When I travel, I love to eat in local establishments, and I thoroughly enjoy trying new foods. I have to admit, however, that sometimes I’m really happy to find a Starbucks where I can get my predictable, favorite drink. Yet I’m sometimes haunted by the implications of getting Indonesians to switch from tea to Frappuccinos, from sandals to Nikes, from oxen to SUVs, and from indigenous movies to Hollywood. This tension needs to be incorporated into our widened perspective on the twenty-first-century world.
For example, consider that on average North American companies make a 42-percent return on their China operations. Apparel workers in the United States make $9.56 an hour. In El Salvador, apparel workers make $1.65. In China, they make between 68 and 88 cents.[16] Christian businesspeople need to help us wrestle with these realities and consider the ethical issues involved and the accountability structures needed for individuals and organizations working cross-culturally.
There’s a growing movement in the corporate arena described as “conscious capitalism.” I’m excited about business professionals looking holistically at how to use business to respond to some of the pressing issues of our world. And I appreciate the economists and business leaders who are helping us grapple with the complexities of McWorld rather than simply saying it’s all good or it’s all bad. The realities of McWorld need to be included in our widened perspective.
In addition, McWorld is creating a virtual, global culture of sorts, especially among youth. A few years ago, a New York City–based ad agency videotaped rooms of teenagers in twenty-five different countries. The convergence of what was found in rooms from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Tokyo made it difficult to see any cultural differences. Basketballs sat next to soccer balls, and closets overflowed with an international, unisex uniform—baggy Levis or Diesel jeans, NBA jackets, and rugged shoes from Timberland or Dr. Martens. “In a world divided by trade wars and tribalism, teenagers, of all people, are the new unifying force. From the steamy playgrounds of Los Angeles to the stately boulevards of Singapore, kids show amazing similarities in taste, language, and attitude. . . . Propelled by mighty couriers like MTV, trends spread with sorceress speed. . . . Teens almost everywhere buy a common gallery of products: Reebok sports shoes, Procter & Gamble Cover Girl makeup, Sega and Nintendo video games, Pepsi, etc.”[17]
We must not too quickly assume that globalization implies we’re moving toward a uniform, global culture. Cultural differences abound, and we’ll see that throughout this book. However, to a certain degree, globalization is shaping the lives of individuals from the urban centers of Shanghai to the remote villages of Madagascar.
McWorld has brought cross-cultural encounters into our daily lives. Working alongside refugees from Bosnia and Sudan, instant messaging people with similar interests across twenty-four time zones, and working in organizations that assume a global presence are just a few ways we encounter globalization.
Snapshot 6: Fundamentalism versus Pluralism
While seemingly more philosophical, this last snapshot is as important to our perspective on the world as the others. On the one hand, there is a growing movement of fundamentalists in today’s world who declare, “There is one right way to view the world, and it’s our way.” Simultaneously, a growing number of pluralists say, “There’s no one right way to view the world. Develop your own view. Just don’t force it on me.”
The clash of fundamentalism versus pluralism is at the center of most of our contemporary conflicts and wars. A world coming together culturally and commercially is simultaneously becoming more and more divided religiously and ethnically. In the 1990s, words like jihad and al-Qaeda were unfamiliar to most North Americans. Now they’re part of our everyday vocabulary. Watching news reports of fourteen-year-old boys in Afghanistan skipping along with AK-47s strapped over their shoulders has almost become ho-hum to us. Yet many Americans are still confused as to why the terrorists hate us so much. In relation to suicide bombers, we ask, “What’s wrong with those people that they’d kill themselves in order to dominate innocent people?”
If anyone should understand the conviction and passion driving the terrorist movements around the world, it’s Christians. Jihad, in its mildest form, is a kind of Islamic zeal held by people committed to proselytizing the world no matter what it takes. Of course, it becomes extreme when it gets expressed through bloody holy war on behalf of religious conviction—just as the Crusades were a case of “Christian evangelism gone bad.” As a concept, however, fundamentalist fervor is as familiar to Christians, Hindus, Arabs, and Germans as it is to Muslims.[18] Jihad, an Islamic expression of fundamentalism, is simply the absolute confidence in the truth of one’s position.
In contrast, pluralism attempts to eliminate the dominance of any one religion or viewpoint. It assumes that multiple and conflicting opinions and philosophies should exist and, further, should be regarded as equals. This kind of pluralistic philosophy permeates the story lines of movies, songs, and books distributed through globalization. Globalization is typically seen as an expression and agent of pluralism. Yet globalization also seems to be based on an essential value held by radical fundamentalists—the core value of domination. Bringing the world a uniform offering of products, services, and entertainment options is assumed to be good for all.
