Strategic Christian

Surprisingly good news!

Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church.Interviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al-Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline:

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

[From Pajamas Media » Blog Archive » Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves]

Posted by Tom Gilson under Progress | No Comments »

Young, Restless, and Ready for Revival

Over the last three years, I have witnessed thousands of such confessions at churches and at more than 30 campuses, both secular and Christian. I’ve discovered that this generation of young men and women is crying out for revival….

Technorati Tags: Students, Revival

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How Short-Term Missions is Becoming a Two-Way Street

If you define “mission” as crossing cultural boundaries for the sake of the gospel, the global church is engaged in mission on a scale that would have been unimaginable to previous Christian generations.

Yet…

Perhaps this is one thing we need to learn, and unlearn: Even the shortest cross-cultural mission trip is fraught with opportunities for God to make himself known—and with the real potential that we will unwittingly misrepresent him.

Technorati Tags: church growth, missions

Posted by Tom Gilson under Church & Missions & Progress | No Comments »

Book Review

I’ve lost several hours of sleep over David Kinnaman’s and Gabe Lyons’s book, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity And Why It Matters. James Emery White, in his Serious Times email newsletter, said* in response to this book, “Christianity has an image problem.” With all due respect to Mr. White, one of the authors I most respect, I disagree. Christianity has a reality problem. The problem is shallow discipleship, and the rest of the world sees it for what it is. It’s a disturbing picture.

Technorati Tags: America, Barna, church growth, Methods, Research

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Posted by Tom Gilson under Book Reviews & Church & Culture & Progress | 1 Comment »

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

Posted by Tom Gilson under Missions & Progress | No Comments »

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

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Posted by Tom Gilson under Missions & Progress | No Comments »

China moves against Christian groups

Technorati Tags: church growth, missions, Persecution

Posted by Tom Gilson under Missions & Progress | No Comments »

Novel Faiths Find Followers Among Russia’s Disillusioned - washingtonpost.com

For churches and mission agencies to be aware of:

Technorati Tags: church growth, Europe, missions, Cults

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Posted by Tom Gilson under Missions & Progress | No Comments »

In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead - WSJ.com

Signs of a resurgence of Christianity in Europe are very encouraging. The article uses the term “supply-side economics” as a possible explanation. My first impression was that it was going to be some economically-based way of explaining the whole thing away. It’s not–it’s a metaphor applied to the way churches have changed from being government-based to being locally or free-church governed. It’s consistent with the theory that being too tightly tied to government–both in polity and in financial support–has hurt European state churches badly. Rodney Stark has advanced this theory in some of his work on the history and sociology of Christianity. He is quoted in the article; I’ve read it in his original work, though I’m having some trouble remembering which book it was. (I think it was probably One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism.)

Though some people may view “church economics” as the whole story, there’s nothing necessarily anti-Biblical about it. It’s a cleansing of a corrupt connection; a release from a strange system in which church leaders had no need to work for their positions, their congregations, or even their finances.

Technorati Tags: church growth, missions, Europe

Posted by Tom Gilson under Church & Culture & Missions & Progress & Stewardship | No Comments »

The Point: Lighting Such a Fire!

“They came by the thousands … to love Oxfordshire…. Amazing to see such a thriving and vibrant Christian community here!” Be sure to see the video.

Technorati Tags: church growth, puppy

Posted by Tom Gilson under Church & Progress & Stewardship | No Comments »