God on the move

Missionaries from the West carried Christianity to the Global South a couple hundred years ago. As Grace Snell explains in her story, “Heralds from the south,” in this issue, the descendants of those early converts are now returning the favor as the number of professing believers declines in Europe and North America.

Are conversions part of what’s driving church growth in the Global South? Really it comes down to demographics and where in the world people are having babies. In the Western world, our birth rates are plummeting, but in places like sub-­Saharan Africa, Christians are still having kids. But researchers disagree about whether conversions are happening in a statistically significant way, because those are just harder to track.

What do we know about the number of Christians in places where the church faces significant persecution? World Christian Database editor Gina Zurlo told me they use three main data sources to track Christians: government censuses, surveys, and talking to people on the ground. Government censuses are considered the gold standard, but about half the world’s countries don’t ask a religion question, and even when they do, they don’t ask about switching religions. So there are a lot of rumors about underground church growth in places like Iran, but it’s hard to verify that.

We’re seeing a renewed hunger for the hope of the gospel in the West. What do Christians from the Global South bring to this moment? They’re bringing a faithfulness to Scripture and a reliance on the Holy Spirit. Across Latin America and Africa, there have been a lot of Pentecostal-type movements, and so there’s often a vibrance and a freshness that they’re bringing with them in their expressions of faith. But then they also seem to have a strong commitment to Biblical accuracy, to holding true to what the text said, instead of embracing more standpoint theology.

What are some of the problems churches in the Global South struggle with? The prosperity gospel definitely came up in my research. But each area of the world has its own strengths and weaknesses. In the West, we have a lot more wealth and a lot more Biblical resources, but we are struggling with issues of human sexuality and gender. In other parts of the world, they might not be compromising on culture war questions, but they are wrestling with poverty. It only makes sense that there would be different types of heresies and challenges taking root there, which is why every part of the church needs every part of the church.

What was the most encouraging thing you learned during your reporting? One of the pastors from Nigeria told me, when people are on the move, God is on the move. In Acts 17, Paul talks about God being the one who sets the boundaries for people and places and times. And so I think it’s really important for each of us to look around and think, If my heart is to bring the gospel to the nations, what if the nations are already here?