Lausanne World Pulse – STRATEGY, TRENDS AND STATISTICS – One Hundred Years of Christian Growth

By Bradley Coon

The twentieth century saw a radical shift in the Christian world, with a majority of believers now being found in the global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Oceania) rather than the global North (North America and Europe). This has not been the case since AD 923 (see graph 1 below). The shift has been well documented and presented by scholars over the past decade, most notably Philip Jenkins in his work The Next Christendom.¹ However, it often seems that there is a noticeable gap between the scholar and the layperson on this point, with few people being able to picture just how dramatic this decentralization of the Church has been.

As an assistant who attended the 2006 Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering in Malaysia, I had an opportunity to see a presentation prepared by Jason Mandryk and Justin Long (available online at www.momentum-mag.org/200611/200611-article1.pdf). Mandryk and Long visually presented the shift of Christianity and highlighted the overwhelming missionary force that is now coming from non-western countries. We are living in an increasingly post-literate society—a society which is much more responsive to oral and visual stimuli than to the written word. There is a certain importance and urgency in helping the whole Church to understand the multi-faceted ways that God’s kingdom is moving, especially as we remember Christ’s words that “the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). Several facets of this shift can be seen through the visualization of the average annual growth rates of Christians and megablocs² around the world.

Perhaps the first thing to notice about Christian growth rates is that the percentages in and of themselves are of limited usefulness without the numerical data used to calculate the growth rates. It is in the comparison of growth rates, however, that fascinating patterns emerge which give us insights into the major shifts that have occurred in Christianity during the last century. You will notice that graphs 2-4 below illustrate a comparison of growth rates. Graphs 2 and 3 compare the average annual Christian growth rate per United Nations region (represented by the bars), with the average annual population growth for the same region (represented by the red lines). Graph 4 compares the growth rate of Christian megablocs within a continent (bars) by the overall growth rate of Christianity within that same continent (thin black line). There are a few major facts I will highlight; the rest of the exploration is up to you.