Ch. 11 – Our Historic Moment
Sider, writing fifteen years ago, saw the 90s as an historic time to be alive and on mission with God, and while we’re now beyond the 90s and almost into the 10s (!), I think much of the opening of this chapter still holds true and bears repeating:
Christians privileged to live in the last decade before the year 2000 face a historic opportunity. The number of Christians worldwide is growing at unprecedented rates. A shrinking global village and new technology make it easier to get the message of Christ to those who have never heard. Growing agreement on both the urgency of evangelism and the importance of a wholistic approach encourages optimism. And historic political changes have opened more doors to the gospel… Global Christianity is on the move.
And Christianity, once thought to be a North American/European thing, is quickly becoming more and more global. Philip Jenkins and various others have observed the geographic shift in the Church, with dramatic decline in Europe especially, but also to an extent in North America, coupled with remarkable growth in the South and the East – Africa, Asia, and Latin America. You might find The Next Christendom and God’s Continent to be particularly interesting.
At any rate, the face of global Christianity is rapidly changing, and we’d be foolish, I think, to ignore the voices that are emerging in the Church around the world. One Latin American theologian, Rene Padilla, has this to say:
There is no place for statistics on how many souls die without Christ every minute, if they do not take into account how many of those who die, die victims of hunger.
Convictions held by Rene Padilla and other theologians from the majority world (outside first world nations such as the USA and many European nations) cannot be evaluated without considering the conditions in which most of humanity live their daily lives, where three meals each day, a wardrobe full of clothes, a roof overhead, and high-speed Internet are not guarantees. The twenty-first century Church looks to be significantly less wealthy than she was in the twentieth century. Could it be that we have been living rather isolated, comfortable lives and that our theology has some significant blind spots as a result? What might these blind spots be?
Do you share Sider’s assertion that this moment is an historic one? What is unique about this moment in history, and about our particular place in this story that is unfolding? How are we uniquely poised to build up the body of Christ? What would it look like to truly share in the growth of the global Church, not merely as caretakers but as blessed beneficiaries?
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