This chapter discusses six major developments in 20th century Christian missions: 1) Indigenous mission movements led notable figures in places like Africa, Asia, and Latin America; 2) Pentecostalism emerged and grew rapidly, influencing many denominations; 3) Ecumenical cooperation developed but theological divisions emerged; 4) Evangelical mission expanded through innovative methods and cooperation; 5) Vatican II modernized Catholic mission and outreach; 6) Global Christian growth shifted to the global South.

1. Chapter 8:
Expansion to and from Every
Continent, A.D. 1900–2000

2. Chapter Outline
• Introduction
• Voices Calling in the Desert
• Mission and Christian Unity
• Ascendancy of Evangelical Mission
• Pentecostalism
• Vatican Council II and Catholic Mission
• Global Mission Advance
• Shifting Gravity
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
This chapter briefly introduces six
significant developments in twentieth-
century missions. Though not strictly
chronological, the topical sequence
follows the general historical order of
events.

4. Voices Calling
in the Desert
• Notable Indigenous Leaders
• Prophets by Divine Commission
• The Fruit of Revivals

5. Notable
Indigenous Leaders
• Samuel Adjai Crowther (Nigeria)
• Pastor Hsi (China)
• Pandita Ramabai (India)
• Kanzo Uchimura (Japan)

6. Prophets by
Divine Commission
• William Wadé Harris (West Africa)
• Simon Kimbangu (Democratic Republic
of Congo)

7. The Fruit of Revivals
• Twenty-five revivals from around the world:
• Beginning with an awakening in Tahiti (1815–16)
• Ending with the East African Revival which started in
Uganda (1893–98)
• Transformed indigenous workers into key players
in the churches
• Revivals, combined with the demise of
colonialism and newly independent churches,
challenged the equation of Christianity with
Western culture.

8. Mission and
Christian Unity
• Mainline Mission
• Cracks in the Unity

9. Mainline Mission
• The Edinburgh World Missionary
Conference (1910) was the starting point for
ecumenical developments, culminating in
the formation of the World Council of
Churches in 1948.
• Liberal theology and the social gospel
gained influence in the mainline churches
and steadily moved their mission in the
direction of humanitarianism. Social action
rose above evangelism as a priority.

10. Cracks in the Unity
• Evangelicals and mainline Protestants
began to divide over doctrine and strategy.
• The Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy
that raged through American Protestant
denominations in the 1920s added tension.
• The 1932 report of the “Laymen’s Foreign
Missions Inquiry” was a lightening rod in
the crisis.

11. Ascendancy
of Evangelical Mission
• Innovative Methods
• Cooperation in Mission
• Parachurch Ministries
• Dying for Christ

12. Ascendancy
of Evangelical Mission
• While many of the mainline missionaries
remained evangelical, the movement ran out
of energy after mid-century.
• In contrast, conservative evangelical
missions surged forward in scope of
operations and number of personnel.

13. Innovative Methods
• Bible translation (William Cameron
Townsend and Wycliffe Bible Translators)
• Radio (Clarence Jones and HCJB)
• Aviation (Betty Greene and Mission
Aviation Fellowship)
• “Evangelism-in-Depth” (Kenneth Strachan)
• Theological Education by Extension (Ralph
Winter and James Emery)

14. Cooperation in Mission
• Interdenominational Foreign Mission
Association (IFMA) founded in 1917
• Evangelical Fellowship of Mission
Agencies (EFMA) founded in 1945
• International Council of Christian Churches
founded in 1948 (in opposition to the WCC)
• World Evangelical Fellowship (now World
Evangelical Alliance) founded in 1951

15. Parachurch Ministries
• InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
• International Fellowship of Evangelical
Students founded in 1947
• Urbana Missionary Conferences
• World Vision

16. Dying for Christ
• Martyrs at the hands of the Auca
• Nate Saint: “The way I see it, we ought to be
willing to die. In the military, we were taught
that to obtain our objectives we had to be
willing to be expendable. Missionaries must
face that same expendability.” (Hefley and
Hefley 1981)
• Martyrs of the Congo uprising

17. Pentecostalism
• Pentecostal Beginnings
• Lightning in a Bottle
• Charismatic Renewal
• The Third Wave

18. Pentecostal Beginnings
• Foundations in the Wesleyan-Holiness and
Higher Life movements of the nineteenth
century
• Charles Parham and revival at Bethel Bible
School in Topeka, Kansas in January 1901
• Azusa Street Revival (1906–9)

19. Lightning in a Bottle
• Over the century, Pentecostalism in its
various forms produced the second-largest
family of Christians after the Roman
Catholic Church, one that transcends
traditional walls of separation between
Christians. What accounts for this dramatic
growth?

