Here’s a few interesting facts from the first twenty five pages.

The world’s population nearly doubled between 1970 and 2010.

63.2% of the worlds Christians are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

About 10% of foreign missionaries work among Muslims, even though Muslims make up about 37% of all non-Christians in the world.

“The non-religious, or secular, bloc has shown the most massive growth in the past century, from a tiny 0.2% of the world’s population in 1900. . . in 2010 representing 13.6% – mainly Europeans and Chinese.

The Indian sub-continent has the largest concentration and variety of least-reached peoples.

The proportion of Buddhists who have come to Christ is minute.

The total population of unreached people is 2.84 billion, or 41.1% of humanity.

“Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation” (Jason Mandryk)

Sometime this week. the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark

At the time of Christ the world’s population was around 250 million. It took until another 1,800 years to reach 1 billion. In 1960 it reached 3 billion.

Lamin Sanneh is Professor of History and World Christianity at Yale University. Here are his estimates of the trends in population growth and the changes in religious belief since 1900.

Note the incredible rise of Pentecostal/Charismatic movements (includes African independent churches and Chinese underground house churches) which has taken place predominantly in the developing world where the population is growing fastest.

Here are the figures on the shift from Christianity as a faith for the Western world (Europe and the US), to Christianity as the faith of the developing world (Asia, Latin America, Africa).

Finally, the incredible growth of the Christianity in Africa, outstripping the growth of Islam in that continent over the last 100 years.
This massive population growth will continue due to the extraordinary growth in agricultural productivity. By 2050 there will be 9 billion people on the planet.

What will it take to reach a lost world with a rapidly increasing population? Christianity of the developing world is showing us how. . . Movements.

“Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (Studies in World Christianity)” (Lamin O. Sanneh)

Tim Gardam reports for the BBC on Christians in China.

Chairman Mao once described religion as “poison”, and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s attempted to eradicate it. Driven underground, Christianity not only survived, but with its own Chinese martyrs, it grew in strength.

More people go to church on Sunday in China than in the whole of Europe.

It is impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today, but no-one denies the numbers are exploding.

The government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics. Independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate. A conservative figure is 60 million. There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of Europe.

The new converts can be found from peasants in the remote rural villages to the sophisticated young middle class in the booming cities.

Chinese Christianity is exploding: China will soon become the largest Christian country on earth. On Easter morning, in downtown Beijing, I watched five services, each packed with over 1,500 worshippers. Sunday school was spilling on to the street.

However, these numbers are dwarfed by the unofficial “house churches”, spreading across the country, at odds with the official Church which fears the house churches’ fervour may provoke a backlash.

According to Auguste Comte, demography is destiny. If he’s right, the future is African.

By October this years there will be 7 billion of us on the planet. Sometime around 2025 world population will reach 8 billion.

We’re not talking about more of the same. Europe is shrinking. Africa is exploding.

Africa’s population has almost doubled between 1975 and 2000, growing from 416 to 811 million; it will add another 75 percent to reach 1.4 billion people in 2025, and presumably another 55 percent to reach the staggering figure of 2.2 billion by mid-century.

Asia remains the largest human reservoir, holding more than 60 percent of the world’s population — a proportion that should still be around 55 percent by 2050.

What is most striking, though, is the unabated demographic swelling of Africa.

The population of Africa as a whole is expected to keep growing briskly, from only 9 percent of the world’s population in 1950 to 24 percent by 2050. The absolute figures will have increased tenfold within that century.

And while countries such as Nigeria (230 million in 2025, 390 million in 2050); Ethiopia (110 million and 145 million) and Congo (95 million and 148 million) have since long been identified as the demographic giants of sub-Saharan Africa, new applicants are following suit.

With a population of 45 million inhabitants today and a fertility rate of 5.5, Tanzania is on the path toward 71 million in 2025 and 138 million in 2050. Kenya is expected to jump from 41 million to 59 million and then to 97 million in that same time span, while Uganda might reach the 100 million mark after mid-century.

A consequence of the growth curve is the pressure to emigrate generated by the annual arrival on the African labor markets of some 20 million youths. That bulge is liable to increase year after year, reaching 40 million by 2050.

The migratory pressure will be directed in the first place toward Europe, whose population, in sharp contrast with Africa’s, is bound to age and stagnate.

Within a decade Europe — for the first time in peacetime — will have no natural increase of its population. Russia’s population has been declining for two decades; more recently so has Germany’s (and Japan’s). The issue is not only one of decline in absolute figures, but also one of a graying population and a shrinking workforce.

It reveals the incredible transformation of the region over the last century. According to the report:

In little more than a century, the religious landscape of sub-Saharan Africa has changed dramatically. As of 1900, both Muslims and Christians were relatively small minorities in the region. The vast majority of people practiced traditional African religions, while adherents of Christianity and Islam combined made up less than a quarter of the population.

Since then, however, the number of Muslims living between the Sahara Desert and the Cape of Good Hope has increased more than 20-fold, rising from an estimated 11 million in 1900 to approximately 234 million in 2010. The number of Christians has grown even faster, soaring almost 70-fold from about 7 million to 470 million. Sub-Saharan Africa now is home to about one-in-five of all the Christians in the world (21%) and more than one-in-seven of the world’s Muslims (15%).

Since 1910 Christianity has been outgrowing Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa by a rate of 3.5 to 1.

