 Asia is undergoing tremendous challenges: the challenge of economic and social challenge of religious resurgence among Asian traditional religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Chinese and Japanese religions; the growth of Islam and its Islamisation process in South-East Asia; the challenge of increasing restrictions for missionary entry; and the challenge of the maturing churches in Indonesia, China, Korea and the Philippines.
Surely Asia’s diversity and vastness defies any sweeping generalisations. And there are no easy answers to the challenges facing evangelical missions. This paper is merely one attempt to reflect on the challenges facing evangelical missiology. I will begin by first surveying the history of Christian expansion that gave rise to Asian missionary movements. I will then discuss some missiological issues facing Asian missionary movements by way of asking the following questions: Is Asian Christianity capable of taking on the baton of mission leadership? If Asian churches are to be mature and be effective instruments of mission, what are some of the key missiological issues that must be addressed today?
History of Christian Expansion
Professor Andrew Walls of the University of Edinburgh, in his recent publication, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (2002) concluded that the 20th Century has probably been the most remarkable century of church history since the first. Certainly the demographic shape of the Church has changed more completely, more radically, in the 20th Century than it has ever in any previous century.
Walls observed that both Islam and Christianity expanded globally to become world religions but Islam is more successful in retaining its converts over a period of time. He studied the growth of Christianity in the non-Western world and commented that Islam expands progressively while Christianity expands serially. Saudi Arabia, as the heartland of Islam, had remained Muslim since its inception.
In contrast, consider how countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Tajikistan used to be Christian heartlands. They are no longer Christian nations today. In each case, the lampstand was removed. But in none of these cases did the dimming or withering of Christian witness in one of its major centres lead to the end of Christian witness in the world.
he very reverse took place. By the time the Jerusalem church was scattered in the wind, as happened in the very first Christian century, there were churches of ex-pagan Greek Christians right across this Mediterranean area and beyond it. As the churches in Iraq declined, the churches in Iran increased. As the great Christian centres of Egypt, and Syria and North Africa passed under Muslim rule, the Barbarians of northern and western Europe were gradually coming to appropriate the Christian faith.
In the 20th Century, Walls observed that two things happened simultaneously. One was the greatest recession that the Christian faith has known since the rise of Islam, and that recession was centred in the West. The second was a huge accession to the Christian faith, again probably the largest that has ever been known. There were only about 10 million professing Christians in the whole of the African continent when the 20th Century began. No one knows how many there are now, but an educated guess would be in the region of 350 million – just in the course of a century. Korea had a tiny, tiny church when the century began. Now it sends over 10,000 missionaries all over the world.
Over the past century Christian advance and Christian recession have gone on simultaneously, recession in the West, advance in Africa, Asia and Latin America; withering at the centre, blossoming at the edges. Christian advance in the world is serial and, in the providence of God, it is the Christians of Africa, Asia and Latin America who are next in the series. Walls noted that the great event, the great surprise for Christianity over the past hundred years, has been this shift in the centre of gravity of the Church. This radical change in its demographic and cultural composition, by all present indications, appears to be continuing. It means that the Christians of the southern continent are now the representative Christians, the people by whom the quality of the 21st and 22nd Century Christianity will be judged, the people who will set the norms, the standard Christians. And the quality of 21st Century Christianity will depend on them.
How do we explain the growth and withering of Christianity in salvation history? Walls proposed that Christianity lives by crossing cultural frontiers. The first believers in Jesus were Jewish by race. Everything abut Jesus made sense in Jewish terms, and for a long time the leaders were very anxious that all other Jews should know about Jesus, but rarely mentioned Him to people who were not Jews. From Acts 13, the church at Antioch launched the cross-cultural enterprise in mission. Without this cross-cultural process the church could wither and die.
So, in the coming century, the new representative Christians of Asia, Africa and Latin America will be required to cross cultural boundaries, possibly even western cultural boundaries, in order to share their faith. But the church in Asia can only only cross cultures if they have strong and contextual missiology that does not export a foreign gospel but seeks to decontextualise the gospel from South Korea into Vietnam, from Latin America into Mozambique, and from Batak peoples to the Malays of Sumatra. As we see emerging churches from Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines cross cultures, we need to form an Asian theology of mission that addresses issues of cross-cultural communication, training, indigenous church multiplication, discipleship in context, mission support and a theology of the suffering.
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity
I would like now to turn to another major book recently published by Philip Jenkins entitled The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Jenkins, who is a professor at Penn State University, argues that the present global trends of Christianity will have an impact on the world similar to major religious movements such as the Reformation.
For Jenkins, the 21st Century will be seen as a time in history when religion replaces the importance once occupied by ideology. Christianity will have a major impact on all of the world’s belief and ideological systems. Jenkins points to Christianity as growing with phenomenal speed in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In Africa, according to the World Christian Encyclopaedia, the present net increase of Christians on the continent is an astounding 8.4 million a year, or 23,000 persons a day. For example, there are 10 million African Christians in 1900; in 2000 there were 360 million. Jenkins notes: “By 2025, 50 percent of the Christian populations will be in Africa and Latin America, and another 17 percent in Asia.”
In other words, the centre of gravity of the Christian world will be deep in the Southern hemisphere, creating new pockets of influence and power. Before too long, the phrase “a white Christian” may be something of an oxymoron. Taking South Korea as an example, Jenkins notes that there were only about 300,000 Christians in the whole of Korea in 1920, but that today there are 10 to 12 million.
I cannot forget the thrill of visiting Christian villages in East Malaysia (formerly Borneo islands) and listening to revival stories of the 1960 and 1970s. Village after village experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. Less than 40 years ago, Sabah and Sarawak had less than one percent Christians. Today, a conservative estimate puts the Christians population at around 35 percent. When missionaries left China, demographers estimated the Christian population at less than one million. Today, the estimate ranges from 80 to 100 million!
The growth of Christianity in Asia and Africa is not only seen numerically, but it is also demonstrable in the spiritual vitality of Korean prayer meetings, dynamism of African evangelists and growth of cross-cultural missionary movements from Latin America.
What distinguishes these southern Christianity exponents from their northern counterparts is their belief in the Bible as authoritative, their proclamation of Christ as the only way for salvation, and their reliance of the power of the Holy Spirit to bring renewal.
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This article is an extract and was first published in Mission Round Table, a publication of OMF Mission Research of which the writer is the director. Used with permission. To read the entire article, e-mail ihq-research@omf.net
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