the ground work by traveling to Africa every year since 1991. He was already on location with a vehicle and some other supplies when their plane landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. It then took them five days to drive over twelve hundred fifty miles (2,000 km) to their destination. They had arrived for a four-year term and knew that they could count on Borges’s annual missionary-care visits and possibly those of other Christian leaders.

Kléber had repeatedly said that they were going to work with the Mozambicans and not for them, so the team encouraged new converts to share their faith and plant new churches while letting the changes in cultural aspects take their time.53 This emphasis on local leadership has facilitated phenomenal growth of the church in northern Mozambique. As of 2006, hundreds had been baptized and native leadership had been established in fifty-five locations, thirty-five of which had some kind of a meeting place erected. These churches have sent their first cross-cultural missionaries to the Koti people on the coast and especially on several islands, and to the traditionally fierce Makonde people in the northernmost region of Mozambique. The dream and determination continue.

. . . to the Ianomami Indians

Nara (Coelho) Taets grew up at ICNG surrounded by the mission of the church. Her parents, Josimar and Maria Helena Coelho, were both among the first involved in the mission-focused plays and in the organization of the earliest mission rallies. Josimar’s physical appearance and childhood experiences on an Indian reservation earned him a part representing Brazilian Indians in the mission play. Later, the church sent him and Maria Helena to participate in a missionary conference at Missão Antioquia which focused on Brazilian Indians. The influence was not lost on young Nara.

In 1998 Nara married Elias Taets, who had come from a Baptist church in the state of Minas Gerais. Both Elias and Nara had completed several rounds of theological and missional training, and in October 1999, they moved to Roraima to work among the Ianomami Indians in the Palimi-Ú village, which is over three thousand miles (4,800 km) northwest of Goiânia near the Venezuelan border. Both Nara’s parents and her sister have visited them several times in order to lend support to their ministry. In 2005, pastors João Márcio, Júlio César, and other ICNG leaders had the life-changing, cross-cultural experience of spending one week with them, further cultivating the missional orientation of the sending church. Elias, Nara, and their daughter continue to live and work in the Palimi-Ú village.

These long-term missionaries from ICNG live and work primarily on four different continents: Africa (Mozambique), Europe (Portugal), North America (Mexico), and South America (Ianomamis in northern Brazil). Adding up the monthly support sent to each family, ICNG maintains a world mission budget that is currently close to $12,000 a year. Despite the instability of the Brazilian economy over the years, the congregation has assumed responsibility for supporting its missionaries monthly in US dollars. This means that whenever the faith-promise income is insufficient, which is more the norm than the exception, the church takes money from the general fund to complete their commitment to missionaries. At times, this commitment to missionaries has been the equivalent of over fifty percent of the church’s regular income. As Wilma Sousa (not related to Gerson) recalls, “It is our duty. We, as a church, laid hands on them. We must also take care of them.”54 People and the world mission of the church continue to be the top priority at ICNG.

. . . to the ends of the earth

The list of shorter-term missionaries supported by ICNG over the years is too long to list. But mention must at least be made of those who were baptized at ICNG and who have served as cross-cultural missionaries for at least two years.

Tânia (Curado) DeGrave was completely ostracized by her extended family when she was baptized at ICNG in 1981. Her unstoppable evangelistic fervor brought the mission play to ICNG in 1986 and influenced countless young people to equip themselves for missions. That same fervor took Tânia to the European continent for missions in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Belgium. She now lives with her husband Theo in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where they find themselves frequently sharing their life in Christ with people who are aggressively opposed to Jesus.

Avanilde Silva, the catalyst behind the children’s mission education program, married missions-minded Tim Bachmann. After no less than seven years of persistent preparation, and supported solely by Brazilian churches, the Bachmanns moved to Guinea-Bissau in January 2002 to do pioneer work among the Felupe people.

Avanilde’s sister, Maria Arenilde (Silva) Carvalho, was baptized two years after Avanilde. Arenilde, too, dedicated herself to missions, primarily through a series of Operation Mobilization (OM) commitments. During one of these 6-month missions she met and married Paulo Carvalho, and together they have repeatedly worked with church plants in Brazil, including three years in Uruguaiana, on the border of Argentina.

It was Arenilde who first invited Neuza (Neto) Peters to visit ICNG. In the first missions play, Neuza played the part of the Indian people in Asia. This experience made a strong impact on her, and she started to do research about India and the spiritual needs of that huge nation. In 1994 she spent her first six-month term in India, and in 2001 and 2002 returned to India with her husband Steve Peters for two more terms. Unable to obtain visas for a more extended period of time, they live in Mansfield, England, but continue to dream of serving Christ on the Indian subcontinent again in the future. ICNG supported Neuza between 1993 and 2002.

As a linguistics student at the Federal University of Goiás in 1986, Eliane Rezende de Ariño understood her call to serve the cause of Christ in some role related to languages. Thus she went to work with newly-founded Missão Kairós as a Linguistics and Missiology teacher for three years in the nation of Colombia. Eliane has continued her graduate and doctoral studies in Linguistics, focusing on the Creole languages of Colombia and Guinea-Bissau. She was also a key influence for mission for many of the youth at ICNG, including young Nara (Coelho) Taets, whose first cross-cultural experience was a three-month research trip through the Colombian mountains with Eliane.

Tom and Libby’s youngest son, Jefferson “Jeff” Fife, was born in Brazil and raised at ICNG. He and his wife Mônica planted a church in the Pirituba area of São Paulo, then another among the Portuguese-speaking population in Peabody, Massachussetts. From Jeff’s experience at ICNG, he believed that any new church should be thinking of ways to get involved in world mission from day one.55 The initial five members of the church all had jobs, so at their very first meeting in July 1994 they decided to send $100 every month to a relative of one of the members who was doing missionary work with YWAM in the Amazon region. Thus began their mission program, which has continued to grow to this day.

Jeff’s vision for missions also continued to grow, resulting in the River of Life Ministries (RLM), which focuses on taking the gospel to the Portuguese-speaking world. As of 2006, RLM had planted 7 churches across Brazil, with a further 7 churches opting to come under the RLM umbrella. The national leaders of these churches are partially supported by RLM during a period of two years, after which the congregation is expected to take full responsibility for its expenses. At the same time, RLM provides each church with discipleship tools and ongoing leadership training. Each church is also expected, from the very beginning, to give ten percent of their income toward church planting and world mission.56 RLM reports that, in 2005, as much as thirty percent of the total given back for this purpose was sent to aid the work of Kléber and Juracema and their team of national church planters in Mozambique.

Not only Jeff and Mônica, but other church planters mentioned in this paper, have shown evidence of four important things which, according to Roger Greenway, the apostle Paul and his co-workers did for the new Christians in their time: (1) they taught aggressively a clear and concise doctrine centered around Jesus; (2) they spelled out a moral system of behavior centered in the lordship of Jesus Christ over all areas of life; (3) they promoted a high level of cohesion and group identity that reached beyond the local group; and (4) they taught about the Holy Spirit and the fellowship of the Spirit-anointed.57

Many others have used their vocations to further the mission. For example, Dr. William Silveira was baptized at ICNG as a young boy and has become an excellent dentist. Not only has he treated missionaries at very low cost as his contribution to their mission but, since the year 2000, he has also been on no less than eleven short term missions trips on a boat that ministers to villages along the Amazon River, over two thousand miles (3,200 km) north of Goiânia.

And the stream of mission from ICNG continues. Each new generation is inspired by the missionary examples of the previous generation, and the fire that God’s Spirit lit in the mid-eighties continues to grow.58

Lessons Learned While On Mission

Twenty-five years of mission have taught ICNG several important lessons:

The world mission of the church must be prioritized above buildings and programs.

Despite the many voices calling for a larger building, ICNG made the firm decision to give first to missions. God has rewarded that decision hundreds of times over, and as a result churches around the world exist to give praise to God. Maintaining that decision required much sacrifice and determination, especially during the decade without a finished building. ICNG has since grown to over 350 in attendance, and continues to prioritize missions first.

Send out and support those with a clear call that is witnessed and confirmed by the community of faith.

The leadership at ICNG likes to say that they are in the business of sending the best that they have to answer God’s specific call, whatever it may be. Each missionary, together with his/her family, that ICNG sent was the best they could offer to God’s call. Likewise, Gerson Sousa was the best ICNG had to answer God’s call to remain in Goiânia. João Márcio and others who have joined the pastoral team were also the best ICNG had at the time to answer God’s call for additional staff.

The resilience and perseverance of missionaries in the face of adversities helps the church to stay the course.

Several missionaries have persevered even when financial support has been inadequate. Their attitude in turn has encouraged ICNG to remain faithful to its commitments at all cost. The snowball effect of this is that the perseverance of ICNG and its leadership in setting world mission as a top priority has been an inspiration to many other Christian leaders and churches.59

Long-term commitments on the part of at least some missionaries are absolutely essential for the continuing health of a world mission.

Unfortunately, there are also many Christian leaders and churches in Brazil today that have become discouraged by the early return of missionaries without accomplishing what they intended, often due to the lack of adequate preparation and/or support. This calls for an urgent response to the need for missionary care among Portuguese-speaking missionaries and their families.60

Close affinity with missionaries who have been sent out maintains the vision to prioritize cross-cultural ministries.

At times when the vision might have become blurred by competing needs, it has often helped for missionaries to have immediate family members and close friends as active members of the congregation. There is no such thing as “out of sight, out of mind.” For the same reason, every time a missionary returns home for any period of time, the flame of world mission is rekindled and burns much stronger.

It is crucial to identify and affirm local leadership as soon as possible.

No matter the missionary’s personality or style of leadership, passing the baton early on is the way to go. If one expects New Testament growth and multiplication, local leaders should be adequately equipped from the start and given full responsibility for the continuity of the mission.

And finally, the Holy Spirit can and must be trusted with the outcome.

Although Tom Fife had always stressed the need for ICNG to be self-supporting, seeing it become mission-minded and strongly supportive of the world mission of the Church is much more than he had ever imagined. Again, only the Spirit of God could have orchestrated things the way they occurred in order for them to have the results as one sees them today. Christian leaders are sometimes guilty of making the attempt to keep the ministry in some kind of green-house state with every detail under complete control. I am more convinced now than ever before that all I have to do is to be faithful to God’s call in my life and ministry and let the Holy Spirit take care of the details. As former translations consultant and teacher of missiology Charles Taber has written, “the Bible does not need to be protected by a nineteenth-century philosophical scaffold; it just needs to be turned loose . . . the national church [is] capable of being guided by the Holy Spirit using the Scriptures.”61

And God looked down and saw . . .

