By Mark A. Taylor
“Missionaries are no longer Americans who come to show slides of “˜foreign” countries, but are those who bring the gospel from all over the world,” wrote Gary Holloway, executive director of World Convention, after attending the second Global Christian Forum in Manado, Indonesia October 3-7. His summary reminds us of new opportunities and strategy for missions today. Consider:
South Korea sent out 22,000 missionaries to 176 countries last year. Nigeria plans to send 50,000 workers to other nations by 2015. Han Chinese plan to send out 100,000 missionaries to other countries in the next few years. Brazilian missionaries are on every continent, including the United States. Spanish is the most widely used language by Christians today. . . .
Numerically, the center of Christianity has shifted to the Global South. In contrast to stagnant Christian growth in Europe and North America, churches are growing in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, growing specifically in unexpected places””China, India, Sudan, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Iran. Particularly rapid is the growth in Christians from a Muslim background. For the Stone-Campbell Movement, the World Christian database counts more members outside than inside the United States, 10 million worldwide.
Several missionary leaders among Christian churches and churches of Christ agree. “Gary”s statistics are spot on,” said Doug Priest, executive director of Christian Missionary Fellowship. Doug Lucas, president of TEAM Expansion, concurred and referred to the website joshuaproject.net. A chart posted there shows that Europe and North America contained 99 percent of the Christians in the world in 1800, but only 34 percent in 2008. During the same time, the percentage of worldwide Christians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America has grown from 1 percent to 66 percent.*
Tony Twist, president of TCM International, added that churches are growing throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia and sending out their own missionaries. And he has experienced Christian interest in Muslim countries. “We now have 80 students at TCMII from Central Asian countries.”
Those interested in missions are finding new opportunities and new challenges in our changing world. And Doug Priest hinted at a new trend when he quoted a paper read at another missions meeting this year, the Evangelical Missiological Society: “The unprecedented urbanization in Asia has become a new frontier for missions,” said the professor who wrote it. He called “burgeoning megacities and new metropolises . . . in underdeveloped nations” the “top priority for deploying new missionaries.”
One thing will not change. The world still needs new missionaries. We can pray that many of them will come from the American church, even as the rest of the world takes up the challenge to send workers to new fields ripe for harvest.
*joshuaproject.net/assets/Mission Trends Facts.pdf
Well said! Americans are still needed, but God is calling and people from all over are responding. Praise to Him!