The coexistence of passionate pluralists with ruthless fundamentalists will continue to create tensions worthy of our attention. Such tension is faced by the worldwide community of Christians as well. Lamin Sanneh, a Gambian Christian scholar, says, “Northern, liberal Christianity has become a ‘do-as-you-please’ religion, deeply accommodated to the post-Christian values of the secular northlands. The new Christianity of the global south and east [e.g., Africa, Latin America, India], which bears the scars of hardship and persecution, will clash increasingly with its urbane and worldly northern counterpart.”[19] We’ll further explore the realities of the Christian church in the twenty-first century in the next chapter.
Concluding Thoughts
These snapshots are an initial step toward helping us open our eyes. The statistics, inequities, and sheer enormity of global issues facing our generation can be mind-numbing. What can I possibly do about the fact that one in thirty-seven hundred American women die in childbirth, whereas one in sixteen sub-Saharan African women die in childbirth?
I’m not interested in putting you on an overwhelming guilt trip. Guilt and shame do little to change these realities. But I do want to bring perspective to how we live our lives and think about the circumstances of many of the people we’ll encounter on our short-term missions experiences. Perspective and awareness alone are not enough. But they are an essential starting point for serving with eyes wide open.
2
One Church
The Changing Face of Christianity
Picture the typical Christian. What do you see? Perhaps you think of the people in your small group Bible study or the people you pass as you walk into church. Or maybe you think of the groupies who attend every Christian conference and concert that hit town or the elderly woman who religiously reads her Bible and prays each morning. While clearly part of the body of Christ, none of them are even close to how the majority of Christians look.
The “typical” Christian in the world is better portrayed as a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian flavella. The vast majority of Christians are young, poor, theologically conservative, female, and people of color.[20] As we grow in our understanding of the changing face of Christianity, there’s great potential for improving how we do short-term missions. The North American church is no longer the trendsetter and center of Christianity, though we still have a significant role. Serving with eyes wide open includes changing our assumptions about the worldwide Christian church and our part therein.
By sheer majority alone, the Western church used to be the trendsetter for the rest of the Christian church. In 1800, only 1 percent of Christians lived outside North America and Western Europe. In 1900, 10 percent of all Christi
ans lived outside North America and Western Europe. By 2000, more than two-thirds of the Christian church lived outside North America and Western Europe. The center of gravity in the body of Christ has shifted southward. The largest Christian communities today are not in the US Bible Belt but in Africa and Latin America.[21]
As a reflection of this reality, from here on we’ll use the term majority world church to refer to the church outside North America and Western Europe. This term was coined by church leaders gathered from these nations at the 2004 Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism in Pattaya, Thailand. They collaboratively rejected the terms previously used to describe them, most frequently third world church, a term they viewed as degrading.[22] Instead, majority world church is a descriptive term that refers to the church in those regions of the world where the greatest population of Christians live—outside North America and Western Europe.
Just as with the world at large, it’s impossible to accurately generalize about the majority world church. However, since many of us have limited experience with anything other than the churches we attend week after week, it’s helpful to pause and consider some of the common characteristics of the majority world church by looking at a few more snapshots.
Snapshot 1: Unprecedented Growth
Many contemporary sociologists are confounded by the pace at which Christianity is growing around the world. Endless predictions were made throughout the twentieth century that suggested Christianity would unravel alongside colonialism. However, “instead of Christianity fading away along with the empire, it unexpectedly grew and spread.”[23] New faith communities came into being without a colonial order to maintain them, and they grew with a flavor and look different from those brought to them by the imperialists.
The pace at which the majority church is growing is phenomenal. Consider a few of the statistics:
On average, 178,000 people convert to Christianity daily.
In Latin America, 35,000 conversions occur each day. There were 50,000 believers reported in Latin America in 1900. By 1980, there were more than 20 million, and the number is now over 480 million.
In China, 28,000 conversions occur daily. When China became closed to missionaries in 1950, there were reportedly one million Christians in China. Today’s estimates are near 100 million.
In Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world, at least one million people convert to Christianity each year.
India has more than 85 million believers. Two hundred teams travel the nation with an Indian version of the Jesus film, entitled The Man of Peace, and report 100,000 conversions monthly!
In 1900, Korea was deemed impossible to penetrate with the gospel. Today, South Korea is reported to be more than 40 percent Christian, with more than 7,000 Christian churches in Seoul alone.
More people have confessed Christ in Iran in the past ten years than in the previous thousand years combined! Thriving churches are found in almost every Iranian city and village.
Daily, 20,000 conversions occur in Africa. Forty percent of Africa is said to be Christian now.