As I reflect on ICNG and its unusual vocation for world mission I am reminded of one of the most celebrated single woman missionaries in modern history, Gladys Aylward. Having arrived in China completely on her own in 1932, she grasped every opportunity to become immersed in the culture and later became a Chinese citizen. After nearly twenty years caring for dozens of war orphans and later serving a local church in evangelism and charity work, the “small woman” of China traveled worldwide to share her experience. In her biography written by Ruth Tucker, however, we find that despite “all the service she had rendered and the fame she had acquired, she was never fully secure in her calling—particularly that God really wanted to entrust a woman with responsibilities he had given her.”62 Her doubts were confided to a friend in her later years:

I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China. There was somebody else. . . . I don’t know who it was—God’s first choice. It must have been a man—a wonderful man. A well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing. . . . And God looked down . . . and saw Gladys Aylward.63

In like manner, one might rationalize that ICNG was not God’s first choice for what has been accomplished so far for world mission. “Certainly,” one might continue to imagine, “there was some other church. It must have been a big one. A well-educated church in a more affluent environment. But, for some unknown reason, they decided not to answer the call. . . . And God looked down . . . and saw ICNG.”

Robert Fife and his wife Derlani were the first transcultural missionaries sent out by the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Brazil. Since 1988 they have served in Carcavelos, Portugal, where they have led a variety of ministries, including Ministério de Apoio a Pastores e Igrejas (MAPI) and the Evangelical Alliance of Portugal. Their passion for taking the gospel to the Portuguese-speaking world is born out in their continuing ministry, entitled Bridges to Life (http://bridgestolife-robertderlanifife.blogspot.com). The Fifes have 4 children and 6 grandchildren. Robert can be contacted at robertofife@gmail.com.

Bibliography

Allen, Roland. The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962.

Beyerhaus, Peter. “The Three Selves Formula: Is It Built On Biblical Foundations?” The International Review of Missions 53, no. 212 (October 1964): 393-407.

Bonk, Jonathan J. Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem. American Society of Missiology 15. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Bridges to Life. “M. Statement.” http://bridgestolife.net.

Ekström, Bertil. “Mission in and from Brazil.” Address delivered at a joint meeting of the Associação de Missões Transculturais Brasileiras and the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies, 2005.

Fife, Robert. “Member Care for Portuguese-Speaking Missionary Families.” Unpublished paper, 2004.

Greenway, Roger S. and Timothy M. Monsma. Cities: Missions’ New Frontier. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Hesselgrave, David J. Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.

Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. “Capital: Goiânia.” Goiás. IBGE Ciudades@. http://www.ibge.gov.br/cidadesat/link.php?codmun=520870.

Koyama, Kosuke. Water Buffalo Theology. 25th anniversary ed., rev. and expanded. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999.

O’Donnell, Kelly. Doing Member Care Well: Perspectives and Practices from Around the World. Globalization of Mission Series. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2002.

Prado, Oswaldo. “A New Way of Sending Missionaries: Lessons from Brazil.” Missiology: An International Review 33, no. 1 (2005): 48-60.

Shenk, David W. and Ervin R. Stutzman. Creating Communities of the Kingdom: New Testament Models of Church Planting. Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1988.

Shenk, Wilbert R. Write the Vision: The Church Renewed. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001.

Stetzer, Ed. Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003.

Taber, Charles R. “My Pilgrimage in Mission.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 29, no. 2 (2005): 89-93.

Taylor, Bill, ed. Too Valuable to Lose: Exploring the Causes and Cures of Missionary Attrition. Globalization of Mission Series. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1997.

Thompson, Phyllis. A Transparent Woman: The Compelling Story of Gladys Aylward. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971.

Tucker, Ruth. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.

Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996.

The gospel according to James resonates deeply with the apostolic gospel. This gospel is not to be confused with the popular notion of personal salvation. Rather, James understands the gospel to be the culmination of Israel’s story in the story of the Lord Jesus Messiah—his life, death, burial, resurrection, exaltation, and consummation. Because this saving story is gospel, James is a rich resource for missional praxis.

Come hell or high water, Luther said what he thought and acted on it. In the first edition of his New Testament translation, called the Septemberbibel, Luther placed the letters of James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation at the back of the Bible. His infamous words about James were that it was “an epistle of straw,” and the reason for his comment I shall take up with you today. He said, “. . . for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”2 Well, there you have it: James can be discounted because it has no gospel. Moreover, if mission is connected to that gospel of Luther’s, then James has nothing to do with mission. I’ll challenge this in what follows, but first I want to turn to a recent discussion of the “gospel” of James, that by Rob Wall, who has written one of the finest and most stimulating commentaries on James that exists.3

Wall’s approach to the “gospel” of James is to set out the “master story” of James. Wall proposes a “pattern of salvation,” which is “vaguely covenantal in substance and narrative in shape,” and this forms a “theological subtext for the entire composition.” For Wall, James becomes a tool for mission. He finds four elements to this narrative theology in James. First, the sovereign God is able to save and to destroy (4:12); second, this one true God sends forth the “word of truth” (1:18); third, this sent word saves those who humbly receive it (1:21), and fourth, those who receive that divinely-sent word will be saved at the coming triumph of God’s reign (1:12; 2:5; 5:7–9). Well, yes, but there’s a problem. Having taught James for nearly three decades now, and having written a commentary that is longer than it ought to be, I read this list and I say to myself, “Well, yes, Rob, but I’m not sure that’s what James is about.” Wall makes a connection between the word “gospel” and the word “salvation” and then reframes both into a narrative approach—and I can’t say I disagree with anything in his narrative ideas. What I do wonder about is why the word gospel got filtered through the word “salvation.” Is the gospel the same as “salvation”? Well, of course, some of you will say “What a stupid question.” But I’m going to stake a claim now that gospel is not the same as “salvation” and that, while I like the substance of Rob’s narrative, calling that narrative the “gospel” for James misses the point.

If Rob Wall’s approach is not completely satisfactory, and if Luther’s is unacceptable, I suggest that the problem with both is how they define “gospel.” Even though Luther could say things closer to what I shall contend later, what is clear about Luther’s problem with the gospel in James is that Luther’s gospel is about justification by faith, and since James gets this exactly backwards in 2:14–26, and since James seems to be so in love with “Torah” (read: Law), James doesn’t have the gospel. Luther’s equating of gospel with justification by faith has become the custom in Protestant and evangelical circles. Let’s make this clear. When you ask the ordinary Protestant and evangelical the question “What is the gospel?” you will get variations on one theme: the gospel is about what God has done to save us from our sins so we can be reconciled with God and spend eternal life on the other side of hell. If this is the case, then James is of little use in missional praxis in the church today.

I begin with D.A. Carson, who in a Gospel Coalition address, summarized the gospel for many in these words:4

The gospel is integrally tied to the Bible’s storyline. Indeed, it is incomprehensible without understanding that storyline. God is the sovereign, transcendent and personal God who has made the universe, including us, his image-bearers. Our misery lies in our rebellion, our alienation from God, which, despite his forbearance, attracts his implacable wrath. But God, precisely because love is of the very essence of his character, takes the initiative and prepared for the coming of his own Son by raising up a people who, by covenantal stipulations, temple worship, systems of sacrifice and of priesthood, by kings and by prophets, are taught something of what God is planning and what he expects. In the fullness of time his Son comes and takes on human nature. He comes not, in the first instance, to judge but to save: he dies the death of his people, rises from the grave and, in returning to his heavenly Father, bequeaths the Holy Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of the ultimate gift he has secured for them—an eternity of bliss in the presence of God himself, in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. The only alternative is to be shut out from the presence of this God forever, in the torments of hell. What men and women must do, before it is too late, is repent and trust Christ; the alternative is to disobey the gospel.

Carson’s appeal to the storyline of the Bible is shaped by what might be called the plan of salvation. In shorter compass, Tim Keller sees much the same plan at work though he ups the ante by seeing cosmic redemption at work in the gospel. But by the time he’s done, his gospel is more or less the personal plan of salvation:

The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. . . . Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God fully accomplishes salvation for us, rescuing us from judgment for sin into fellowship with him, and then restores the creation in which we can enjoy our new life together with him forever.”

And J. I. Packer joins Carson and Keller:

I formulate the Gospel this way: it is information issuing in invitation; it is proclamation issuing in persuasion. It is an admonitory message embracing five themes. First, God: the God whom Paul proclaimed to the Athenians in Acts 17, the God of Christian theism. Second, humankind: made in God’s image but now totally unable to respond to God or do anything right by reason of sin in their moral and spiritual system. Third, the person and work of Christ: God incarnate, who by dying wrought atonement and who now lives to impart the blessing that flows from his work of atonement. Fourth, repentance, that is, turning from sin to God, from self-will to Jesus Christ. And fifthly, new community: a new family, a new pattern of human togetherness which results from the unity of the Lord’s people in the Lord, henceforth to function under the one Father as a family and a fellowship.

Tom Wright thinks this approach is fine so far as it goes, yet as he has said in numerous settings, what they are saying is true, though it is not what Paul meant by the term “gospel.” So Wright formulates the gospel in other terms:

The gospel is the royal announcement that the crucified and risen Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again according to the Scriptures, has been enthroned as the true Lord of the world. When this gospel is preached, God calls people to salvation, out of sheer grace, leading them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord.

So, when we ask about James’ gospel, and about mission as its corollary, we have to decide if we are really asking this: Did James teach the plan of salvation? That is, did James teach that God loves us and that God is holy? That we are sinners? That we need forgiveness? That Christ died in our place and for our sins? That we need to repent and believe? If that is the gospel, I’d have to say I can’t know from his letter that James believed in that gospel and it puts the book in jeopardy for anyone who cares about that kind of missional praxis. Rob Wall did explore one way of doing this, and it’s as good as it gets in James, but if we mean personal plan of salvation when we say gospel, then I’d have to stop now and say we’re wasting our time.

Obviously, I wouldn’t have chosen this topic if that is as far as we could go. So I must have something up my sleeve, and I do, and I want now to explore what that is. I’m going to suggest that Tom Wright is more or less right, that the gospel and the personal plan of salvation are not one and the same thing, and that we can discern the gospel from the apostolic writings and that once we do that, we can explore all over again if James teaches the gospel. And I will suggest he does and that the book of James is therefore of value for missional praxis today. But it’s going to take us awhile to get there. That’s okay, we’re academics, and we like tedium. It sure beats getting your book scorched in the media and having prominent pastors “farewell” you in Twitter-world.5

The Apostolic Gospel

Before we can turn to James, we need to get the apostolic gospel on the table and make it abundantly clear. How do we do that? I suggest we ask the apostolic authors themselves, and when we ask that question we are forced into a new set of categories. There are three places to go to discern how Jesus and the apostles understood the gospel, and it all begins with a simple observation. To gospel was to announce or to proclaim or to declare good news about something—like a wedding or a military victory. So when Jesus and the apostles were talking about the “gospel” they were talking about some kind of declaration they were prepared to make. What was that declaration about?

