The Fourth Lausanne Congress, September 2024, Memos from Incheon, Memo #2
The two significant documents coming out of this congress are the Seoul Statement and the State of the Great Commission Report. I’ll comment on the former document in an up-coming post. But let me highlight the latter.
Simply put, this is an extraordinary, impressive, comprehensive new source on global Christianity. The first edition is 522 pages long. In my opinion, it ranks in significance with other resources such as the World Christian Encyclopedia and Operation World.
The State of the Great Commission report begins with an article on the theological basis of the Great Commission. Then it divides into three sections.
Section One is on the state of the Great Commission It has all kinds of statistics and charts on global Christianity, the various Christian traditions, evangelicals, Protestants, independents and Pentecostals, mission workers, unreached peoples, disciple making movements, Bible translation, financial giving, etc..
Section Two looks at trends and statistical projections from today to 2050 It includes research on the shift to a polycentric missions world, majority world mission movements, the challenge of Islam, secularism, and radical politics, media impact, information about global aging, youth populations, people on the move, urban populations, religious persecution, poverty, artificial intelligence, digital life, sexuality and gender.
Section Three is focused on regional analysis and reflections it includes sections on every major region of the world. Each one focuses on challenges, gaps, opportunities, and needs in that region, and then includes a list of references for further research.
What are some of the interesting finds and trends? I can only list a few. Here is a sample.
- The Shift of the Christian center In 1900, 80% of the world’s Christians lived in Europe or North America—the Global North. By 2050 80% of the worlds Christians will live in Africa Asia and Latin America,-the Global South. Africa is projected to have the highest percentage of Christians. The largest Protestant/Independent congregations and the fastest growing mega denominations are now located in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Over the past century, Christianity witnessed its most marked growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its most marked decline in the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe.
- Global Christianity The top seven countries with the most Christians include: the US, Brazil, Mexico, Russian, China Philippines, and Nigeria. Among the lowest, Turkey and Tunisia, places where Christianity once flourished.
- Polycentrism Missions in the future will no longer be monocentric—from one center, i.e. “from the West to the rest.” Instead of polycentricity, missions will be “from everywhere to everywhere.” It is now from every continent to every continent.
- Mission workers The United States still sends out most of the world’s missionaries (135,000), followed by Brazil (40k), and South Korea (35,000). But only 3% of international missionaries go to the unreached populations.
- Unreached peoples Countries with most unreached people groups include: India, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh. Because of mission efforts and population growth, while the number of unreached people groups continues to decline, the number of unreached peoples continue to grow.
- Bible translation While work remains, the rapid increase in languages having Bible translations over the last 50 years is one of the great missionary successes of our time. Never before have so many people had access to the Bible in their heart language. Three fourths of the global population have access to the full Bible. However, 10% lack even partial access. Specifically, over 1000 languages still lack a translation of even a part of the Bible. Yet new technologies such as AI are assisting and expanding the work of Bible translation.
- The language of Christianity More Christians speak Spanish than any other language.
- Number of denominations In 2023, there were about 47,300 Christian denominations.
- Christian traditions More protestants are now found in the global south than the global North with more Anglicans worshipping on Sunday morning in Nigeria than in England.
- The center of the Evangelical world The majority of evangelicals now found outside of the West.
- The dominant Christian tradition The report says that Catholicism remains the dominant Christian tradition throughout the world. It adds that the Orthodox traditions have experienced the sharpest decline in the past century.
Here is where I find one significant issue with the State of the Great Commission Report. In measuring Protestants and independent against the number of Catholics, one key section separates Protestants from independents (p. 13) and Evangelicals from Pentecostals (p. 13) and says that independents do not identify as protestants. When it then compares Protestant numbers to Catholics, Protestants are a significantly smaller number. But here’s the problem, many Independents (if not most), evangelicals, and Pentecostals identify as Protestants. When these numbers are added all together then Catholicism suddenly does not look like the dominant Christian tradition. Complicating the matter still, the document then contradicts itself telling us that evangelicals are protestants (p. 14). In another place it tells us that independents do not identify as Protestant (pp. 12,13), and yet on p. 33 protestants are paired with independents. There is more overlap in these categories than this report admits. We need more clarification of this area in the second edition of this report.
- Pentecostalism Pentecostal and charismatic expressions of Christianity are the leading edge of Christian growth around the world.
- Theological education Africa and Latin America remain under resourced with theological schools while North America with a steady or declining Christian population, possesses an abundance of such institutions.
- Urbanization The world is now majority urban. It’s generally not a “mission field” anymore.
- Global poverty There has been a remarkable reduction in global extreme poverty. That number has been reduced from over 2 billion people in 1990 to under 1 billion in 2019. Over the course of thirty years, extreme poverty has been cut in half, even while the global population grew by over 2 billion people.
- Rise of the global middle class In 2018 for the first time in history, half of the global population was middle class. It especially notes middle class expansion in India, China and Asia.
- The age wave Despite calls to emphasize reaching youth and equipping young leaders, one of the most transformational demographic trends of our time is global aging to unprecedented levels. This trend is pervasive.
These are just a few of the fascinating and helpful details of this report. The State of the Great Commission report gives us much more than data bites. It is filled with plenty of helpful charts and detailed analysis.
If you’d like to get a copy of the report, it can be downloaded from the Lausanne website at https://lausanne.org/report.