September 16th 2007
CADRE Comments: Revival in North Korea?:
September 5, 2007: The North Korean Army has started a special propaganda effort to discourage soldiers from practicing religion. There’s apparently an outbreak of Christianity in the ranks, and it’s so widespread that the generals are getting nervous.
Very interesting!
Technorati Tags: church growth, missions, Persecution
September 13th 2007
Asia Times Online :: China News - Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia:
Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter’s veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world’s largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history. If you read a single news article about China this year, make sure it is this one.
I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East.
China’s network of house churches may turn out to be the leaven of democracy, like the radical Puritans of England who became the Congregationalists of New England. Freedom of worship is the first precondition for democracy, for it makes possible freedom of conscience. The fearless evangelists at the grassroots of China will, in the fullness of time, do more to bring US-style democracy to the world than all the nation-building bluster of President George W Bush and his advisers.
Technorati Tags: Asia, church growth, missions
September 8th 2007
Sarah Scott analyzed sales at Christian Book Distributors and came up with distressing results. This is crucial for the growth and re-conversion of the church and culture in the West. Be sure to catch the comments.
Hat Tip to Douglas Groothuis.
Technorati Tags: Books, Christian Growth, Knowledge, Methods, Mind