First, according to the apostle Paul there was an already existing tradition that outlined or stated what the gospel was. Paul is either passing on that tradition by quoting it, or he is summarizing what the tradition was, in 1 Cor 15. There is some dispute here, and without time to develop this I will only state my view: the apostolic tradition of the gospel is found in 1 Cor 15:1–28 and not just in 15:3–8. In other words, the apostolic gospel includes the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, the exaltation, and the consummation of all things. There’s more here. The apostolic gospel deals with these facts about Jesus in a narrative framework: the gospel is to declare the Scripture story to have found its fulfillment, its completion, its zenith, its telos-point in the Story of Jesus. And there’s yet another point to make: this Story about Jesus is a saving, forgiving Story. The gospel, according to this apostolic tradition, is to declare the Story of Jesus, who is Messiah (which means King), Lord, and Son. It is to declare that the Story of Israel has found its way to Jesus and this Story is now complete, and it saves. We should observe also that there’s nothing here about God loving us—though God does; there’s nothing here about how the cross does the atoning work—all we get is “for our sins.” There’s more here than any of our gospel tracts imagine, including the Story of Israel as the only imaginable context, including the consummation of all things before the Father. There’s a whole lot here about Jesus as Lord and Messiah and King. There’s stuff here about exaltation. And there’s stuff here about resurrection. But there’s not much encouragement for that plan of salvation approach to the gospel. It’s in your Bible, so I encourage you to sit down with 1 Cor 15:1-28, read it, and to ask what the gospel looks like if this is what it is. And it is.

Second, too many Bible readers pick up Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, see the title page where it says, “The Gospel According To,” and, if they think about it, take the word “Gospel” as a kind of book. In other words, “Gospel” means Gospel genre over against, say, Acts or an apocalypse or an epistle/letter. But the Gospel of Mark opens with a line that is as much a title to the whole book as anything else: “The beginning of the Gospel about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God” (1:1), and a text like Mark 14:9, which says that “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Now this has to be the Story of Jesus and nothing else, and is a shorthand way of Mark’s speaking about his own book. Others have suggested that Matthew, too, uses the word gospel for his book, as in Matt 24:14. What is clear is that Jesus’ preaching is a gospel message, and that encompasses much of each of the Synoptic Gospels.

I belabor these points slightly because I want to say this: there must have been a reason why Mark and probably Matthew, and all the early Christians, referred to these four books as The Gospel. Not the “gospels” but The Gospel. Why did they call them The Gospel in four different forms? Because they were the gospel. What they are not, unless you are as creative as Stephen King, is an outline of how to get saved that one finds in the plan of salvation approach to defining the gospel. In other words, although the elements are present, one doesn’t find in The Gospels an orderly sorting out of how to get saved. What you do find is an orderly account of the life of Jesus. Over and over, and on every page of each of the Four Gospels, the background music to the separable stories about Jesus is Old Testament and Jewish stories. If there’s a geneaology in Matthew, there are ones in Genesis and Chronicles that Matthew picks up and—surprise, surprise—then cleverly arranges into three groups of fourteen, and David’s name in gematria6 adds up to fourteen. That’s what we mean by “gospel.” The Story of Israel is finding its wandering way into the Story of Jesus, and telling us that the Story is now complete in Jesus is just what the apostles said the gospel was all about. I could go on, but we’re trying to get our way to James, remember.

Third, long ago C. H. Dodd wrote a brilliant little book called The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, and there he made the point that the Gospels are a fleshing out of 1 Cor 15:1–28.7 But what he was really on about was the preaching in the Book of Acts, and what he found there was the apostolic gospel itself. Where? In those gospel sermons in Acts. Where? Acts 2, 3, 4, 10–11, 13, 14, and 17. Did they preach the plan of salvation as we saw above? No. What did they preach? The gospel that Paul passed on, 1 Cor 15 and the gospel that is being told in the first four books of the New Testament. What Peter and then Paul preach over and over is the same apostolic gospel: the Story of Israel has found its way in the Story of Jesus, and this Story is a saving Story for those who turn to God from their sins, believe in Jesus as Messiah, Lord, Son, and Savior, and get baptized in his name. We don’t have time to sketch each, so let me simply quote what is the most pregnant statement of the preaching of the apostles in the Book of Acts. I will quote 10:34–43:

Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached—how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.

“We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”8

What I’m contending is that this is the gospel itself. To “gospel” is to tell the Story of Jesus; to tell it as the fulfillment of the Story of Israel; to declare that Jesus is Messiah, Lord, Savior, and Son; and to summon people to repent, believe, and be baptized. If they do this, they will be forgiven and can be part of God’s messianic people, the new Israel, the church.

Now a summary: the gospel, we are arguing, saves, but it is not the plan of salvation. Nor are we led by these fundamental statements in the New Testament to think that outlining how to get saved, or arranging the various salvation statements into a powerful method of persuasion, is the gospel. No, the gospel is the announcement that Jesus completes Israel’s Story because he is the Messiah, Lord, and Savior.

What is mission then if this is the gospel? It is to announce the Story of Jesus, it is to talk about Jesus, and it is to show how the Story of Jesus completes the Story of Israel. It is to announce God, and who is God, and how we are to live before God and under God. It is to live under Jesus’ authority and wisdom, it is to bring others under that same authority and wisdom. It is to point people to Jesus, and it is to point the whole world to this Jesus. First and foremost, then, mission is about Jesus.

We can now ask if James taught the gospel, but in so doing we are not asking if he taught salvation, as Rob Wall did, but if he saw Jesus as the fitting completion of Israel’s Story. If he did, then James indeed is a gospel book, and perhaps Luther will restore James back to its proper place in the New Testament. And if James did this then we can look to James for missional wisdom.

James as a Gospeler

We begin at the beginning. Here’s how James begins his letter: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). While we are at it, I will cite the only other reference to Jesus in James. At 2:1, James says, “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” There are some very interesting debates about how best to translate these lines, especially those in 2:1, but those aren’t of significance to this discussion. What is of significance is that James twice mentions Jesus, and both times he attaches to his name the Greek word that translates the Hebrew word for Messiah. For James—and tradition tells us they were brothers, though it gets sketchy in the tradition just how they were brothers, depending on which theologian you believe: Jerome, Epiphanius, or Helvidius. For James, Jesus and Messiah go together. The fundamental claim of the gospel is to declare that Jesus, this brother of James’, was indeed the true king of Israel, the true son of God, the Messiah himself.

We need to remind ourselves of this simple fact: to call Jesus “Christ” was to call him “Messiah,” and to call him “Messiah” was to call him “King.” Yes, King of Israel, but the eschatological expectations of Judaism were not just that they would get that final Moses figure who would be also a Davidic descendant and would rule in Jerusalem. No, the expectations in the Jewish world were of a final single world ruler who would rule the nations (with a rod of iron) from Jerusalem. When the apostles and someone like James called Jesus “Messiah” they were making more than a soteriological statement. It was much closer to a liberation theology and to a political theology than a claim about personal redemption. They were saying Jesus was that long-anticipated and final Messiah who would wrap up God’s plan.

I’m thinking we could stop right here and say to Martin Luther: “Yes, Mr. Martin Luther, we know what you mean about James and the Torah, and about James and justification, but there’s plenty of gospel in this book. Mr. Luther, the sixth word of James’ letter is ‘Messiah,’ and that in and of itself is the gospel message the apostles declared.”

But this immediate strike with the word Messiah is not enough. We want to ask if James fits the apostolic gospel of 1 Cor 15 and the Gospels and the sermons in Acts. To do that we have to ask more questions, and they look like this:

• Does James talk about the life, death, burial, resurrection, exaltation, and consummation with Jesus as part of that Story?
• Does James set the Story of Jesus in the Story of Israel?
• Does James see the Story of Jesus as saving?

The Story of Jesus, From Death to Consummation

So now to those questions. We begin with the first one: Does James talk about life, death, burial, resurrection, exaltation, and consummation? Yes, to the “life” question. I will develop this in a second article: James’ letter resonates all over the place with the teachings of Jesus. Those emerged from his life. To back up one step in all fairness to the apostolic gospel: the apostolic gospel focused on the death, burial, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus as Messiah and not on his life. The incarnation theology we find in John’s Gospel is not present in the apostolic gospel tradition.

On the death and burial the same thing can be said. Not a word. But let me speculate for a moment, knowing this is not to be taken as anything like a conviction. We can assume that James knew that Jesus died; we can assume that James knew that Jesus died on the cross. No one who followed Jesus as James did could have been ignorant of the fact that he died on a cross and was buried. So, we can guess this: when James calls Jesus “Messiah” he assumes the cross was not the last word about Jesus, his brother. Therefore, it seems reasonable, if speculative, to say: when James calls Jesus “Messiah” in 1:1 and 2:1, he is calling the One who was crucified the Messiah of Israel. There is no cruciform theology here; there’s no soteriology-through-the-cross theology. But at the bottom layer there’s a story of the Jesus who was killed by the authorities in Jerusalem and crucified. That person is for James the Messiah.

But what about resurrection and exaltation? We’ve got something to go on here. In James 2:1 we have a set of words that confuse the grammarians. The problem is clear: there were some believers9 who were partial against the poor and believed in “our Lord Jesus Christ of glory.” That’s a literal rendering of the Greek. The expression “of glory” is at the end of the long phrase and leads me to think the most accurate translation is “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glorious One” or “the glorious one, the Lord Jesus Christ.”10 Permit me to quote from my commentary:11

Glory (doxa) could be conveying a translation of the Hebrew kabod or perhaps hod, shekina, or tip’eret. The term could be (1) incarnational or theophanic (e.g., 1 Cor 2:8) and suggest the very splendor and presence of God, which would render favoritism especially hypocritical. Or it could be (2) eschatological and suggest the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ after his humiliation and poverty (e.g., 2 Cor 8:9; cf. John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32), which would in turn put the behavior of the messianic community under the threat of judgment. In which case, the text of James echoes texts like Deuteronomy 10:17-18 and Sirach 35:10–15:

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing (Deut 10:17–18).

Give to the Most High as he has given to you,
and as generously as you can afford.
For the Lord is the one who repays,
and he will repay you sevenfold.
Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it;
and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice;
for the Lord is the judge,
and with him there is no partiality.
He will not show partiality to the poor;
but he will listen to the prayer of one who is wronged.
He will not ignore the supplication of the orphan,
or the widow when she pours out her complaint
(Sir 35:12–17; cf. also 10:30–31; 11:1, 4, 12–13).

If one favors the suggestion of the previous paragraph and translates “the glorious one,” there is a slight tip of the hat toward the first interpretation since the weight of the expression is on an attribute of the Lord Jesus Christ – he is the glorious one and therefore the one deserving of honor. Nonetheless, that consideration does not compel either interpretation and can be made to fit with either the theophanic or eschatological view. Sophie Laws is right: “James is not here concerned with the definition of christology [which the theophanic view emphasizes] but with the relation between faith and behaviour.”

Inasmuch as James has no other references to glory and no christology outside this passage, we are left with the option of leaving the two views in balance. If we take the theophanic view, contextually James could be emphasizing that the Lord Jesus Christ left the glorious presence of God, entered exemplarily into the impoverished state of the human condition, and has now returned to that glorious state of splendor: he is the poor and now exalted one. Therefore, the messianic community should be shamed in not identifying with the doubly glorious one who humbly identified with the poor. If we take the eschatological view, James could be exhorting the messianic community to recognize that they will have to render an account for their deference to the rich and their systemic mistreatment of the poor to the all-glorious Lord of the judgment, who, after his earthly ministry, was exalted to the right hand of God (cf. 5:7).

