When Stephen Kasamba came to the United States last October, he brought a spiritual legacy full circle. Kasamba, a young Anglican evangelist and worship leader, was part of a Ugandan ministry team invited to help foster renewal within Episcopal churches in several American dioceses. The team's charge was to be a spiritual encouragement to flagging U.S. churches. In Uganda, the Anglican Church has been growing phenomenally: there are 5 million Anglicans in 21,000 churches, compared to the United States where Episcopalian membership has dwindled to about 2.5 million in 7,360 churches.

For Kasamba, the task held deep personal meaning. Decades earlier, an American missionary working in northern Uganda had told Kasamba's grandfather, "Today, we are coming to you to preach the gospel, but tomorrow, you shall bring the gospel to us." That day had finally come.

Kasamba's story is a living illustration of dramatic changes occurring within the global evangelical movement—shifts that are forcing new interpretations of missions and ministry.

As recently as 1960, evangelicalism was largely a movement concentrated in Western Europe and North America. Today it has become a global movement with startling new dimensions. Of the world's estimated 400 million evangelicals, 70 percent are non-Western, living in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. As the new millennium grows nearer, church leaders from around the world agree that such an enormous demographic transformation has significant implications for theology, for missions, and for the future of evangelicalism.

In Abbotsford, British Columbia, evangelical leaders representing 115 nations and 110 organizations in early May will convene the tenth General Assembly of World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), the international umbrella group for national and regional evangelical alliances.

WEF International Director Agustin B. Vencer, Jr., says the meeting in suburban Vancouver was planned to "celebrate the globalization of Christianity." For the opening ceremony, delegates are to enter the convention site carrying their national flags in a vivid display of a WEF theme Bible verse: "My name will be great among the nations" (Mal. 1:11).

"Our world is becoming a smaller village each passing day," says Vencer, a Filipino lawyer and pastor and WEF's first non-Western leader. "This has an impact on the church because we are aware that we are part of a global body, that the point of reference is no longer defined simply by missions but by the reality of what God is doing in other parts of the world as well."

Delegates to the general assembly are expected to commemorate the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the founding of WEF's predecessor, the Evangelical Alliance. But much has happened since the 1846 London meeting when Christians from ten nations sat down to form a new international evangelical organization. And in setting global evangelical priorities for the twenty-first century, WEF delegates will have new strategies to consider.

GROWTH SPURTs SOUTH AND EAST
According to veteran researchers Patrick Johnstone and David Barrett, who have been tracking global church trends for nearly three decades, as late as 1960 more than half of all professing Christians still lived in North America and Europe. But, says Johnstone, by the early 1970s, the "center of gravity of Christianity" began moving toward the Eastern and Southern Hemispheres. By 1990, only 38 percent of all Christians lived in Western nations, and by 2000, Johnstone estimates the figure will be down to 31 percent.

Western evangelicalism is by no means dead. Johnstone says there has been a "slow, but steady growth" in the number of evangelicals in the West. But within the past 20 years, he says, there has been a virtual explosion of evangelicalism in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

For example, Johnstone's Operation World (Zondervan, 1993) reports that in 1960 there were 4 million evangelicals in Brazil, the largest Roman Catholic nation in the world. By 1990, that number had risen to 26 million evangelicals, about 18 percent of the population. In fact, Brazil now has the third-largest national evangelical community in the world, after the United States and China.

In 1900, there were about 8.8 million Christians in Africa, composing less than 2 percent of all the world's Christians. By 2000, there will be about 338 million Christians in Africa, nearly 17 percent of the total global population. In Uganda alone, more than 80 percent of the nation's 22 million people are Christians.

At the beginning of the century, only 4 percent of the world's Christians lived in Asia. Today that number is close to 20 percent. South Korea, where the first Protestant church was planted in 1884, is now home to 10 of the 20 largest congregations in the world, including the single largest congregation, Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul.