This map reveals a continent divided between Islam and Christianity.

You can download an 18 page executive summary of the report or a the full 331 pages.

NPR reports on one of the most amazing advances in the history of the Christian movement.

The missionaries planted the seed of the gospel but it’s the Chinese themselves, largely without foreign interference, who are reaching their nation. The current estimate is 100,000,000 followers of Jesus in China today.

We have much to learn from them.

UPDATE

Over the past 30 years, nearly 400 million Chinese have moved to the cities. There are some 170 Chinese cities now with more than one million residents compared with only 35 in all of Europe. The urbanisation process has a long way to run with another 300 to 400 million people expected to move from the country to the city over the next 20 years.

If the Chinese church has followed the example of the church in the west, do you think they would have had any chance of keeping with these trends?

Miriam Adeney tells the story of how the gospel saved a whole people from annihilation.

In Borneo, in the middle of the nineteenth century the British governor prohibited head-hunting and improved agricultural methods. More rice and freedom from fear led to more fermented beverages, partying and heavy drinking. Alcoholism became a major scourge, families were broken, and violence erupted frequently.

Then in Australia, several Christians felt called to serve the Lun Bawang and Kelabit people. When they arrived, officials tried to discourage them. They said it was not worthwhile because those people are going to disappear. They will be gone in a generation.

Nevertheless, the missionaries did go. They shared God’s good news. The people responded. Lives changed. They quit drinking. Families healed. They asked the government for schools. Today they are literate, contributing citizens.

Including believers in nearby tribes, there are 150,000 followers of Jesus, and more than one thousand churches. They say, “The gospel saved us, not only as individuals but as a people.

HT: David Mays

“Kingdom Without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity” (Miriam Adeney)

Time Magazine reports:

A religious revolution is transforming Indonesia. Part of the spiritual blossoming entails Muslims embracing a more conservative form of faith, mirroring global trends that have meant a proliferation of headscarves and beards in modern Islamic capitals. More surprising, though, is the boom in Christianity — officially Indonesia’s second largest faith and a growing force throughout Asia. Indeed, the number of Asian Christian faithful exploded to 351 million adherents in 2005, up from 101 million in 1970.

  more. . .

Thanks to reader Bryan.

Prayer can penetrate anywhere. Long before we enter the valleys of Nepal prayer can be doing a concrete work in laying the foundations for the future kingdom. . . . When we have prepared the way with the Spirit of God in prayer, he will answer those very prayers in permitting us to occupy Nepal.

Gordon Guinness, The Quest of the Nepal Border, 1928

We can never predict where and how the next breakthrough in world missions will occur. But when it comes there are always transferable principles on display.

Here’s what John B has learned after spending much of his life in Nepal and witnessing a move of God in this former Hindu kingdom.

First, there was an unprecedented degree of cooperation among various Christian groups.

Second, rapid development in Nepal, encouraged by His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, resulted in openness among the common people to new things.

Third, the prohibition of conversion and the reality of persecution from the outset prevented nominalism and kept the church strong.

Fourth, most converts were young, vigorous, and vibrant, with a keen sense of evangelistic outreach to the majority society. Also, family conversions were not uncommon, and mass conversions occasionally took place among tribal groups.

Fifth, retired Gurkha servicemen who had converted to Christianity while in the Indian or British army returned to their villages and established small Christian communities.

Sixth, new Christians were trained across the border in India to fill the need for pastors and church leaders. Locally, there were short-term training schools and conferences.

Seventh, several parachurch groups, especially student and youth organizations, worked alongside the churches to spur evangelism and to support new Christians.

Eighth, Christian literature, including translation of portions of Scripture into several tribal languages and the translation of the whole Bible in Nepali, spread the Christian message. Radio ministries transmitted the message. Bible correspondence courses provided instruction to thousands of new believers.

Ninth, the predominant use of indigenous songs and tunes reflected the general pattern of indigenous worship that included such culturally appropriate practices as meeting on Saturdays (Sunday being a working day in Nepal) and gender-segregated seating on the floor, often in ordinary village homes.

Finally, Betty Young, added the following: “A very widespread means which God has used in the rapid spread of the Gospel is healing—there must be thousands who have come to the Lord through healing.”

John B: A Description and Analysis of the Growth of the Church in Nepal

John B shares some great news out of Nepal.

Until recently Nepal was the world’s only Hindu kingdom. The mighty Himalayas and the fact that Nepal was a closed land until the middle of the twentieth century enticed many, but from 1881 to 1925 only 153 Europeans are known to have visited Nepal and none became a resident.

The earliest recorded entry of Christians into Nepal was the visit of a Father Cabral, a Jesuit priest, in 1628.

For two centuries before 1951, Nepal was totally closed to any Christian presence.

From just a single secret Christian residing in Nepal in 1951, the number of Nepali Christians grew to about 40,000 baptized believers by 1990 and has increased more rapidly since then.

The most comprehensive survey of churches and Christians in Nepal was conducted by the Nepal Research and Resource Network.

It showed a total of 2,799 churches and 274,462 baptised church members. The survey counted 379,042 persons attending churches and presumed to be Christian; this number equals about 1.5 percent of Nepal’s population. Ten percent of the churches have sent out a missionary or evangelist, and one out of five churches has planted one or more daughter churches.

Next post: John explains why.