Either way, James assumes both resurrection and exaltation of the one who was crucified and now is the Lord Messiah. I tie this question with this observation: at the heart of the apostolic gospel was the declaration that this Jesus, the Jesus whom they had killed, God raised and exalted to the throne of God to rule alongside the Father. My contention is that James reflects the apostolic gospel tradition’s emphasis on resurrection, exaltation, and rule, while assuming without statement the crucifixion.

Before we move to our next question, one brief point about an issue that matters here: the word “Lord” in James is confusing. We can’t know always if he is referring to God, to the Father, or to the Son. But one text seems to be clearly in favor of it referring to Jesus Messiah as Lord. James 5:7, when we observe that James calls Jesus Lord at 1:1 and 2:1, perhaps refers to Jesus’ return/parousia: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord” (5:7).12 The exaltation and coming of the Lord were a part of the apostolic gospel.

The Story of Jesus in the Story of Israel

The question can be asked in a number of ways. Is the “narrative” at work in James an Israel Story narrative? Does James set the teachings of Jesus into the context of Israel’s Story? Does James set what he thinks about Jesus into Israel’s Story? And does James set his own teachings in the Story of Israel? I’d say yes to each of these, and I’d like to develop the use of the Shema in Jas 1:12 and 2:8–9, his use of the Old Testament all over the place, as well as, again, his appeal to Jesus as Messiah. But I will limit my comments to one text, Jas 1:1. James begins in a most unusual way.13 He calls his audience the “twelve tribes in the dispersion.” In this expression a hermeneutic is revealed.

The singular question is actually two/four-fold: does this pregnant expression describe an ethnic body (Jews or messianic Jews) or a metaphorical body (anyone Jewish or messianic or Christian)? And, does “Dispersion” refer to physical distance from the Land (in the physical Dispersion) or to the metaphorical sojourn-life on this earth the Christian is called to endure (in the spiritual Dispersion)?

The principles for detection of a metaphor are critical here. For a term to be metaphorical, there need to be some clues: the presence of a metaphor signifier: “as” or “like”; the impossibility of rendering something literally, as in the rich man “withering away” in 1:11; low correspondence between metaphor and analog, as would be the case if we knew that James was addressing the messianic community in Jerusalem and he used “Dispersion”; and, finally, sometimes an expression is so clearly developed that one must conclude it is metaphorical, as when James describes temptation in 1:13–15.

Do any of these apply either to “twelve tribes” or to “Dispersion”? First, this language is typical for Jews when referring to themselves as an ethnic body in the Dispersion—in other words, this is ethnically- and geographically-oriented language, and there is nothing that indicates it is a highly developed metaphor. Second, this language is dropped from this point forward, foreclosing any chance of peering into the mind of the author through other evidence. Third, the expression “Twelve Tribes” could be seen as almost per definitionem metaphorical: ten of those tribes have been lost since the Assyrian captivity. But it’s not that easy: Jews with plausible connections back to the 8th century deportation were present in the Diaspora in the 1st century and the hope of their return was a routine feature of Jewish eschatology. So, since that return is expected but has not yet occurred in the ethnic sense, to use “Twelve Tribes” must be a reference to all of Israel, and this expression probably also included the eschatological hope of reunion.14 This is how Jesus used “twelve” (Mark 3:13-19; Matt 19:28) and for Jesus there is a reconstitution of that twelve-tribe group for those who follow him and his apostles. Which means, since James stems from a messianic community shaped by a messianic hermeneutic, it is highly likely that James is writing to the “Twelve Tribes” in the sense of those ethnic Jews who are part of the apostolically-led messianic community. The single text that should clinch this for understanding James is found in Acts 15:13–21 (esp. 16–18a), when James addressed the Apostolic Conference in these words from Amos 9:11–12:

After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up,
so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—
even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.
Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things
known from long ago.

Clearly, James sees the work of Jesus to be one of restoring Israel, and the specific shape of that restoring work is the messianic community of Jerusalem led now by the twelve apostles who could easily be seen as the new heads of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Now a slight clarification of the Christian emphasis just made: the border line between this messianic community and the rest of the Jewish community is amorphous. James 2:1–13 unveils a community that still meets in a “synagogue” (2:2), and the rest of James only uses the word “church” one time (5:14). Which means that twelve tribes is both messianic and still ethno-religiously inseparable from the Jewish community. We conclude then that on balance it is more likely that James writes his letter to the messianic Jewish community, or to messianic communities, who remain attached to the non-messianic Jewish community, but who also are residing in the Dispersion, and which messianic community James understands to be the foretaste of the kingdom of God.

Our question, if you remember, is a gospel one. Does James see the Story of Jesus in the Story of Israel? If the answer is yes, then we have clear evidence of James telling us the gospel. The answer is, in light of 1:1, yes. James gospels directly when he sees his community as the community of Jesus and that community as the one that fulfills the expectations of a twelve-tribe Israel in the kingdom of God.

Now we can return to Luther.

The Story of Jesus as Saving

Luther struggled with James, and to be honest, many Christians have, because they’ve been taught to read the Bible through the law/grace dialectic or because they’ve been taught to read it through the lens of a Christian soteriology. Once soteriology was equated with gospel, James got himself in trouble. Had he known, some must be thinking, he would have clarified his thoughts.

I want to suggest both that James does have a soteriology but that James’ gospel is not a soteriological one. First, consider James and salvation. Five times James mentions salvation:

1. 1. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. (1:21)

1. 1. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? (2:14)

1. 1. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? (4:12)

1. 1. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. (5:15)

1. You should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (5:20)

“Souls” and “you” and “sinners,” as well as the “sick” are in need of salvation. The salvation James has in mind appears to be final in 1:21 and 2:14 and 4:12 and 5:20, but in 5:15 it is probably healing. We can complicate this for an endless discussion if we recognize that for James “save” and “justify” are synonyms at some level. If 2:14 says such a faith cannot “save,” that same topic and the same audience is told such a faith cannot “justify” in 2:20–26. To be sure, James gets “works” in here in ways that bugged Luther mightily, and I don’t want to pretend there are not major interpretive difficulties here (and not just because gospel and justification were equated), but the word “justify” and “save” are nearly synonymous.

What James does not tell us is whether Jesus Christ is the one who saves or justifies or whether faith in Jesus Christ is what saves. James tells us about “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glorious One” in 2:1, but he does not tell us much about that faith—except that such a faith and partiality are a living, dangerous contradiction. We could guess that anyone who said “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” in 2:24 when Paul was alive and thriving would know that the word “faith” had as its object the Lord Jesus Messiah. But James does not say that. And James speaks of forgiveness in 5:15: “and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.” But he says not a word how that might happen, and does not connect it to the cross or resurrection.

We can again guess: if James knew Jesus was crucified, and if James knew he was raised, and if he could call that Jesus the Messiah and the Lord and the Glorious One who would return, then we can guess that he thought that Jesus was also Savior. We’d be theologically solid, but we would not be fair to James.

If gospel is equated with salvation, justification, and forgiveness, we cannot say James “gospeled.” But if the apostolic gospel was about the Story of Israel finding its lost way to Jesus Christ, and if it meant announcing that Jesus was the Messiah and Lord, then James is full of gospel.

James and Mission

Now let me draw all of this together in the space that is permitted, which isn’t much. When it comes to mission we learn from James to live and to teach in light of the teachings of Jesus who is Lord, Messiah, and the Glorious One. I will develop this in our next lecture.

We also learn that being missional is to point to Jesus in all of life: when we suffer and when we do not; when we are tempted and when we are obedient; when we see the poor and how we treat the poor; when we see injustice and when we seek to establish justice. What might matter more in today’s world than ever before, and this because of the ubiquity of talk on the Internet, is that James teaches us how to live under Christ in how we talk. I’m big on the word “civility,” though I’m not sure James always lives up to what we mean by civility. But neither are we in James’ world: what James tells us is that we will be judged by our words and that as teachers we ought to teach wisely and well and reduce our words, and because he says that, I shall take his cue and conclude. Right now. On that missional note.

Scot McKnight is the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University (Chicago, Illinois). He is the author of acclaimed works such as The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others (Paraclete, 2004) and The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Zondervan, 2008), as well as various New Testament commentaries, the most recent of which is The Letter of James (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Eerdmans, 2011). His award-winning blog, Jesus Creed, is found at http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dodd, Charles H. The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1964. http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=539&C=607.

McKnight, Scot. The Letter of James. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.

Meriam-Webster Online, s.v. “gematria.” Accessed August 14, 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gematria.

Mussner, Franz. Der Jakobusbrief. 5th ed. Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 13.1. Freiburg: Herder, 1987.

Wall, Robert W. Community of the Wise: The Letter of James. New Testament in Context. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997.

Wax, Trevin. “Gospel Definitions.” http://trevinwax.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Gospel-Definitions1.pdf.

A very simple truth generated the initiative to put together an issue entitled “Mission in the Global Village”: the world has changed. That bears some expansion, not least because the world is always changing. In fact, epochal change is, if not frequent, then at least typical of the global human culturescape. Yet, even if it it necessary to guard against overexhuberance, there is no doubt that humanity is in the midst of one such momentous shift. A transformation with the global scope of the one taking place in the early twenty-first century matters for many reasons, the most important of which is that the context of God’s mission is essentially different.

How, then, has the world changed? What is so radically different that we must speak in terms of a new global context? As one naturally expects, a change of such magnitude requires a good deal more than a few paragraphs to explain. But it is fair enough to say that the world has shrunk. The vision in Donella Meadows’s 1992 “State of the Village Report” was, at that time, just about to become a reality in a new way.1 Meadows’s comparative tool, imagined for the purpose of communicating statistical information, was powerful to begin with, because she tapped into a reality that always existed: we were always a de facto world community. What was happening already when her idea began its viral email circulation around the turn of the century, however, was something qualitatively different. It is what Thomas Friedman famously labeled “Globalization 3.0”:

Globalization 3.0 is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0—the force that gives it its unique character—is the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally.2

While Friedman wrote from a primarily economic standpoint, and not without considerable controversy,3 many of his observations have proven very insightful for conversations about globalization more generally. This basic account of individual—or perhaps we should say personal—impact on the global scene may be the most important aspect of his narrative. This is the sense in which the world has shrunk, and from a missional standpoint, we must emphasize that the fundamental dynamic of such personal connectedness is relational.

Moreover, Friedman seems right to prognosticate that “this new era of globalization will prove to be such a difference of degree that it will be seen, in time, as a difference in kind.”4 The casual observer may not see much to justify the claim that things have changed so drastically, particularly when one considers the assertion that the Internet is the fundamental propeller of this new world order. Yes, many people are connected to the Web: What is the big deal? Nevertheless, the role that social media played in the Arab Spring earlier this year made more obvious the kind of impact that transcultural, personal connectedness via the Internet is having on globalization—in this instance, the globalization of democracy.