Some scholars suggest this southern and eastern trend is part of the "serial movement" of Christianity that has characterized the faith since its very beginnings. According to Bryant Myers, director of the Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center (MARC) at World Vision International, the church may have begun as a Jewish movement in Jerusalem, but the center of gravity quickly moved to the Greek world as Christianity spread into Greece and Turkey. Then for many centuries the church was a Roman-dominated movement, until the period of the Reformation, when a new center of gravity moved into northern Europe and England. In the modern era, the demographic center shifted to North America.

With the explosive growth of evangelicalism in the Third World, Myers says, it appears that Protestant Christianity is again heading into a new dispensation, although its final composition may not yet be set. "A demographic shift that is as significant as this will take some time to play itself out," Myers cautions. "We're not far enough into it to be able to comment with any certainty."

RESHAPING EVANGELICAL THOUGHT
Nonetheless, Myers and others agree the new trend already has major implications for the worldwide church. One of the key influences is likely to be felt in the reshaping of evangelical thinking.

"All the great authors of the world, all of the great philosophers, all the great thinkers of evangelical thought are no longer necessarily centered in just one or two geographic areas," says Dwight Gibson, North American director of WEF.

"The theology of the future is the theology of where the Christians are," says Kwame Bediako, a Ghanaian seminary professor who wrote Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion.

Many evangelicals from developing countries used to come to North America or Europe for advanced studies, but today seminaries and other evangelical educational institutions are being established across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to teach the evangelical faith from a non-Western framework.

"Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans are asking different questions, and because you have so many Christians there, you'll find theology trying to address those questions and, hence, a new center of theological creativity," says Myers.

In Africa, for example, Bediako notes that Christians wrestle with numerous topics that have not been pressing issues for the West, including the influence of traditional religions, struggles between ethnic groups, and church-state relationships in situations where Christians are a minority.

Africa can be a "laboratory" where "those Christian answers are going to be hammered out," Bediako says.

As South Africans have discovered fresh approaches to racial reconciliation, Western leaders have been learning from African achievement.

One of the key mediators behind the scenes in the 1994 elections was Michael Cassidy, team leader of African Enterprise. He encouraged Washington Okumu, a Kenyan professor who is also a Christian, to play an important role in resolving longstanding political difficulties.

In addition, Cassidy, during the election campaign, brought 90 opposing politicians face to face during intensive weekend encounters. "The key in those experiences was having each person share an autobiography and history," Cassidy says. "This required everybody to listen rather than talk. And when that happened, the stereotypes were broken."

Since his successful efforts to aid democracy in South Africa, Cassidy has been drafted to speak about reconciliation in other countries.

Cassidy told CT that once an alienated adversary is fully understood and "humanized," the stage is set for apology, repentance, and reconciliation. "We stumbled almost unwittingly onto a formula that was powerful and which we have found to be workable."

The Christian leader took that message abroad to Northern Ireland last October, where he met 300 leaders. He intends to return there in August at the invitation of the Presbyterian Church.

He also addressed groups of Promise Keepers in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Chicago last July. A third speaking engagement, during which he will again talk about racial reconciliation, is scheduled for June 7 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

According to Cassidy, the South African situation could be a model for helping to improve racial tensions in North America, the political and religious impasse in Northern Ireland, or the tribal strife in Rwanda and Burundi.

African Enterprise has been active in all of these countries. Cassidy is also considering some involvement in Liberia as that war-torn West African country struggles to return to normalcy after years of fratricide.

David Richardson, the African Enterprise Canadian director who has worked closely with Cassidy for 20 years, says North Americans could apply the same principles of reconciliation to ease multicultural tensions, including those of the Asian and Native American communities. "They have never been dealt with in a way that brings healing and closure to historical hurts," he says.

"The whole thing about race relations in many parts of the world is that they have been ignored; they have been such a hot potato," he adds. "No matter how far back in history it may be, it [reconciliation] is doable within the understanding of the Christian context."

