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"With no end in sight to the war, we persevere in seeking to be faithful to God."

Ajith Fernando

In the early 1980s, something good happened in the church here. Christians, especially in the newer charismatic churches, began taking the gospel to the rural villages (most Christians lived in the cities), and churches began springing up in areas where there had previously been no Christian witness. Many Buddhists and Hindus came to Christ—something that rarely happened in the past. This evangelistic fervor hit segments of the older mainline churches too, and they began planting churches in non-Christian areas, often creating new structures to accommodate these new churches.

This is a welcome development in a country where the number of Christians has dropped from about 10 percent of the population at the start of this century to 7.5 percent in the early eighties, with Protestants accounting for just 0.7 percent. This is happening in a context where Buddhism—the religion of 67 percent of the population—is the national religion (though the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian minorities have the freedom to practice and propagate their faith).

There are several reasons for this growth spurt. The first is that Christians began to talk in a new way about practical ways of fulfilling the Great Commission. This reflects the influence of the emphasis of "reaching the unreached" in the great international conferences on evangelization attended by Sri Lankan Christian leaders in the sixties and seventies. Many had been praying for revival in Sri Lanka, and revival came in the form of a revived interest in evangelization. Larger churches have sponsored the starting of daughter churches in unreached areas, and giving toward such missionary activity by Sri Lankan Christians has increased markedly.

A second reason is that this fresh growth of the church coincided with the intensifying of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka into a full-blown civil war. About 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the two major conflicts in the past 15 years. In this time of uncertainty and fear, the idea of a supreme God who cares for us and meets our needs has become very attractive to the people. Most non-Christians have come to faith through friends taking them at a time of need to a Christian meeting where needs were prayed for.

A third reason for the recent church growth has been the disillusionment with Buddhism many have felt. After independence there were great expectations that with the country's possession of a pristine form of Buddhism (Theravada Buddhism), Sri Lanka would become the launching ground for a worldwide missionary thrust. But many have become disillusioned with the few numbers of people, even among the clergy, who actually practice the noble ethic of Buddhism.

A fourth reason is the witness and challenge of Christian servanthood. A Hindu journalist for an Indian newspaper attributed three reasons for the rapid growth of the church among the tribal people of India. First, he said, Christian missionaries (usually from South India) go where others don't go—to the most interior parts where these tribal people live. Even government census workers usually make their own estimate of the population living in remote mountain tribal areas without actually visiting the areas. Second, Christian missionaries hand over leadership to the tribal people very soon. And third, Christianity is a cheap religion because it usually costs nothing to receive the services of a Christian "priest," unlike in Hinduism.

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November 16 1998, Vol. 42, No. 13