This, of course, raises the fraught questions of what one means by globalization, how it is now so different and, subsequently, what the global change might mean missiologically. Globalization has often referred to economic systems in particular, and, although this is too narrow to account for all relevant dynamics, it is undeniable that free-market capitalism has been the driving force for the establishment of the new global connectedness that makes other dynamics possible. A second typical characterization of globalization is in terms of culture, including ideology (e.g., secular democracy), language (e.g., English as lingua franca), and material culture (e.g., Coca-Cola). As the parenthetical examples suggest, aspects of wealthy, powerful countries such as the US are typically what become globalized. In combination with the fact that one of the precursors to current postmodern globalization was colonialism (Friedman’s 1.0), it is no surprise that so many find all globalization to be thinly veiled imperialism—cultural and economic imperialism rather than literal colonization, but power plays for domination nonetheless.

Yet, even at its most oppressive, globalization has never been unidirectional. Rather, it has always been about intercultural encounter and exchange. Those points of contact have often been overshadowed by ungodly power dynamics, to be sure, but what has been subsequently globalized—everything from food to philosophy—was often a matter of deliberate appropriation rather than involuntary subjugation. That is, we must not, in our critique of these power dynamics, deny the agency of the less powerful party or the impact of its own contribution to the global mélange simply because it was not the more powerful.

The problem, however, is not that there is some cosmic scorecard of whose stuff got globalized the most. Nor is the problem that cross-cultural encounters happen in the first place, as though the ideal were that all cultures would become insular and stop evolving. Both of these ideas caricature the cultural relativism that is battling for a place in the global discourse. No, the problem is not that globalization is an affront to the supposed equal “value” of all cultures; not that one culture is just-as-good-as or fine-without another culture’s globalized impact. The problem is sin. The problem is that, given the power dynamics often at work, cross-cultural encounters are marred by selfishness, greed, violence, pride, hatred, and injustice. There are indeed losers in these encounters. They do not lose because their culture does not shine as brightly on the global stage. They lose because they are oppressed, marginalized, and impoverished by the winners.

Returning to postmodern globalization in particular, the question is to what extent it produces the same results, because the real issue for missions is how to be light and leaven amidst the global reality in which we must necessarily participate. There is no doubt that, just as economic disparity is growing in the US, it is growing throughout the world in step with the spread of the free market. The fundamental error of Friedman’s construal is the expectation that the continued spread of individual empowerment to compete in the market will inevitably overcome and correct the present inequities.5 It appears that there is no invisible hand of the global market. The gap between the rich and the poor is only increasing. Insofar, then, as Globalization 3.0 is to be equated with the spread of the free market, it does indeed carry within it the legacy of disempowerment and injustice.

At the same time, the special nature of postmodern globalization is not actually capitalistic (that characteristic belonged to the previous era of globalization driven by big business). As mentioned above, capitalism funded the creation of the infrastructure necessary for the World Wide Web and all that it makes possible. In fact, the Internet has a variety of American cultural bedfellows. The personal computer itself is an American cultural product. As an advanced technology, it is particularly Western. Its basic function is an innately democratizing one. But “globo-electro-Westernization,” as Carl Raschke has called it,6 is radically unprecedented essentially by virtue of the connectedness it facilitates, not the ideologies that have gone into hyperdrive because of it.

While I make no claim that the technology is neutral, the church needs to come to terms with the fact that the world has changed because of it. Missiology has long recognized the necessity of addressing context both critically and pragmatically. The global village is our new context, for good or ill—and probably for both. As David Bosch put it in 1992, surveying the complexities of mission in global perspective just before the advent of globo-electro-Westernization, “crisis is not . . . the end of opportunity but in reality only its beginning, the point where danger and opportunity meet, where the future is in the balance and where events can go either way.”7 Much will depend on what the church makes of the new global context.

What, then, is really the nature of the new context, beyond being technologically determined? Or, in what sense is it a global village? Indeed, given the technological aspect as well as the global trend of urbanization, might it not be more accurate to speak of a global city? Some social theorists have in fact opted to think in terms of the “cosmopolis.” The city, though, does not account for the relational dynamic of postmodern globalization; it is still too big, too impersonal a metaphor. Rather, the world has become a single community, a cosmocōmē—a global village.

What this means for Christian mission is that all of the issues of globalization have become personal for Christians right where they are. The cross-cultural and the global are no longer the sole province of the “missionary.” The Christian must read the parable of the good Samaritan with a new vision: To whom will you be a neighbor in the global village? The Internet has empowered anyone with access to have a personal, global impact. This is what some have labeled “glocal” (global-local), and it is the unique inner dynamic of postmodern globalization. It is the difference in kind.

Glocalization is not separate from globalization. Globalization always involved the impact of the local on the global. To reiterate, it was always about cultural exchange—local cultural exchange. Bob Roberts Jr. describes it this way:

War is one of the oldest expressions of glocal, though it has been more from the vantage point of domination than merging. It starts locally in one part of the world and takes its intentions to another part. The local and the global merge—glocal. It’s everywhere and in every form. Pharaoh, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and others connected the world, but it was through global domination and the imposition of the victor’s customs and culture upon the victims. . . .

However, there is something substantially different about modern glocalization. Glocal connects everyone, but unlike war, it doesn’t do away with anyone’s culture and customs. It can actually strengthen them and facilitate transformation. The whole basis of connection is not domination, but information and connectedness that allow for the integration of anyone, anywhere, anytime.8

The difference that merits the new terminology is that every locale is potentially connected to every other locale without a military, political, industrial, or otherwise institutional intermediary. Glocalization is about personal connectedness between individuals and communities across the globe, not as conquerors and subjects or winners and losers but merely as global neighbors. Thus, the concern is ever more about how we will live together in a diverse global community.

Diversity is also reasserting itself more strongly through glocalization because of this mutual connectedness. In a sense, the Internet itself is the ultimate manifestation of the tendency to appropriate, adapt, and indigenize globalized phenomena. Thus, the Internet (and related digital media) is now the conduit for every other connected culture to globalize just as much as Western ones. Perhaps it is a Western cultural phenomenon that becomes globalized, but it gets filtered and reified as a new thing by other cultural neighbors with just as much agency in the global village:

This inculturating potential cautions us against homogeneity because hearers interpret with the lenses of their indigenous worldviews. Such a perspective privileges indigenous agency: the initiative and creative responses by local actors. Third-world contexts are not a tabula rasa on which foreign culture—extra space bearers—wrote their scripts. Hidden scripts abound at the level of infrapolitics.9

What is actually happening in postmodern globalization is globo-electro-localization. Rather than suffering homogenization, everyone is showing up at the village council with an equal opportunity to make their distinctive voices heard.

Unfortunately, the diversity of these voices may be intractably conflictual, or at least mutually exclusive. This is as it should be until repentance and humility permeate the discourse, because many of the voices belong to those who are on the losing end of globalization’s imperialistic legacy, and they represent the many more who cannot even dream of access to the “flat-world platform.” Beyond the humiliation and resentment engendered by these power dynamics, which many like Friedman presume to be the fuel for movements such as Islamic fundamentalism (which is making good use of glocalization), there are deeper conflicts.

Raschke, in his redux of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis, identifies Friedman’s optimism about the flat world as the “new secularist mythology.”10 The problem, he asserts, is that:

Contrary to the famous argument of Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington—right after the Soviet Union unraveled, he predicted a “clash of civilizations” where the legacies of the West and the Middle East would find themselves on an unstoppable collision course—the conflict is turning out to be one between those who assert the antireligious values of modernism and the Enlightenment on one hand and those who find ways of repackaging old religious symbols for contemporary political purposes on the other. The genuine clash of civilizations is “between the religious and the non-religious,” not between the different religious cultures.11

There is a deep cultural divide that is not just about non-Western victims of conscienceless capitalism expressing their angst. It is about an underlying difference of worldview that causes mutual connectedness to fall short of mutual understanding. To be more precise, whereas Raschke names them “antireligious values of modernism,” sociologists such as José Casanova nuance the issue by identifying multiple modernities and multiple secularisms.12 There are different configurations of modernism and secularism, and the two are quite separable. Thus, while Islamic fundamentalists are capable of adopting the “modernist” infrastructure of the flat world for their purposes, the secularist mythology—its Utopian nonreligious end—has nothing to do with it.

As members of the global village filter globalization through their worldviews, the infrastructure that makes the discourse possible remains in place, but the ideological baggage that accompanied it does not fully come through. Therefore, it is unlikely that the point of contention—secularism; even a new “compassionate flatism”13—will turn out to be the solution. Those who come to the village council meeting expecting everyone to leave their religion at the door for the sake of a relativistic, dispassionate pluralism and middle-class aspirations14 will be in the small minority.

But Raschke also asserts a second recapitulation of Huntington: “The clash of civilizations is beginning to look like a war of eschatologies.”15 In this he refers to the resurgence of religion globally, which is concomitant with the decline of secularism. Authors such as Philip Jenkins have thoroughly documented the simultaneous rise of Christianity and Islam in the “global South,” the former “third world” that was on the receiving end of imperialist globalization.16 The seemingly inexorable global prominence of these two religious blocks provides the context for Raschke’s thesis. It is the convergence of these eschatological visions with the globo-electro-local platform that constitutes the major challenge for the global village:

The globopomo [global-postmodern] resurgence of religion has set us on an inescapable collision of eschatologies. . . . This collision ultimately arises out of the profound presence of nonnegotiable differences at the soteriological core of each faith. From a theological standpoint, eschatology is not simply the ultimate disclosure of the truth of God. It is also the supernova-like revelation of difference in the sense of a grand separation of the truth from the lie. . . .

A liberal Christian, or even post-Christian, global civil society that allows a loose and mutually respectful—if not tolerant—recital of differences is looming as increasingly less possible in our globopomo environment.17

The question remains, therefore, as to what role the Western church will play. By some accounts, it is so bound up with secularism that it has little to do with either an alternative voice in the discourse or the burgeoning Southern church. It is undoubtedly in decline, even in “religious” America.18 Yet, there are also significant reformist stirrings within Western Christianity, not to mention actual subaltern movements. Although it remains to be seen just what will come of these, and they are admittedly difficult to track, sweeping trend studies such as Jenkins’s tend to overlook even the possibility of resurgence within or out of Western Christianity (even as they are willing to speculate rather freely on, e.g., the Chinese underground church). It must be noted, however, that missiology in Western Christianity has long wrestled with the issues on the table, and the tendency among “missional” groups to take mission seriously as a paradigm for being the church is an extremely positive sign.