Daniel Ho, senior pastor of the Damansara Utama Methodist Church in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, says Asian evangelicals also face distinctive challenges, such as learning to function in sharply restrictive environments; dealing with "heightened religious sensitivities" among other faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam; and coping with a rapid urbanization.

"It is a great challenge for the church to know how to operate and witness in this context," says Ho, former general secretary of the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Malaysia.

From his vantage point in WEF's world headquarters in Singapore, Vencer says he sees evangelicals in the Third World applying a more holistic vision to how their faith impacts all areas of life, including poverty, justice issues, and politics. "Evangelicals are now becoming conscious of oppressions and injustices in their own lands and the role they can play in their own countries so they can be part of the process of transforming their societies for Jesus Christ," he says.

In some places, WEF's Vencer concedes, this role has led to political involvement that has not been well thought through. "There are some negatives to this, of course, but by and large, it doesn't change the fact that they are picking up a biblical agenda to be truly evangelical and take, as we say, the whole gospel to the whole world."

SHIFTING PARADIGMS
In fact, overwhelming numbers of evangelicals from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are indeed taking the gospel around the world. The emergence of a vibrant missions force from developing countries has been one of the hallmarks of the past decade. Scholars estimate that by the end of the century there will be as many missionaries from the Third World as there are from the West.

"It's not a competition, but simply a growing awareness on the part of the Third World to pay their global debt to the gospel, to reach their own neighbors, and contribute to the task of proclaiming the goodness of Jesus to all the world," Vencer says.

In some cases, Christians within the developing world are ministering to unreached people and language groups within their own borders. The 1996 Directory of India Missions, published by the India Missions Association, lists 86 indigenous agencies, all headquartered inside India and largely financed by Indian churches. Most are working with India's many ethnic groups.

Another widespread trend is the growth of Third World tentmaking missions. With the rise of labor migration, many contract workers from the developing world are finding ministry possibilities in the wealthier nations where they work. Thousands of Filipinos, Indians, and Ethiopians are hired annually in Muslim Gulf States. Peruvians with a Japanese ethnic background are going to Japan in search of jobs. Some of these overseas workers are Christians committed to sharing their faith, planting house churches, and forming cell groups in their new environments.

Increasingly, Third World churches are following the more traditional route of sending missionaries "abroad." Daniel Ho's church in Malaysia has planted four churches in Cambodia and is helping those local Christians establish income-generating projects. Many Latin American missionaries have effectively worked in Muslim nations, and missionaries from South Korea and Singapore are working around the globe.

"I find that what God is doing today is moving people outside their cultural comfort zones to peoples and language groups different from their own, and that is happening from everywhere to everywhere," says Edwina Thomas, national director for the U.S. branch of SOMA, Sharing of Ministries Abroad, an Anglican mission facilitating group.

"From everywhere" includes missionaries from the Third World coming to the West. According to David Barrett, there are about 16,000 non-Americans working in the United States as missionaries.

Thomas, who helped organize Stephen Kasamba's ministry trip from Uganda last fall, says numerous American churches were blessed as a result. "It was an incredible success because our people are so very thirsty and hungry to see people who are unashamedly, unabashedly speaking out for Jesus," she says. "We in America need the fire and the passion for the gospel that some of our brothers and sisters in the Third World have."

According to many analysts, such shifting paradigms will force Western agencies to examine their roles in missions and evangelism. "We need to realize that the great actors of mission in the past were people sent from nations in Europe and North America," says Samuel Escobar, professor of missions at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, "but in the next century, the great actors of missions will not be them. They will be the partners of them."

Escobar and others say new global partnerships need to go beyond the old models. "We have to ask the question 'In what way can Western Christians add value to a world where most of the evangelicals are living in former mission fields?' " says MARC's Myers. He believes God expects Christians to share resources.

Possible resources the West may have to offer include technological expertise, information and research about various unevangelized people groups, and material resources. Stuart McAllister, director of the European Evangelical Alliance, says Western churches can also contribute "the experience [of] mistakes and lessons learned from two millennia of church and mission."

