Lausanne World Pulse – Research Articles – World Christian Trends, Update 2007
2. Christianity is fragmented. Christians are now found in thirty-nine thousand denominations. These range in size from millions of members to less than one hundred members and are listed for each of the world’s 238 countries in the World Christian Database. By 2025, there will likely be fifty-five thousand denominations. One should note that the vast majority of these denominations are Protestant and Independent, forming the core of global evangelicalism.
3. Christians are experiencing unprecedented renewal. There are many forms of renewal within global Christianity, including evangelical movements, liturgical renewal, Bible-study fellowships and house church movements. One of the most significant is the Pentecostal/Charismatic renewal which coincide with the end of the 100-year period we have been reflecting on. The percentage of Christians involved in this renewal is shown in Slide 8. The focus of the renewal is clearly in the Global South where the majority of its practitioners live and where it is growing the fastest. It is also interesting to see that Southern languages dominate the list of the most Renewalists by language (Slide 9).
4. Christians are experiencing unprecedented suffering. Christians around the world are being persecuted for their faith. We estimate that over the entire history of Christianity, seventy million Christians have been killed for their faith. Over half of these were in the twentieth century alone, a century which historian Robert Conquest referred to as “The Ravaged Century.” Slide 10 shows the Hill of Crosses—an international shrine to martyrdom found in Lithuania.
Slide 11 highlights another aspect of suffering for Christians of the Global South, who represent sixty percent of all Christians but receive only seventeen percent of all Christian income. This puts them at a disadvantage in many areas, including health, education, communications and overall quality of life. This imbalance is one of the great tragedies of global Christianity that could not have been easily predicted by our colleagues in Edinburgh in 1910.
Trends Outside Global Christianity
1. There is enough evangelism to reach everyone in the world. One might have the impression today that what is needed is more evangelism to reach the world for Christ. But, in sheer quantity, there is already enough evangelism in the world today for every person to hear a one-hour presentation of the gospel every other day all year long. This amounts to over 1,430 billion hours of evangelism generated by Christians every year ranging from personal witnessing to television and radio broadcasting.
2. Most Christian outreach never reaches non-Christians. Slide 12 shows that over ninety percent of all Christian evangelism is aimed at other Christians and does not reach non-Christians. Here we have graphed the deployment of the world’s foreign missionaries, but close examination of virtually any Christian evangelistic activity reveals this massive imbalance. Part of the explanation is the unanticipated success of Christian missions in the twentieth century.
Much missionary deployment is trying to keep up the growth of the churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America. What is surprising today is how missionaries from the Global South have also been drawn into mission primarily to other Christians. Deployment studies in Nigeria and India have shown this to be the case, although there is a perceptible shift in the past decade toward work among non-Christians.
3. Christians are out of contact with Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Recent research reveals that as many as eight-six percent of all Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists do not personally know a Christian. This must be viewed negatively in light of the strong biblical theme of incarnation which is at the heart of Christian witness. Christians should know and love their neighbors! In the twenty-first century, it is important to realize that the responsibility for reaching Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists is too large for the missionary enterprise. While missionaries will always be at the forefront of innovative strategies, the whole Church needs to participate in inviting people of other faiths to consider Jesus Christ. Note that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists are increasingly found living in traditionally “Christian” lands.
4. Many of the most responsive peoples in the world are Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist. Our analysis in the World Christian Database reveals that of the top one hundred most responsive people groups over one million in size, twenty-two are Tribal (nine percent of the total by population), thirty-one are Hindu (forty-eight percent), thirty-one are Muslim (twenty-five percent) and four are Buddhist (nine percent). The five most responsive of these are the Jinyu of China (Buddhist), the Khandeshi of India (Tribal), the Southern Pathan of Afghanistan (Muslim), the Magadhi Bihari of India (Hindu) and the Maitili of India (Hindu). What this means is that God himself is inviting the world’s peoples into his family. Christians must be more alert to his initiative.
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