Global Church

When George Liele set sail for Jamaica in 1782, he didn’t know he was about to become America’s first overseas missionary. And when Rebecca Protten shared the gospel with slaves in the 1730s, she had no idea some scholars would someday call her the mother of modern missions.

These two people of color were too busy surviving—and avoiding jail—to worry about making history. But today they are revising it. Their stories are helping people rethink a missionary color line. As National African American Missions Council (NAAMC) president Adrian Reeves said at a Missio Nexus conference in 2021, challenging the idea that “missions is for other people and not for us.” African Americans today account for less than one percent of missionaries sent overseas from the US. But they were there at the beginning.

British missionary William Carey is often called the father of modern missions. Adoniram Judson has been titled the first American missionary to travel overseas. But both Liele and Protten predated them.

Former missionary Brent Burdick now believes African Americans are a “sleeping giant” with an important part to play in the proclamation of the gospel. “They have a lot to offer to the world.”

Evangelicalism is now the largest religious demographic in Central America, according to a poll of about 4,000 people in five countries. More than a third of people from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica told researchers that they are evangelical, while another 29 percent said they are “nondenominational believers.”

Only about a third of people in the region said they were Catholic—down from about 60 percent in the 1970s. Some scholars have attributed the shift to internal Catholic conflict and the long fallout from the church’s political affiliations on the extreme right and left, along with the disruptions of urbanization.

Evangelical theologian Samuel Escobar, noting the trend in an interview in 2006, said Catholics who moved to Central American cities found empowerment in their evangelical conversion. He said, “Their decision to accept Christ meant a change in patterns of behavior which helped people to reorient their lives.”

In an article in Vice, Brian Merchant argues that the first structure that humans will probably build on the Moon after they have completed building a base there will be a church. Indeed, Christian missionaries and clergymen have built churches in the harshest of climates, whether they be the tropical jungles of Africa or the sun-drenched deserts of Australia.

When the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 landed in Antarctica, among the men was an Anglican priest named Arnold Spencer-Smith. Spencer-Smith set up a small chapel in a dark room in Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. He built an altar with a cross and candlesticks and an aumbry where he reserved the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, there are eight churches in Antarctica. One is an Eastern Orthodox church built of wood in the Russian style. Another is The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows which is a Catholic church located in a cave in the ice. It is the most southern place of worship of any religion in the world.

Churches have been erected in Antarctica since the 1950s. Extended stays in the region can be an extremely stressful experience for the researchers who often stay separated from their families for months at a time, which is one of the reasons why churches exist in this remote continent.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living anywhere in the world (or space) is a stressful experience for believers. We need the church to give support, care, connectivity to others, and to center ourselves in worship of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth.

A study by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity reveals the shift in the number of Protestants in major areas of the world:

61 million Protestants in North America

67 million Protestants in Latin America now has more than North America (Led by Brazil at 35 million)

99 million Protestants in Asia (now more than Europe, led by China at 26 million)

228 million Protestants in Africa and will contain half of all Protestants world-wide by 2040 (with Nigeria at 53 million, which is second only to the United States at 56 million)

New York City has the largest Ukrainian population in the United States, a community of about 150,000. Thousands had come to the United States as Christian refugees, most of them Baptist or Pentecostal, under a special asylum for those fleeing Soviet religious persecution.

As President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert, some took to the streets to join the protests against Putin’s aggression. But mostly, these followers of Jesus gathered in the churches to pray, weep, lament, and sing to God. They called their praise songs “weapons of war.”

As the nuclear threat escalated tensions, people in the service were in disbelief about how quickly the situation had spiraled. One church leader told Christianity Today, “Our minds fail to understand: How is this possible in this day and age? God allowed this to happen, and we do not know why. But we know God is sovereign, and he is on his throne. There are people who think if they kill someone it will accomplish a goal.”

A worship leader said, “Our hope is in the Lord, the one who holds things together. No matter how things fall apart, the Lord created this world, and he holds things in his hands.” He played music and led worship in tears. But he also told his church family, “Even if a nuclear attack happens, the hope we have is we go home. And we will be together with Jesus, the one we know will help us.”

The 2010s were a tipping point for global Christianity. Now, in 2020, more than half the world’s Christians live in Africa and Latin America, according to a new report from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. The portion of Christians in Europe has also fallen below 25% for the first time since the Middle Ages.