The greatest financial resources are still concentrated in the West, although many Third World churches are increasingly financing their own mission efforts. Even where Western money still plays a role, Escobar cautions that finances can no longer be allowed to drive missions. "Traditionally, we've thought that those who pay the player call the tune," he says, adding that the great challenge for Western churches will be learning how to enter creatively into truly equal partnerships with the Third World.

NEW ACCOMMODATIONS
Some organizations have been making changes to accommodate the new demographic realities. In 1986, WEF moved its international headquarters to Singapore "to provide the image that WEF in reality is a global movement," according to Vencer.

But for some Western Christians, the changing trends have led to an identity crisis. "When you've seen yourself as the locus of mission, the energy of mission, the leader … it's very hard to say, 'Well, now somebody else is sharing this with us, and we need to find a supporting role,' " Myers says. "We are really afraid of letting go of that sense that we are at the center."

Many international church leaders believe the global evangelical movement will be enriched for recognizing the gifts that non-Westerners bring.

"With the emergence of the Third World, the pool of leadership to run Christian organizations around the world has expanded," Vencer says.

However, McAllister says the international evangelical bodies "need to go further and faster in identifying and involving" more non-Western leaders. "Although we are on our way, I cannot help but feel that most organizations and structures still wear a predominantly Western face," he says.

Regional evangelical leaders say there is much Western churches can learn from their experiences. "We have a vibrancy of faith and worship in churches here in Asia," says Ho, noting that with so many other religious options available, "people here cannot take the belief in the uniqueness of Christ sloppily." In addition, he says believers around the world can learn from the "cost that many in Asia are paying for their commitment to Jesus Christ."

Caio Fabio, president of the Brazilian Evangelical Association, says that while U.S. Christians may be worried about being "politically correct," many Latin American Christians "are always very bold in making their confession."

GROWING PAINS
For all the positives, the dynamic spread of evangelicalism east and south has not been without growing pains.

Fabio says that "for years and years" he dreamed of seeing such phenomenal growth of evangelical Christianity in Brazil. "Then we realized there was this tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and so many people were coming to Christ and listening and hungry for the Word and the truth," he says. "It was very pleasing to see, but it very quickly became a nightmare."

Brazil's evangelical association has experienced severe tensions with other Protestant movements, such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which has millions of followers. One leader of that movement created a national scandal when he smashed a statue of Brazil's patron saint on national television (CT, Dec. 11, 1995, p. 64).

Fabio, who has been highly critical of the Universal Church, says they follow a theology of power and prosperity.

"Growth brings seduction and the potential for political manipulation," he says. "Some of the growing is with sincerity and honesty; but others are more interested in taking. Power, money, prestige. They're taking."

Edwina Thomas also raises concerns about the character of Christians some of the growth is producing. Last year, SOMA participated in a reconciliation project with churches in Rwanda where, prior to the 1994 genocide, 80 percent of the population were affiliated with either a Catholic or a Protestant church, and about 20 percent were evangelicals. Ethnic bloodletting resulted in horrifying numbers of deaths. How could such a tragedy have occurred in a predominantly Christian nation?

"There are no easy answers, but one of the conclusions we've come to is that many of the Christians there were evangelized but not well-discipled," Thomas says.

She describes how at one reconciliation meeting, a Nigerian Anglican bishop preached a strong sermon asserting that what took place in Rwanda must be condemned as sin. "After he made that public statement, I went to him and said, 'Thank you for saying that.' His response to me was, 'Perhaps now you in the West will stop idolizing us in Africa,'" Thomas recalls.

"We need to see that there is a real fire and passion for Christ in many of the [Third World] churches … but they too are fighting with their own problems, and those problems can be deep and difficult," she says.

In Asia, where numerous churches still have severe Bible shortages and lack access to good theological materials, "the training and equipping of leaders who in turn will be able to train others for the work of ministry is one of our greatest challenges," acknowledges Ho.

With the twenty-first century approaching, the global evangelical movement itself faces key challenges as evangelicals everywhere increasingly face common problems.