From within the global village, then, old issues have taken on new dimensions. Paternalism and dependency are perennial concerns for missionaries. In light of globo-electro-localization, they have a different complexion. What is beyond post-colonial missions? In the shadow of the rising South, they suddenly seem multidirectional. Who is dependent upon whom? Who will be? As connectedness increases, cross-cultural intelligence and insights into the nature of worldview will be indispensable for overcoming the ethnocentrism that problematizes the discourse. Muslim-Christian dialogue has assumed center stage along with the disparity of wealth between the West and the rest. Jesus’ enacted kingdom eschatology must frame the global church’s approach to both, especially among secularized Western churches. New opportunities abound for personal, global impact: from cross-cultural encounters with immigrant neighbors to Internet-empowered service to global neighbors. The Western church is renegotiating its identity, and the majority world church is becoming the predominant agent of mission. Through it all, God is at work, for the mission is his. Will we proceed with faith and courage to face the challenges before us? The future is in the balance, and it can go either way.

This Issue

Pepperdine University Associate Professor of Religion Dyron Daughrity opens the issue with a survey of major trends in the global church. Reality on a global scale is difficult to describe and often quite eye-opening for those of us to tend to think more locally. Christianity, explains Daughrity, is “a universal, transcultural, multi-lingual religion that spans the entire breadth of the world’s surface.” The article looks to Christianity’s future, considering key issues such as the strength of the church in the global South and the place of secularization in the global mix.

Two essays on the Book of James by leading New Testament scholar Scot McKnight fill out the Missional Theology section. Originally presented at the Rochester College conference Streaming: Biblical Conversations for the Missional Frontier, these two papers do not have to do with mission in the global village per se. Then again, the missional frontier is precisely what is at issue in the global village. If McKnight’s lectures cause readers to reflect critically on the interpretive traditions of the flagging Western church and the missional implications of reading James afresh, then we remain on track.

The first two articles in the Missional Praxis section bring to the fore critical issues. Robert Reese, Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Ministry at Mid-Atlantic Christian University, expertly discusses the problem of dependency in a post-colonial, globalized setting. The legacy of colonialism still plagues the potentially fruitful “new era of cooperation between churches around the world,” he explains. The issue of dependency will not simply go away with the advent of globo-electro-localization. Senders and missionaries alike will do well to consider carefully Reese’s treatment of dependency. Similarly, Jim Harries of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission proposes an intriguing thesis about the specific dynamics of east African interactions with Western donors. Harries looks at cultural-linguistic aspects of “talking for money” related to magic in African contexts, suggesting that Westerners often unintentionally reinforce harmful worldview assumptions within already problematic patron-client arrangements.

Robert Fife’s article began as a masters thesis and, with the help of Missio Dei’s own Danny Reese, condensed into the present contribution. Fife narrates the story of a Brazilian church that became a missional force. The article is representative of one of the most important trends in the global village as the Southern church takes on the mantle of responsibility. In addition to being a moving tale, the article bears numerous practical insights.

The last Praxis article is a simple beginner’s guide for US Christians interested in initiating cross-cultural ministry among their Latino neighbors. Jim Holway, Field Coordinator for Latin American Mission Project in Miami, offers straightforward, practical advice. Those who take the first steps in relationship and service that he recommends will find themselves engaged in another important facet of mission in the global village: ministry among immigrant populations.

In the Reflections section, Dan Bouchelle challenges readers from Churches of Christ to catch up with God’s work in the challenging new global context. Marisol Rosas writes personally about her multicultural missional experiences, which are perhaps as representative of mission in the global village as anything else in the issue. Three more Streaming presentations follow: John Barton reviews the dialogue on Muslim-Christian relations revolving around Miraslov Volf’s book Allah: A Christian Response, undoubtedly a central issue in the global village. Josh Graves considers James narratively and David Fleer contributes an artistically formatted sermon on James 1:22-27. Finally, Mark Parker shares his thoughts on the recently published web document “The Missional Manifesto.”

Once a tiny Jewish sect, Christianity has become the largest religion in the history of humankind. No other religion has enjoyed such size and global influence, so far as we know. This paper probes current trends in world Christianity by surveying important turning points in its history. The latter part of the paper investigates issues related to secularization, particularly in the context of post-Christian Western Europe.

Introduction

Christianity is the largest religious institution in the history of humankind. In addition to having more devotees than any other religion, it is also the most global, most diverse, and perhaps most influential religion in history. Several of the world’s cultural blocks are today, at least in name, largely Christian: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern and Western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and parts of Asia. The enormous size and global influence of the Christian faith emphasize why Christianity must be understood as a global reality.1

But how did this happen? How did a tiny Jewish sect grow to become so large, so powerful, and so attractive to so many throughout the centuries?

This article is an exercise in macro-history. Rather than investigating a man, a movement, or an epoch, our purpose is to back up and see the bigger picture of Christian history. Gazing at this big picture causes us to ask a question: How did it happen? How did Christianity—this Middle Eastern sect—become the largest, most international, and most influential religion in the history of the world?

In this article we will:

1. Look at some general statistics that illustrate the growth of Christianity.
2. Point out pivotal moments in the 2000-year history of Christianity.
3. Highlight some trends in Christianity today that may shed light on future possibilities for this religion, giving special attention to the phenomenon of secularization.

Christianity: The Largest Religion in the World

There are around seven billion people in the world right now. One-third (33%) are Christian, one-fifth (20%) are Muslim, one-eighth (13%) are Hindu, and one-seventeenth (6%) are Buddhist. These are the only religions in the world that are statistically significant; in other words, these are the only religions that contain more than one percent of the world’s population. Judaism, Sikhism, Baha’i Faith and all other religions in the world each amount to less than half of one percent.2

This might come as something of a surprise because the world is often thought to be a religiously diverse place. Actually, the world is not as diverse as one might think. When we combine Christianity and Islam, two faiths that trace their roots to Judaism, we see that over half of humanity (54%) is either Christian or Muslim. Cultural geographers point out that these two religions prevail over 70% of the Earth’s inhabited territory.3 Christianity and Islam are, truly, world religions. Christianity is more diverse and more global—as we will see momentarily—but both of these religions are very widespread.

It is important to point out that people rarely switch religions. When this does happen, it is newsworthy, and can deeply impact the future demographics of a particular region of the world. It has been estimated that over 99% of people in the history of humanity practiced the religion their parents modeled for them.4 While it is fairly common for people to convert to new doctrines or take a fresh perspective on their own faith, outright conversion to an entirely different religion is very rare indeed. People may shift from one form of their religion to another—for example from Presbyterian to Pentecostal—but these are not considered changes in religion. They are better characterized as changes in emphasis, since the core beliefs remain relatively unchanged. Those who deny the religion of their parents and make an outright conversion to another are, historically, exceptional.

Religions tend to be associated with countries or regions of the world. People in India tend to be Hindu. People in Latin American tend to be Christian. People in the Middle East tend to be Muslim. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it is certainly a general tendency. A good example is the United States of America. Around 80% of Americans explicitly consider themselves to be Christian. When we combine all Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and other world religions in America, the total percentage is only 4.7% of the US population.5 Statistically speaking, America is a strongly Christian nation.

Imagine if by the year 2100, America was 50% Muslim. That would be highly unlikely. It is significant to point out, however, that this sort of thing has happened in human history. While rare, it will probably happen again. Why? In a word, the answer is proselytization—the concept of consciously attempting to convert someone else to one’s own faith. Christians call this “evangelism” or “missions.”6

General statistics on the growth of Christianity

While Christianity is the largest faith today, this is not necessarily going to be the case forever; nor, obviously, has it always been the case. Christianity’s rise to global prominence can be traced through quarterly estimations, using the years 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 as a guide.7

It began as a Jewish sect shortly after Christ’s death in the first century AD. Through the work of Paul and others it morphed, surprisingly, into an inclusive religion regardless of ethnicity. Missiologist Andrew Walls has called this the Ephesian Moment, “the social coming together of people of two cultures to experience Christ.” Walls cites Ephesians 2:22 as the rationale for why there could be only one Christian community, instead of two: “In union with him [Christyou too are being built together with all the others to a place where God lives through his Spirit.”8 Had the Ephesian Moment not occurred, Christianity would have remained, in all likelihood, an ethnic sect. But with the Ephesian Moment a new frontier opened. Gentiles were in. What began as a Jewish thing swiftly became a Gentile thing.

By the year 500 there were approximately 43 million Christians alive, which would have been about 20% of the world’s population.9 Rodney Stark argues for a sudden spike in Christian adherence between the years 250 and 300. In the year 250, Christianity was the religion of only 2% of the Roman Empire. In the year 300, Christianity claimed around 10% of the empire. By 350, well over half of the Roman Empire was at least nominally Christian. He writes, “40 percent per decade (or 3.42 percent per year) seems the most plausible estimate of the rate at which Christianity actually grew during the first several centuries.” As a comparison, this is remarkably similar to the average growth rate of the Mormon Church over the last century.10

In the year 1000, still, approximately 20% of the world was Christian. In spite of successful missionary campaigns into northern Europe and Central Asia, all the gains had been offset by mass Christian defections to Islam, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

In the year 1500, Christianity’s world market share had not changed much and was still hovering right around 20%. Things would soon change, however.

The year 1500 marks a period of major Christian expansion, particularly in the voyages of the Spanish and Portuguese to the Americas. Subsequent European empires established bridgeheads all over the world. From West Africa to East Asia, Christian Europeans—and later Christian North Americans—were sent out by the thousands in the name of Christianity and commerce. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain rose to become the unrivaled superpower in the world, on land and on sea, and it opened up many opportunities for British missionaries: safe travel, military protection, an English-language infrastructure, and unprecedented access to the peoples of these lands.

The era of European colonialism did not yield an immediate harvest, however. In the year 1800, Christianity was the religion of about 23% of the world’s population.11 In other words, from 1500 to 1800, Christian growth was mild. However, as Stark has shown, exponential growth eventually pays handsome dividends. By 1900, this number had increased to around 33%, where it has remained for over a century. Approximately one-third of humanity was Christian by 1900, when the modern heyday of Christian missions ceased.

Thus, the years 1800 to 1900 represent a second important spike upward in Christian adherence. The first spike—around the year 300—was a result of, in Stark’s words, “the rather extraordinary features of exponential curves.”12 The second spike had much more to do with Christian missions and proactive evangelization campaigns to convert non-Christian peoples to the faith.

So what about the future? Will Christianity grow? Will it die? Either scenario is possible.

Christianity: A Religion That Is “Moving South”

Christianity’s center of gravity has shifted in recent years. This phenomenon has caused a splash in the academic study of religion. The changes are astonishing. Christianity—by far the largest religion in the world today—has moved South. No longer is Christianity primarily a Northern or Western faith. The majority of Christians today live in the global South.

What is meant by that expression the “global South?” What scholars usually have in mind are Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Historically, other expressions have been used such as the third world, the two-thirds world, or the developing world. The preferred term today is the global South.

