October 12 - God is Moving Across the Globe!

This is going to be a tough week.  I have a lot of things to do - three paper - which means there is a lot of reading.  I had a Greek quiz today and realized that in two weeks I have a mid-term!  Yikes!  Ok ... breathe, Diane.  I spent some time today going through the course list for next semester.  I need to get that ironed out this week so I'm ready to register.  All of a sudden, professors are posting lectures - where did these come from?  So ... I have plenty to do.

This evening I have been reading further into Philip Jenkins book, "The Next Christendom."  There really is some exciting information in here - the numbers can be staggering! 

Western colonialization was ending in the mid part of the 20th century.  All across the third world, countries were regaining independence.  As this happened, Christianity began to see a period of explosive growht.

Since 1965, the Christian population has risen from 25% of the total population to 46% in Africa.  This ends up being about 8.4 million new Christians a year - 23,000 per day!!!  And these numbers are net numbers - those who leave the church aren't counted in these numbers.

The growth of Independent churches in Africa is overwhelming, but the leading churches are still Catholic, Anglican and Methodist.

In Latin America there are 424 million baptized Catholics.  That is 42% of the global total.  In 1955 there were 16 million Catholics in Africa.  Today that number is 120 million.

There are 70 million Anglicans worldwide - 20 million of them are in Africa.  In Uganda alone, Anglicans make up 30-40% of the Ugandan population.

Protestantism has been growing rapidly in these countries.  In Latin America, Protestants reach out to the migrant and marginalized communities and sees a growth of about 6% per year.

These numbers seem overwhelming - especially when in the United States ... in the United Methodist church we have seen declining membership for the last 43 years.  God is moving - and moving in grand and glorious ways.  I think we're going to have to get out of ourselves and out of our safe zones to see how explosive and creative His moving is.  It's happening across the globe and if we don't pay attention, we might never recognize it for what it is!