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not just the glamorous
The Great Commission is not just the glamorous “far, far away,” but the humdrum local outreach in the streets and fields where the believers live, and also to the difficult sections of the community nearby that we would normally seek to avoid. Jesus was not giving a range of alternatives from which we could choose, even if his calling is to a specific location, whether local or afar. Patrick…
prayer is the ministry
The ministry of the children of God is not doing but praying, not strategizing, but prostate before God seeking His will, not clever stratagems for manipulating people and events, but trusting in God who moves in the ears of even His most implacable enemies. Through prayer, Nebuchadnezzar and today’s dictators get converted, Manasseh and today’s persecutors repent, and kingdoms of Babylon and…
Review: Serving God in a Migrant Crisis
Review: Serving God in a Migrant Crisis
Serving God in a Migrant Crisis, Patrick Johnstone with Dean Merrill (foreword by Stephen Bauman). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.
Summary: Concisely sets forth the scope of our present-day global refugee crisis, how as Christians we might think about all this, and several levels of action steps we may take.
We are facing an unprecedented refugee crisis. Corrupt regimes. Violent gangs.…
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Catching up with the Global Church
Interview with Patrick Johnstone, Leadership Journal, March 26, 2013 Patrick Johnstone authored Operation World, "the definitive prayer guide to every nation." The resource has sold more than 2.5 million copies and is considered by many to be the most important missions resource in history. Johnstone, a former missionary, recently took on another writing project of equally impressive scope: The Future of the Global Church (IVP, 2012). The book includes data on global history, demographics, and religion.
What are some surprising developments in Christianity globally? The 1990s was the greatest harvest into the kingdom of God that the world has ever seen. Part of this is due to trends in demographics. The places where Christian faith has flourished have also been the places with the greatest population growth. Evangelical Christians went through a wilderness period from the 1920s until the 1960s. But now evangelicals are a leading expression of Christianity. I recently spoke at an Anglican clergy conference and said, "Do you realize that the Anglican Communion in 2050, if present trends continue, will be 84 percent African and almost entirely evangelical?" Arguments about homosexuality, women's ministry, and other current hot issues in Anglicanism will hardly be relevant in 2050.
In the 20th century many assumed Christian faith would decline. What's actually happening? The former Communist, European, and Pacific countries are secularizing very rapidly. Canada is somewhere in between the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile Christian faith in the U.S. is in gentle decline. But growth in what I call "AFASLA"--Africa, Asia, Latin America--more than compensates for the losses in the West.
Nonreligious people are committing sociocide, mainly because of their low birthrates. There are a handful of prominent atheists making noise in the public square, but nonreligious groups peaked in the 1970s and have declined ever since.
How can we help the global church? We need to work together with other members of Christ's body. By 2050, one-third of the European population will be non-indigenous. And the figure will most likely be higher in North America. We need multicultural teams that work with multicultural churches.
