Lausanne World Pulse – Asian Missions in the Twenty-first Century—An Asian Perspective

By Hwa Yung

Asia today is a vast continent consisting of fifty nations, with 3.7 billion people making up sixty-one percent of the world’s population. They consist of thousands of diverse ethnic groups, speaking as many different languages, with a multiplicity of cultures, some of which go back to antiquity.

What Has God Been Doing in Asia?
Over the past century Asia’s encounter with modernity has propelled many Asian countries into the forefront of technological advances and economical development. Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are already richer on a per capita basis than some Western colonial powers of yesteryears.

South Korea’s Samsung is the world’s largest consumer-electronics company today, and IBM’s personal computer division has now become a Chinese company named Lenovo. In the words of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, “an increasing number of Asian societies are leapfrogging from the Third World into the First World.” Yet, hundreds of millions or more in places like Bangladesh—and many areas in rural China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and so forth—remain mired in grinding poverty.

Over the same period, Christian missions have also met relative success. The World Christian Encyclopedia tells us that Christian numbers, as percentages of Asia’s population, have gone from 2.3% in 1900, to 4.7% in 1970, and to 8.5% in 2000. Today there are over 300 million Christians on the whole continent, many of whom would be evangelical in theology and freely operate in the ‘signs and wonders’ of the Holy Spirit.

In some places, the growth has been phenomenal, including better known examples like South Korea, as well as lesser known ones like Nepal and proliferating grassroots churches in many parts of India. And the story of the explosive growth of the Chinese Church has yet to be fully told! Clearly, God has blessed the labors of his servants in Asia.

What Is God Doing in the Asian Church?
This growth of the Church has not gone unnoticed by external observers. Reflecting on the future direction of world missions in the twenty-first century, the American spiritual writer, Richard Foster, in a “Pastoral Letter” from November 1999, wrote, “The twenty-first century will witness one of the greatest harvests of Christian mission ever. I concur with John Paul II that in the next century we will see a ‘new springtime’ for the gospel message.” Foster goes on to note that much of the energy for this will be found outside the West, but

“The really pivotal continent …is Asia. Throughout the twenty-first century Asia will be the rising culture, no doubt about that. The real question is whether the Christian witness in Asia is strong enough to ride the rise of Asian culture… I believe the Christian witness is strong enough. Chinese Christians have suffered tremendously and are deeper and stronger for it. They will teach the rest of us how to live for God. Korea… will teach the entire Christian world how to pray. And the signs of spiritual vitality in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and numerous other places are so encouraging that I believe the twenty-first century will be viewed as ‘the great century’ of advance for Christ and his kingdom. Let us pray that it may be so.”

This may appear astounding to those unfamiliar with Asian Christianity. For me, whatever doubts I had vanished after I attended the global mission conference, Ethne06, held in Bali in 2006.

Hwa Yung is the Bishop of the Methodist Church in Malaysia. He was formerly the director for the Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia, Trinity Theological College, Singapore.