20. Lightning in a Bottle (cont.)
• “The genius of the Pentecostal movement
lay in its ability to hold two seemingly
incompatible impulses in productive
tension”: New Testament restorationism
and pragmatism. This “enabled them to
capture lightning in a bottle and, more
important, to keep it there, decade after
decade, without stilling the fire or cracking
the vessel” (Wacker 2001, 10).

21. Charismatic
Renewal
• Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s,
“Pentecostal” movements arose among
mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and,
to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox
Christians (Hocken 2002, 479–85).
• The “charismatic renewal” quickly attained
global dimensions, and features of its
spirituality could be found in large sectors
of Christianity.

22. Charismatic
Renewal (cont.)
• Although many charismatic Christians have
not embraced all the teachings of the
Pentecostal movement, the breadth of the
renewal indicates that twentieth-century
Pentecostalism challenged virtually every
branch of Christianity to review its
understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit
in the life and mission of the church.

23. The Third Wave
• By the 1980s, interest in charismatic spirituality
had grown in conservative evangelical ranks,
notably in the spiritual gifts, prayer for the sick,
and the usefulness of exorcisms.
• As the movement grew, insiders called it the
“Third Wave” of the Holy Spirit (Wagner 1988,
15–19).
• Leaders shied away from identification with the
Pentecostal and charismatic movements, believed
to be the first two waves.

24. Vatican Council II
and Catholic Mission
• Conversation with the World
• Liberating the Oppressed

25. Vatican Council II
The Second Vatican Council (1962–65)
profoundly affected the outlook of the
Catholic Church on the modern world, the
contextualization of the faith, other
Christians, and the non-Christian religions.

26. Conversation
with the World
• The council broadened the scope of those who will
be redeemed.
• In an extraordinary action, it referred to Protestant
and Eastern Orthodox Christians as “separated
brethren” in whom the Holy Spirit is at work
(Abbott 1996, 346–49).
• Furthermore, the council recognized that those
who have not yet heard the gospel have a
relationship to the “people of God” in some
fashion.

27. Liberating the Oppressed
• That the mission of the church included working
toward social justice, land reform, and helping the
poor represented a seismic shift away from the
defensive posture of the nineteenth century.
• Indeed, “those who are oppressed by poverty,
infirmity, sickness, or various other hardships, as
well as those who suffer persecution for justice’
sake—may they all know that in a special way
they are united with the suffering Christ for the
salvation of the world” (Abbott 1966, 70).

28. Global Mission
Advance
• Never before in the history of Christianity had so
much attention been placed on mission and
missions than in the latter half of the twentieth
century.
• Missiologists like Donald McGavran (The Bridges
of God [1955]) explored the many aspects of
presenting the Christian message in cross-cultural
contexts and what factors produced church
growth.
• The vastness and many shapes of Christianity
became evident in David Barrett’s World
Christian Encyclopedia (1982).

29. Global Mission
Advance (cont.)
• Moreover, world conferences, schools,
academic societies, journals, and books
wielded considerable influence on the
mission enterprise.
• World conferences played a critical role,
most notably the Lausanne Congress on
World Evangelization (1974).
• Peoples, rather than nations, became the
focus.

30. Shifting Gravity
• Over the course of the twentieth century, the
global weight of Christianity shifted south.
• Today the largest congregations in the world can
be found in Korea, Brazil, and Nigeria.
• The number of missionaries and mission agencies
from majority-world countries grew exponentially.
• “Self-theologizing” has been added to the “three-
self” formula.