None of the fifty largest churches in the world are found in North America. Check out the size of a few of these congregations. In Seoul, Korea, the Yoido Full Gospel Church has 837,000 members. In Abidjan, Ivory Coast, there are 150,000 members in one congregation. Another 150,000 members attend Yotabeche Methodist Church in Santiago, Chile, and 120,000 members attend Deeper Life Bible Church in Lagos, Nigeria.[24]
Some question these statistics, and that’s fair. Simply counting the number of people who say a prayer or espouse to follow Jesus is not enough. We’re called to make disciples who in turn have a transformational impact on their communities. Regardless, sociologists and missiologists agree that unprecedented growth is happening in the Christian church worldwide. Something is happening in God’s people around the world. Clearly the revolution of Jesus Christ continues to transcend the many atrocities and inequities described in chapter 1.
Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the world, with a 6.9 percent growth rate, compared to 2.7 percent for Muslims, 2.2 percent for Hindus, and 1.7 percent for Buddhists.[25] The story of Christianity represents a fundamental and historical shift in worldwide religions. Christianity is not held captive by a particular culture. In fact, more languages and cultural expressions are used in Christian liturgy, devotion, worship, and prayer than in any other religion.[26]
Add the burgeoning growth of the church to your perspective on the twenty-first-century church. Open your eyes. Those of us who are members of God’s people are part of a worldwide revolution that is growing with racing speed.
Snapshot 2: Persecution? Of Course!
The phenomenal growth of the church has not come without a cost. More Christians have been martyred for their faith in this century than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. Christians in the majority world church suffer brutal persecution. For most of the majority world church, persecution is commonplace and expected. As a result, many portions of the Bible make much more immediate sense to them. The stories of Mordecai and Esther, Daniel and friends, and Paul and Silas read like their daily news.[27]
Persecution is especially prevalent for Christians living in many of the remnant communist countries, including China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Laos. North Korea has been in “first place” for three years in a row as the least religiously free nation in the world. Religious persecution is also prevalent in parts of the Islamic world, such as Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan. These states live by a fundamentalist conviction that there is one right way to see the world: through Islam.
You won’t often hear these stories from your news outlet, or even from the persecuted themselves, because for them persecution is just a fact of life when you’re a Christian. Almost daily, young Christian boys are stolen from their parents in Sudan and taken to “cultural cleansing camps” where they are forcibly converted to a fundamentalist sect. They’re then sold at open-air slave markets. This is happening today! Right now fellow members in the Christian church are experiencing this kind of Paul-like persecution.
Take a minute to visit Voice of the Martyr’s website, www.persecution.com, for a timely story about someone in the majority world church who is experiencing persecution today.
Snapshot 3: Communal Decision Making
Another reality in the majority world church is an emphasis on communal decision making rather than an individualist approach. I’ve often been involved in developing ministry partnerships between different organizations across cultures. When I do so with organizations led by North American ministry leaders, the process typically involves a few conversations with the key decision makers at the table, and the agreement is formed. Sometimes a variety of staff play a part in the decision-making process, but at the end of the day, the partnership is solidified between one or two key leaders.
The process is very different when developing partnerships with many ministries in the majority world. One reason is the commitment of majority world church leaders to a more communal decision-making process. The leaders deliberately wrestle with the implications of a decision for many groups and whether it will promote harmony. This doesn’t mean decision making and leadership are approached in an egalitarian manner in which everyone has equal voice. In fact, many majority world church leaders are far more hierarchical and paternalistic than egalitarian. However, the decision-making process occurs collectively with many people rather than with a couple of key leaders making decisions in isolation.
Historian Peter Brown sees the communal nature of the majority world church as strangely reminiscent of the Christian church in the third and fourth centuries. A radical sense of community is what made Christianity so appealing to people at that time. It allowed people to move from the wide, impersonal world into a miniature community. In the same way, many Christians in the majority world today find a far greater sense of identity with their local churches than they do with bei
ng citizens of Peru or Nigeria. Communities of faith fill the void of disintegrated families and tribes, which have been eroded by ethnic cleansing, disease, and famine. The intimacy experienced among Christian faith communities in the majority world is comparable to the intimacy of a large family gathering.[28]
An emphasis on community and interdependence is one way majority world pastors have adapted the tools and philosophies they received from Western missionaries. For example, the emphasis on helping a church become self-supporting has been a driving agenda of Western missions over the last several decades, as expressed in the “three-self” formula. According to the three-self formula, national churches should be self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-governing. Three-self is an appropriate reaction against “spoon-feeding,” where national churches remain dependent upon Western missionaries and Western funds.[29]
However, some majority world church leaders aren’t convinced that the three-self model is the right approach. They argue that the three-self movement comes from an individualist perspective rather than one developed for an interdependent church around the world. Isaac Mwase, a Christian scholar with roots in Jamaica and Zimbabwe, says, “Unless the economies of poverty in the global South change dramatically in the future, Christian solidarity would seem to demand external support. What is needed is not self-sufficiency among the poor, but a way of partnering across cultural and economic differences that affirms Christian solidarity, the interdependency of the Body of Christ.”[30]
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