Christianity’s demographics changed radically in a short period of time, and few scholars were aware of the massive implications of these changes until quite recently. The watershed moment took place around 1980. For many centuries prior to 1980 over half of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and North America. After 1980 the majority of the world’s Christians lived in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.13

Another key statistic illustrates Christianity’s move to the global South.14 In 1900, 82% of the world’s Christians lived in Europe or North America; only 18% of the world’s Christians were outside the Euro-North American block. In the year 2005, only 39% of the world’s Christians lived in Europe or North America. During that century, Christianity’s heartland moved south to the point that over 60% of the world’s Christians now live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

How did this shift to the global South happen? The most obvious answer is Christian missions. In modern times, there were two great waves of Christian missions: the Catholic wave in the 1500s and the Protestant wave in the 1800s. During these periods, Christian missionaries from the West launched massive, expensive, and focused campaigns to take the gospel to non-Western nations. Millions of people accepted the Christian gospel and themselves became missionaries to their own peoples.

Herein persists one of the great misconceptions of Christian missions. It is all too easy to think that Western missionaries “won” entire continents over to Jesus Christ. Without minimizing the heroic deeds of these Euro-North American missionaries, the people who received them deserve equal credit for spreading the faith. The mass movements that occurred during the great expansion of Christianity could not have happened without indigenous agents. How could a missionary even communicate with people of different cultures unless someone accepted him, protected him, fed him, taught him the language, and introduced him to others?

Western missionaries often arrived to these lands with few language skills, and local people had to help them in the very basics of survival. Upon arriving to these foreign shores, Europeans and North Americans needed guidance on how to survive: which plants could be eaten, how to find fresh water, with whom to trade, how to act appropriately, how not to offend people. A few key locals would eventually “accept” Jesus Christ as their lord. These converts then explained Christianity to their people. And in many cases it made sense to them.

Once Christianity took root, it often indigenized, shedding many of the cultural assumptions brought by missionaries. Naturally, many of the indigenous social and cultural norms became interwoven with Christian teachings. The mission churches were often very different from the churches back home in the USA or in Europe. Nevertheless, they were clearly attempting to be Christian churches. Looking back, we can say that the Western missionaries to the global South were successful. They planted Christianity while locals made it their own, resulting in thriving churches comprised of hundreds of millions of people all over the global South.

Alongside Christianity’s historic, geographical shift is the changing Christian ethos—the way the world’s Christians prefer to live out their faith. If present trends continue, the world’s Christians will continue to embrace Pentecostal, charismatic forms of the faith. And this change in Christianity’s ethos is directly linked to the indigenization of the faith. Pentecostal Christianity is growing apace in the world right now. One influential scholar, Paul Freston, writes:

Within a couple of decades, half of the world’s Christians will be in Africa and Latin America. By 2050, on current trends, there will be as many Pentecostals in the world as there are Hindus, and twice as many Pentecostals as Buddhists.15

Indeed, Pentecostal Christianity is one of the fastest growing religious movements in modern times. Harvey Cox is another scholar who has noticed these changes in the global church. His important work Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century was his attempt to make sense of these new developments.16 Both of these scholars recognize that Christianity is undergoing seismic changes that will have inevitable consequences. Most notable among the changes are: (1) Christianity is receding from Europe—its center of gravity for a millennium; (2) it is gaining ground in the global South; and (3) its changing ethos is reflecting the customs, beliefs, and worldviews of its host cultures in remarkable ways.

The Future of Christianity

Major changes are going on in Christianity today—changes that will impact the future of this religion forever. This is not altogether surprising. Christianity has always morphed, reformed, and spread to new places. For example, Christianity in Norway in the 1300s was very different than Christianity in Zambia in 2000. While the Christians in those places in those times held many of the same principles, they varied considerably in how to practice the faith, and how to interpret the Bible. The genius of Christianity is its adaptability, its borderlessness.17 It is always changing: geographically, theologically, liturgically, and socially. Religions are never stagnant; like cultures they defy rigid categories and definitions. Christianity has proven to be particularly adept at finding its way into new people groups.

Historian Lamin Sanneh often points out that the reason Christianity has succeeded in adapting is because it is based on a person, Jesus. In Christianity, God reveals God’s self as a human being. This is very different from other religions. In Islam, for example, God reveals God’s self through text. Thus, in Islam, a person must understand God’s words, the Quran, to understand God’s revelation. Christianity is different. While one may or may not read and understand a text, the key is to know the man Jesus. The text can help with that task, but by no means is the text equated with the revelation. Knowing Jesus is far more important than knowing the texts about him. In Islam, the text remains most critical to the faith. This is why Muslims must learn at least some Arabic. Christians, however, do not have to learn a particular language. They have to learn a man. And Christians in the global South are continually being introduced to this man, in many cases for the first time. China is today witnessing an epoch similar to what happened in the book of Acts. Many people are hearing—for the first time—about the life, the teachings, and “the way” of Jesus of Nazareth. This is an awesome development, especially considering the fact it is coming in the wake of one of the more punishingly atheistic epochs in recorded history.

Today, the notion of Christianity moving South is attracting more scholarly attention because the implications are huge. Christianity is the religion of one-third of the human race and the likelihood of this changing anytime soon is small because of higher fertility rates in the global South. Many Western nations have fertility rates that are in decline or soon will be such as in Germany, Denmark, the UK, France, and Italy.18 Eastern European nations are in steep decline—the governments of Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine have launched national baby-making programs that reward mothers of multiple children. Some have even referred to the extremely low fertility rate in Eastern Europe as an auto-genocide.19

Westerners commonly perceive the future of Christianity to be dire due to these once strongly Christian nations becoming less populated. However, the statistic that is rarely given attention is that Christianity is growing rapidly in other places—where there are high birth rates. Most Latin American countries easily replace themselves. African birth rates are the highest in the world. It is not uncommon for African women to have six children on average, which is indeed the case in several African nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Angola. Overall, because the high fertility of the global South offsets the low fertility of the global North, Christianity will continue to remain the largest religion in the world.

According to today’s fertility trends, Islam and Christianity will continue to grow their world market shares. Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions will likely shrink in terms of global percentage. While Hindus constitute 13% and Buddhists 6% of the global population, these numbers will almost inevitably decline.20

Some scholars comment that Islam is growing much more rapidly than Christianity; this conclusion is premature, however. There is little reason to assume that Muslim nations will have higher fertility rates than Christian nations in the global South. Many of the theories which claim Islam is rapidly gaining ground on Christianity neglect the paradigm shifts in Christian demography.

While Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam are missionary religions, they grow mainly because of fertility. It is significant to point out that there have been watershed moments in history when entire people-groups converted to one religion or another, but they are exceptional. How will this play out in the future? Nobody knows. Religious growth is uncontrollable and unpredictable; the history of Christianity showcases this principle remarkably well. Only in retrospect can we discern what events were decidedly pivotal in the history of Christian faith. We can home in on four dates that proved epochal in four different parts of the world.

First, the year 312 marks Constantine’s victorious Battle at the Milvian Bridge in Rome which he accredited to Christ. Shortly thereafter, Constantine began to show favor for this previously illegal religion, issuing the Edict of Milan in the year 313. That Edict represented a pivot in the history of Christianity—from illegal to legal status.

Second, the year 988 was when Prince Vladimir of Kiev converted to Christianity and began Christianizing the people of the great Russian land mass.

Third, 1492 marks the year Columbus’s discoveries had the effect of initiating a massive campaign to Christianize the people of the Americas.

Finally, 1807 is the year the Slave Trade Act passed in the parliament of the United Kingdom. Led by a devout, evangelical Protestant Christian named William Wilberforce, this monumental act marked what would become a vital link between England and sub-Saharan Africa—the next heartland of Christianity. The Atlantic slave trade began its long decline in that year and the African continent became a popular destination for British missionaries.

Throughout history, Christianity was usually transmitted by isolated Christians who might travel in pairs across long, lonely stretches of land to win a handful of souls to Christ. The remains of dedicated missionaries litter the world’s crust from California to Japan, all in the name of bearing good news, the gospel, to new people-groups. In the vast amount of cases, missionaries converted only a family or two, and perhaps started a small Bible study or humble worship assembly. But as mentioned earlier, it is local people who do most of the recruiting and the converting of their own compatriots to the newfound faith. The role of the missionary as a seed-planter and nurturer, however, should not be minimized. In the past and still today, missionaries play a strategic part by building on the work of their predecessors in the faith, faithfully serving their God in the best way they know how—by teaching stories of the Bible, administering the sacraments, reaching out to the needy, and offering their lives to the people they love and serve.

Today, Christianity is witnessing the fruits of the labors of those missionaries. The Christian faith has taken root in those lands where missionaries worked and died. As a result, the nature of Christianity is changing dramatically. We are today eyewitnesses of a universal, transcultural, multi-lingual religion that spans the entire breadth of the world’s surface. Of this phenomenon, historian Stephen Neill wrote in 1964:

It is only rarely that it is possible, in the history of the Church or in the history of the world, to speak of anything as being unmistakably new. But in the twentieth century one phenomenon has come into view which is incontestably new—for the first time there is in the world a universal religion, and that is the Christian religion.21

Christianity, in this sense, may be considered the first world religion.

The four largest religions in the world today are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Hinduism has never really been a missionary religion, and its growth is through fertility alone. The great era of Buddhist expansion to new lands is over, and its market share of the world’s inhabitants is in decline. Conversions to Islam are isolated. Islam is growing today, but that is almost wholly through fertility rates.

Christianity is different. As many in the Western world walk away from the Christian faith, this trend is offset by people actually converting from non-Christian to Christian in other parts of the world—most notably in China. Globally, one out of every five people lives inside the border of China. After decades of insularity, the great walls are falling, and this could affect religious demographics significantly. While it is too soon to predict just how eager the Chinese people are for Christ, the opportunities for Christian growth are obvious. If a major movement of Chinese Christians were to occur, it would alter the face of Christianity. At this stage, educated estimates of the number of Chinese Christians range between 5-10%.22 In other words, 100 million Chinese citizens might be Christians.

The Christians of China are known to be Protestant in the majority, and generally evangelical. While most of them are recent converts, they are proving to be skilled missionaries. What is most striking is their zeal, even in the face of government opposition. A cover article for the New York Times recently reported on a congregation in Beijing that raised the eyebrows of the governing authorities when it raised $4 million for a church building. The police raided, evicted them from their meeting place, and took the leaders into custody.23 Some highly ambitious Chinese Christians have decided to missionize the Middle East. One group, known as the “Back to Jerusalem” movement, describes itself as “God’s call to the Chinese church to complete the Great Commission.”24

The cross-cultural transmission of the faith is more creative and ambitious than ever. Christians are spreading their faith through mission work, literature, and all forms of high-tech multimedia. The phenomenally successful Jesus Film (1979) has been labeled the most watched motion picture of all time according to the New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).25 Created by Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, the Jesus Film has purportedly been viewed six billion times in over a thousand languages. The official website claims that since 1979, over 225 million people have made decisions to follow Christ because of the film’s impact on them.26 If these statistics have credibility, then this film is easily one of the most effective evangelistic tools in the history of Christianity.

Secularization

A few words must be said here about secularization—a concept that is commonly applied to the Western world, Western Europe in particular. Western Europe was for centuries linked to Latin-based Christianity—first for the Roman Catholic Church and after 1517 various Protestant forms of faith. Secularization has destroyed that link—at least for the time being. But still, in many ways, Western Europe seems bathed in Latin, Roman Christianity.