The change was predicted by historian Philip Jenkins, among others. Jenkins wrote in 2007, “We are living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide, as the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably . . . southward.” The demographic trends are expected to continue into this decade.

Percentage of the world’s Christians 2010 compared to 2020:

USA & Canada: Down from 12% to 9%

Europe: Down from 25% to 23%

Asia: Up from 15% to 16%

Latin America: Up from 24% to 25%

Africa: Up from 22% to 26%

More and more, we can’t help but live in a globalized world. Almost every aspect of our everyday life relies on global supply chains. If you have an iPhone, you’re using a product made with hundreds of parts from 43 countries. If you use a Samsung phone, chances are it was assembled in Vietnam or India with a similarly complex supply chain process. The ever-reliable Toyota Corolla has 30,000 parts from a far-flung supply chain stretching the globe. BMW works with 12,000 suppliers in 70 countries. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine includes 280 different components, manufactured in 86 different sites across 19 countries, driven partly by the research of a son and daughter of Turkish migrants to Germany.

But the commercial airplane has been called the “mother of all global supply chains.” A single Boeing airplane is made of more than three million parts, which means the company’s supply chain is a massive, global operation. More than 150,000 people are employed in more than 65 countries, not to mention the hundreds of thousands more working for Boeing suppliers across the globe.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) The church is also called to be a global movement, including men and women from every tribe and nation and tongue. (2) Global missions—God loves the whole world and desires to draw all men and women to himself through believers working together although scattered around the world.

More than 5,000 people groups are without an indigenous Christian church, according to recent data from Joshua Project. Nearly 2 billion people—more than a quarter of the world’s population—live in a group without a “self-sustaining gospel movement.” The ten largest unreached people groups are located in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Algeria.

Missiologists say cross-cultural missions are more effective than near-neighbor evangelism to share the gospel with people who have never heard it, but only about 4 percent of global missionaries are going to places where there are no existing churches.

Anil’s life took a sudden turn after his mother was miraculously healed following a woman’s simple prayer to Jesus. In this episode of God Pops Up, follow Anil’s journey to learn more about the man who he is convinced saved his mother.

After watching this episode of God Pops Up, read more about Apilang Apum’s call to Christ in a remote corner of India.

This strategic work in Southeast Asia faces continued pressure from the government, yet it continues to spread. Drawing on new technologies, the leaders have equipped hundreds of “hubs” across their region. In some places, they have brought the gospel to tribes who have never heard it. They’ve translated the Bible, for the first time, into the language of some of these people. Their video ministry is even reaching untold numbers of deaf people, helping them learn sign language, and the language of God’s love. For security reasons, we don’t divulge the identity of these brothers and sisters.

After watching this episode of God Pops Up, read the story in Christianity Today of missionaries in the mountains of Papua, who face life and death in “The Land of the Clouds.”

In her novel The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver's main character is a missionary to Africa named Nathan Price. According to one review of the book, "[Price] is meant to represent the patronizing attitude of white colonialists toward Africa—and the devastating legacy of violence [Christian missionaries] bequeathed to regions like the Congo." Although Kingsolver may have written a fine novel, Nathan Price does not represent the legacy of most missionaries.

Robert Woodbury, from UNC Chapel Hill, did a landmark study of countries where Victorian-era Christian missionaries worked. The current thinking (particularly in academic circles) today is that Christian missionaries destroyed the local culture, religions, and overall were a bad thing wherever they went.

However, when Woodbury studied the economic, educational, medical, family relationships, and other markers in these countries, he discovered that the most successful African countries today were countries where Victorian-era Christian missionaries worked. And the opposite was also true: The countries today that are wracked by chaos, financial instability, poor healthcare, and other negative markers were countries Victorian-era Christian missionaries never went. This remarkable study confirms that even though things may be difficult right now, we actually can turn this around and begin to restore our credibility in today's culture based on our strategy.

Southern Baptist pastor and leader Russell Moore recently highlighted one of his favorite books of all time—a series of essays by the southern novelist Walker Percy titled Signposts in a Strange Land. Moore wrote, "It is hard to overstate how much this book has shaped my ministry. First of all, Percy articulated what I sensed was wrong with nominal [Christianity]. It was, he argued, not Christian at all but rather Stoic … But, most of all, in this book Percy taught me that the collapse of [the political power and outward display of] Christendom is not a catastrophe. As Percy wrote:

The good news is that in becoming the minority in all countries, a remnant, the Church also becomes a world church in the true sense, bound to no culture, not even to the West of the old Christendom, by no means triumphant but rather a pilgrim church witnessing to a world in travail and yet a world to which it will appear ever stranger and more outlandish.