Vencer sees the growth of secularism as one such obstacle that is faced by both East and West. "Even if we evangelize the 10/40 window, we will still not evangelize the world, because the one demographic shift that we need to face is the rise of secularism in our societies today," Vencer says. "With development and progress, the seduction of culture will put a lot of people in the secularist camp, and they will be very difficult to reach for the gospel."

McAllister agrees. "Many of our churches have been neutralized by the effects of modernity," he says. "At the theological as well as the ethical level, the gospel has been shrunk to be an individualized, internalized, and privatized message."

Ethnic and religious conflicts are increasingly replacing the political conflicts that divided the world during the Cold War era. Some scholars have argued that these conflicts are a backlash to technological advances and a globalizing economy, which are perceived as threats to local identities. "We as Christians are going to have to face up to the increasing polarizations that are taking place," Operation World's Johnstone says.

In some conflicts, Christians themselves are responsible for polarization, even within the body of Christ. Vencer says, "If we are not careful, the impact of globalization can result in a kind of isolation of the church, with each one doing what is right in his own eyes. This division will retard recruitment for the church and for missions."

SIGNS OF HOPE
But there are indications that the future of global evangelicalism is encouraging.

Many analysts say one hopeful sign is the growing international awareness of the role women can play. "Nowadays, there are women leaders as well as men leaders," says David Barrett.

In many parts of the Third World, leadership roles for women are still largely within traditional roles. "We're not going to be jumping on the bandwagon of the feminists, which is one of the greatest fears," says Eva Sanderson, a founder of the Pan African Christian Women's Alliance.

But Sanderson, who is on the WEF International Council, says she hopes there is a growing awareness that "when God chooses to put a woman into a leadership position, we need to honor that."

The expansion of technology, particularly of the Internet, is making numerous positive contributions to the global evangelical movement. Increased communication is breaking down barriers and bringing church leaders around the world closer. For example, on any given day, Dwight Gibson and his Carol Stream, Illinois, office of WEF are likely to be in touch by electronic mail, fax, or telephone with evangelicals in the Philippines, Singapore, China, England, Finland, and Germany.

Such information exchanges have radically transformed evangelization efforts. Massive amounts of anthropological, linguistic, and social background research about unreached people groups are easily available by computer, and with improved communication, missionaries can better coordinate information and efforts. Technology has also facilitated the translation of Scriptures and other theological training materials.

"For the first time, we've got a fairly clear picture of the boundaries of the task that remains before us [for world evangelization]," says Johnstone. "The fact that we have the information enables us to plan for the finishing of the job that Jesus gave us to do."

In addition to missions, evangelicals also have been developing coordinated international strategies on other fronts, such as global prayer and intercession movements and responding to religious persecution.

Last September, WEF's Religious Liberty Commission sponsored an International Day of Prayer for persecuted Christians, and evangelicals from more than 100 nations participated. Through the use of e-mail (religious-liberty@ xc.org), the Religious Liberty Commission forwards information about specific incidents of persecution and suggests international responses.

Numerous international projects have been established to pray for world evangelization. In addition, global prayer strategies are launched on behalf of particular emergencies. In March, as civil fighting in Albania reached a crisis, church leaders and missionaries caught inside the country sent urgent appeals for prayer that were forwarded around the globe in minutes.

"We are able to become the church worldwide responding as a church to issues around the world," Vencer says.

For evangelicals, the greatest hope for the future is the faith itself. "We preach a gospel that transforms. That is a reality in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, and in the United States also," says Samuel Escobar.

And because of that reality, Escobar says he is heartened by Revelation 7:9 where John describes a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language praising God together in one voice. "Today, at the close of this century, we are closer than ever to that vision."

Despite the great challenges both inside and outside the church, Vencer remains optimistic: "I say to our people, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there. Welcome to the future, the Lord is there."

Additional reporting by Ted Olsen, Richard Nyberg, and Timothy C. Morgan.

Originally published in Christianity Today, May 19, 1997.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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