Statistically, Western Europe is Christian. In every single Western European nation, Christianity is the majority religion. Overall, Western European Christians are 63% Catholic, 36% Protestant, and less than 1% Orthodox. Only a tiny percentage of Western Europeans explicitly identify themselves as members of non-Christian religions. A small but growing percentage claims to be “non-religious”—around 15%.

While Western Europe may have a Christian majority, in no way is this region the center of Christianity any more. In 1900, eight of the world’s top ten Christian-populated countries were in Europe: Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Poland, and Ukraine, although the latter three are in Eastern Europe.27 There was little doubt, however: Europe, clearly, was the axis mundi for the Christian faith.

Today, the situation is completely different. In 2005, Germany was the lone Western European nation still on that list.28 Western Europeans do not attend church much anymore. In 2006, Pope Benedict went to his native Germany—a country where less than 15% of the population attends Mass—and warned, “We are no longer able to hear God. . . . God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited for our age.”29 Perhaps Philip Jenkins said it best:

Europe is demonstrably not the Faith. The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning. The fact of change itself is undeniable: it has happened, and will continue to happen.30

Why did this occur? Why did Western Europe, apparently, get up and walk away from faith? This is a big question, and many historians, theologians, and social scientists are still trying to make sense of it.

Many have argued that secularization is rooted in the social shocks brought on by the Protestant Reformation. One of the most important consequences of the Reformation was the rise of national identities. Luther paved the way to nation-states by undermining religious authority and triggering a long period of violence and instability. In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia stopped the bleeding of the Thirty Years War with the dictum: cuius regio, eius religio, “whose realm, (use) his religion.” If your king is Catholic, be Catholic. If he’s Protestant, follow his lead. It may have stopped the war, but it did so at the expense of religious conviction, suggesting a sort of religious relativism. Are Catholics or Protestants the true Christians? Well, it depends on where you live. Not too satisfying for the seeker of truth.

In histories of Christianity, the Treaty of Westphalia is generally treated as a documented beginning for European secularization. Today, however, the concept of secularization is much more complex. It has come to be understood as a cultural movement that marginalizes faith. It challenges the assumption that religion is good for society. Like the Treaty of Westphalia, secularization is essentially a living argument that religions need to back off in order for society to be free and peaceful. Perhaps more than anything else, it is an erasure of the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Religious holidays become downplayed, sacred places lose their religious quality, and the influence of the clergy becomes drastically reduced. It is common today to visit Western Europe and see churches turned into pubs, stores, warehouses, even mosques.

Why did this happen? There are many answers, but we can highlight the most obvious:

• Nationalism: the nation-state supplanted the role of the Pope. People began to identify with the ruler of the land rather than the authorities of faith, due to cuius regio, eius religio.
• Urbanization: people moved to the cities. There was a breakdown in the old agrarian structure of society. In the city, people are anonymous. There is less accountability. Individuals choose how they want to believe rather than how their community expects them to believe. Quite naturally, this also affects behavior.
• Individualism: Luther’s legacy persists—a deep questioning and a need to return to the sources (ad fontes). Nothing is true except that which I can independently confirm to be true. Religious authority takes a beating.
• Scientific advance: experimentation takes precedence to religious tradition. There results an erosion of confidence in religious texts, clergy, and institutions. Truth is determined by demonstration and experimentation, not by conformity to social codes or religious norms.
• Religious pluralism: the Italian circumnavigators and Catholic missionaries began to encounter people from vastly different cultures in Latin America, Africa, India, and China. These people did not have Christianity, and some of them seemed to be doing fine without it.

These are some of the larger, contextual pieces of a puzzle that still confounds scholars. However, it is far from a complete picture. For example, Peter Berger, in his classic The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, persuasively argues that humans in the West are discontent because of mass bureaucratization. He writes that many humans no longer feel connected to their families due to migratory trends. Humans who change contexts are in many ways socially homeless, living a confused existence, “a world in which everything is in constant motion.”31

What is the net result? The result is that religion in the Western world is in serious crisis. “The age-old function of religion—to provide ultimate certainty amid the exigencies of the human condition—has been severely shaken.” Berger provides a label for this predicament: “social homelessness.”32

The reality of the basic premise of the secularization thesis is undeniable—Western Europeans do not go to church like they used to, and most of them know little about Christianity. However, what does this mean? Scholars do not really know. Are Western Europeans actually less religious, or are they simply avoiding the institutional structures of religion? Every single Western European nation has secularized, if by that we mean church participation has fallen precipitously. There are several other key indicators to illustrate the secularization thesis:

• Policy making takes place separate and apart from the churches;
• Schools are not in the hands of the clergy;
• Charitable, benevolent welfare is largely in the hands of the state;
• Hospitals are not controlled by the churches;
• Church attendance is, in most cases, under 10% of the population in Western Europe.33

The question persists, however: Why? Some scholars tend to think in Marxist terms: when the needs of the people are met, religion will simply wither away. While there is credibility to this view, there are so many counterexamples. The USA remains a vibrantly religious culture but is economically on a par with Western Europe.

The long decline of religion in Western Europe continues today. It is evidently a cultural juggernaut. Attendance rates are at their lowest in history, and there is little evidence to suggest a turnaround. In the late twentieth century, about 40% of Western Europeans claimed they “never” attended church.34 Grace Davie, a noted scholar of secularization in Western Europe, wrote, “An ignorance of even the basic understandings of Christian teaching is the norm in modern Europe, especially among young people.”35 A study in 2011 claimed religion may soon go extinct in nine countries.36

There are some creative theories, however, such as Graeme Smith’s, which call the secularization thesis into question. Smith argues a fascinating idea—that secularization is simply Christianity in disguise. He writes:

Secularism is not the end of Christianity. Rather, we should think of secularism as the latest expression of the Christian religion. . . . Secularism is Christian ethics [without] its doctrine. It is the ongoing commitment to do good, understood in traditional Christian terms, without a concern for the technicalities of the teachings of the Church. . . . Secularism in the West is a new manifestation of Christianity, but one that is not immediately obvious because it lacks the usual scaffolding we associate with the Christian religion.37

Graeme Smith is not alone in this claim. Anthropologist Jonathan Benthall argues a highly nuanced thesis that says, essentially, religion never went away. For all this talk about Europe secularizing, the propensity for religiosity is universal and intrinsic to our species, and nothing has changed that. Humanitarian movements, strikingly similar to Christianity’s prophetic voice of justice, are clearly a modern outworking of religious tendencies. In other words, religion is not receding in Western Europe; it is being reinvented.

Benthall argues that religion is very difficult to define. If we define religion as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, then sure, religion seems to be less prominent in Western Europe. However, if the definition of religion is opened up to include concepts such as social justice, environmental activism, charity, and civility, then religion in Western Europe has merely adapted itself to suit a scientifically advanced context created by modernization and scientific methods. While miracles may have been expelled in this worldview, the longing to heal people through medicine has not. Both of these approaches are rooted in a deep and abiding human orientation towards religion.38

Grace Davie argues that while Western Europeans tend not to belong to a church, they still believe in many identifiably Christian teachings. Her idea has become known as the “believing without belonging” thesis.39

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), while awaiting execution in a Nazi prison, famously wrote about the future of Christianity in Europe. Bonhoeffer foresaw a secular future for Europe. He was partially reacting to how his fellow countrymen could have possibly allowed Hitler’s rise to power—in a supposedly Christianized Germany. Bonhoeffer struggled with the meaning of Christianity as a religion. In his view, the future of Christianity in Europe was a “religion-less” Christianity.40

Hasn’t the individualistic question about personal salvation almost completely left us all? Aren’t we really under the impression that there are more important things than that question? I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that. But, fundamentally, isn’t this in fact biblical? Does the question about saving one’s soul appear in the Old Testament at all? Aren’t righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything?41

Bonhoeffer envisioned a Christianity that was a lifestyle more than it was an institution. Even the doctrine of God was to be radically reoriented in an age when man has come of age and abandoned religion: “God as a working hypothesis, as a stop-gap for our embarrassments, has become superfluous.”42

If Bonhoeffer was right, then perhaps Christianity as an organized religion in Western Europe will indeed cease to exist. Maybe the Christianity of the future will be a Christ-like ethic, a sensitive and humane treatment of others, with compassionate social institutions, but without rituals, clergy, and buildings? Perhaps the future of Christianity will be kindness, love, and justice, without the constant prodding of the church?

While Western Europe continues to secularize, we would be remiss if we did not point out that there are faithful remnants scattered about the land, bearing a witness for a somewhat ghostly Christian past. In addition, immigration and reverse missions have led to new churches that are growing. London has several megachurches, and most of them are either African or Caribbean. Kiev, Ukraine, is home to the Pentecostal megachurch Embassy of God, led by Sunday Adelaja, a young Nigerian-born pastor. This church has now expanded to 35 countries.

There are thriving traditional churches as well, such as Holy Trinity Brompton, where, in the 1990s, Nicky Gumbel transformed the Alpha Course into a worldwide phenomenon for introducing the Christian faith to non-Christians—kind of ironic in a historically Christian city like London. Indeed, Gumbel recognized that his fellow Londoners had almost no idea about even the very basics of the Christian faith.

Western Europe is today no valley of dry bones. While the vast majority of people do not attend church, there are still bastions of Christian witness. For example, the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva, is the hub for the largest Christian network in the world, and the flagship for the interdenominational ecumenical movement. Pentecostal churches are popping up all over the region, as in virtually all corners of the globe. Immigrant churches (and mosques) are full and growing, with few signs of becoming secular like their native counterparts. Thus, in many ways the ancient Christian faith is still alive in former Christendom.

Nevertheless, there is no way to predict what will happen in Western Europe. For all the talk about the rise of Christianity in the global South, it is perhaps just as likely that Christianity may, one day, rise up again in Western Europe, perhaps only in a different guise.

We cannot predict what will happen globally, either. Religions die, they flourish, and they pulsate back and forth, assimilating aspects of new and old cultures. For all we know there might be a new religion on the horizon that will take the world by storm at some point in the future. Perhaps the bizarre religion of “Chrislam”—a fusion of Islam and Christianity that has occurred in parts of Nigeria—is not altogether surprising considering the religious strife in a country that is about half Muslim and half Christian.43

Whatever the case, we do know this: Christianity is rather young, only 2000 years. And for those two millennia, it has grown, albeit in a punctuated way. In the beginning, it was a Jewish sect, marginal to another religion. Today, it claims the devotion of one out of three humans on the planet. Its rise has been gradual. And its future appears secure if history is in any way a useful measuring stick.

Dyron B. Daughrity is Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. He is the author of numerous academic articles, book reviews, and book chapters, as well as two books, the most recent of which is The Changing World of Christianity: The Global History of a Borderless Religion (Peter Lang, 2010). He can be contacted at dyron.daughrity@pepperdine.edu.

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