The first missionary from North America was George Liele, a former slave who left the American colonies for Jamaica in 1782 and began a ministry of preaching in 1783, nearly a full decade before William Carey sailed for India from England. Liele was born a slave (circa 1750) in the colony of Virginia. He launched his preaching career in 1773, and a year later he gathered slaves for what could be considered the first African-American church in America. After the Revolutionary War, the recently freed Liele fled to Jamaica to escape being re-enslaved.

George Liele arrived in Jamaica as an indentured servant, but would serve as a missionary-evangelist to the island. Liele became the first Christian to win a significant number of slaves on the Island to Christ, and the first to plant a church composed of slaves. He preached in private homes and public settings drawing crowds of slaves. In a letter written in 1791, Liele reported 500 converts and 400 baptisms. In 1789 Liele's congregation had organized and by 1793 they had completed the Windward Road Chapel, the first Baptist church on the island.

Liele achieved these successful evangelistic and church planting efforts despite opposition from a powerful constituency on the island. White slave owners feared the impact upon the slave population if the slaves were to embrace Christianity. Concern arose that "if their minds are considerably enlightened by religion, or otherwise, that it would be attended with the most dangerous consequences."

Despite Liele's numerous efforts to appease the slave owners, he still faced stiff opposition. He was charged with sedition and jailed on numerous occasions on trumped-up charges. Despite these obstacles, Liele was able to baptize new converts as well as plant and organize new churches. His evangelistic and church-planting efforts led to the establishment of the Baptist denomination on the island, with slaves, freedmen, and whites joining churches started by Liele. The impact of Liele's ministry continues to this day; however, Liele himself is buried in an unmarked grave in Jamaica.

Phillip Yancey toured the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery, built to honor 145 missionaries in South Korea. All of the missionaries died in their adopted country. Yancey writes:

Some of the gravestones date back more than a hundred years, and the caretakers have added stainless steel plaques to recount the stories of the missionaries buried there. Some faced persecution for leading protests against the brutal Japanese colonial rule. A couple with the Salvation Army began the long tradition of caring for Korean orphans. A scholarly Presbyterian contributed greatly to the Korean translation of the Bible. Two women pioneered education for girls by founding schools and ultimately a women's university. Another American woman, who came to Korea as a medical missionary, developed Braille suitable for the Korean language and established a school for the blind.

My favorite story was of S. F. Moore, who gave medical treatment to a butcher deathly ill with typhoid fever. The butcher survived and became a Christian, only to find that no church would admit him. (Korea's rigid class system scorned butchers, who dealt with "dead things" such as meat and leather, as the lowest social class.) Moore supported a freedom movement to fight such discrimination and organized a Butchers Church for outcasts and social underdogs. He died of typhoid fever at the age of 46.

Each plaque spelled out hardships of the men and women buried there. Many of the missionaries also lost children, buried in small graves beside them. Yet the fruit of their work lives on, in schools, libraries, hospitals, and church buildings dotting the landscape of modern South Korea …

To a nation steeped in hierarchy and dominated by its powerful neighbors China and Japan, the men and women buried here brought a gospel message of justice, compassion, and transformation. In comparison with much of Asia, South Korea has been unusually receptive to the Christian message; 30 percent of South Koreans identify as Christian. I spoke at one impressive church with 65,000 members—yet it is less than one-tenth the size of Seoul's largest church.

In a recent article on the suffering church, FaithWorks listed the degrees of persecution one could face for practice of religious faith:

1. Disapproval
2. Ridicule
3. Pressure to conform
4. Loss of educational opportunities
5. Economic sanctions
6. Shunning
7. Alienation from community
8. Loss of employment
9. Loss of property
10. Physical abuse
11. Mob violence
12. Harassment by officials
13. Kidnapping
14. Forced labor
15. Imprisonment
16. Physical torture
17. Murder or execution

It is of no avail to talk of the church in general, the church in the abstract, unless the concrete particular local church which the people attend can become a center of light and leading, of inspiration and guidance, for its specific community.