The Fourth Lausanne Congress, September 2024, Memos from Incheon, Memo #9
In its State of the Great Commission Report, the Lausanne Congress highlighted three emerging demographics that should inform Christian churches and institutions as they plan for 2050. The report described them under the headings of “global population,” “global aging,” and “new middle class.” Let me focus on the first two.
Global populations
The current world population is 8.2 billion. It has been growing rapidly since 1800 when it was 1 billion. In 1980 it was 4.4 billion. The world population is expected to peak sometime between 2050 and 2100 at around 9-10 billion and then decline. The report reminds us that in every generation there is a new unreached people group—it is the new generation, that must also be reached with the gospel. Regardless of evangelistic outreach in the past, there must be strategies to reach the new incoming generation.
Right now the global north is marked by declining birth rates and aging populations. That’s also true, though slightly delayed, in Latin America. The population of East and South East Asia, including China, has peaked and will decline in coming decades. Meanwhile, sub-Saharan Africa will become the world’s most populous region. In 2050, Nigeria will pass the US as the third most populous nation in the world (even though it has one tenth of the land mass).
The report notes that if Africa is the most Christian continent now, “it follows that the face of Christianity in 2050 will probably be that of a young African woman.” That in the next generation, African Christian churches will determine the whole shape of church history to come!
In 2024, the US continues to face demographic challenges as well as its population steadily declines and rapidly ages. The US birth rate has dropped to 1.6 births per woman over the course of a lifetime, which is far below replacement levels. This decline is somewhat offset by annual immigration levels.
Global aging
On global aging, the Lausanne report says, “Despite important calls to emphasize the equipping of young leaders, one of the most transformational demographics trends of our time is global aging. Due to advances in medicine and health care, more and more of the global population will live well beyond their seventies”
The report quotes the UN Population Division which estimates that the number of persons aged 65+ is expected to double over the next three decades. This population aging is unprecedented. It is without parallel in the history of humanity with more and faster aging to come. It emphasizes that this will be a global and enduring phenomenon. It is not just Europe and North America that will face this. The report says that Asian nations will soon become the center of our aging world.
It will have major consequences and implications of every region and will place increased strains on governments to provide resources.
According to the UN, there are 1.8 billion young people in the world, accounting for 16% of the global population, 90% of whom live in the global south. Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania possess the far great number of young people under 15 than over 65. North America and Europe by contrast possess a smaller share of youth. The Lausanne report notes that these aged contexts are the very places where Christianity is experiencing its greatest rate of decline.
Challenges and Opportunities for the Great Commission
The Lausanne report dives into these details in order to consider challenges and opportunities for the Great Commission in the decades to come. Some of these trends are a kind of “demographic time bomb” that we dare not ignore. The report notes that resources for mission (missionaries, finances, theological training, etc..) are centered in a part of the world where Christianity is declining, and much more sparse in those parts of the world where it is exponentially growing. It sees a great opportunity in training and mobilizing seniors for the Great Commission, calling this generation “an untapped agent of gospel witness.” It says just as there is a 4-14 window where people are more open to the gospel, there is also an often unrecognized 7-100 window, where seniors, mindful of their mortality, are more open to spiritual things. The report also implies that there are two ways to grow the church—by adult conversions and by having children and raising them in the Lord.
While there is so much more in this report than we can comment on, it reminds us that the common secular caricatures of Christianity being a white man’s religion, simply does not hold. The Christian faith is a global, transcultural religion.