The document discusses the history and growth of Christianity in Africa, South America, Asia, and other parts of the world. It notes that Christianity was initially spread through western missionaries establishing schools and hospitals and empowering local leaders. Over time, indigenous churches formed and experienced rapid growth as leadership transitioned fully to local people. The sequence often involved an initial planting of seeds, a period of local training and education, a crisis that forced transition to local control, and then tremendous expansion under indigenous leadership. Key factors in various regions included engagement with local cultures, education/healthcare, empowering local people, and addressing the needs of both the poor and elite.

1. Good News Sells

2.  Existing African church – Ethiopian Coptic church,
continuous line of Christianity since the early
church.
 Evidence of Sabbath keeping until contact with the
Roman church in the middle ages.
 But, no real missionizing on continent.
 Largely a cultural church of North Africa that did
not experience a reformation.
 Colonies – Sierra Leone as a land for freed slaves
in 1799; Liberia founded by American freed slaves
in 1820.

3.  Story of growth of church in Africa, though,
has been the story of seeds planted by white,
western missionaries, in establishing
educational and health institutions, creating a
small but educated and committed vanguard
of locals who were capable of carrying on the
work, and then, either through plan or
accident, these African nationals take over the
work themselves, and there is an explosion of
growth and expansion.
 There were a number of black missionaries to
Africa in the late 1800s, some sent by American
black churches.

4.  Much of the growth has occurred by native
African churches that were created when
African members of Western churches found
they were not treated well or equally within
those churches.
 Leaders and prophetic voices like William
Wade Harris and Joseph Appiah in West
Africa.
 But some growth came from native leadership
staying inside the traditional churches, for
instance Samuel Crowther, the first African
Anglican priest and bishop and leader of the
Niger mission.

5. Church in South Africa:
 Tradition one: Dutch reformed background
associated with the Dutch Afrikaner settlers,
has been primarily the religion of the Afrikaner
whites, and has been an instrument in
supporting apartheid.
 English Moravian mission efforts were aimed
at the native peoples, and focused on creating a
series of Christian villages.
 Dutch missionary Johannes Van der Kemp,
sponsored by the London Missionary Society,
combined the African Christian Village
tradition with concerns for justice for the
natives, to help create a tradition of Christian
social justice in Africa.

6.  Those that finally liberated South Africa were
part of this low-church, Moravian/Wesleyan
tradition.
 Nelson Mandela’s mother became a Christian,
and he was baptized as a Methodist, and
attended mission schools, maybe even an
Adventist one.
 He and his first wife sent their children to an
Adventist school, and he had a close colleague
that was the child of Adventist missionaries.
 Shows how Christianity can be misused to
oppress, but used appropriately to liberate and
free.

7.  Africa – more Christians in Africa than people in
America.
 Some countries from 50 to 90% Christian.
 All too often, commitment to tribalism outweighs
commitment to gospel.
 Rwanda was one of the 90% Christian countries,
mostly Catholic, but a large Adventist population.
 But those critical of the implementation of
Christianity in Africa overlook the short-time it has
had to work on social and political structures.
 Western Europe had Christianity for more than
1500 years before it made meaningful strides
towards democracy, human rights and balanced,
stable governments.

8.  Africa and the re-discovery of:
 Narrative theology, the telling of stories as a means
of communicating spiritual truths,
 The supernatural in daily life, belief in spirits and
miracles, the power of prayer and the possibility of
healing.
 Worship enthusiasm and creativity.

9.  India – long history, as in Africa, of a Christian
influence.
 Legends of St. Thomas bringing Christianity to India
in first century, what is known is that Malabar
Christianity had been there since at least the 7th
century, and possibly the 4th.
 But again, it seems to have been limited to a narrow
cultural group.
 The Portuguese were first Europeans, and brought
Jesuit Catholicism with them, causing many of the
Malabars to become Catholic.
 Some desultory British and Dutch contacts, but
opening of modern missions was by British Baptist
William Carey in 1793.

10.  Translated the Bible into a number of dialects,
did not make large number of converts, but
laid groundwork for others, and a solid church
resulted.
 Other protestant groups joined the effort, and
made some meaningful progress among the
lower castes, the untouchables and the like.
 Christianity in India, to its credit, has been
largely a religion of liberation, which makes
Gandhi's conflict with it all the more ironic.

11.  Various protestant churches have merged in
India, producing larger churches, such as the
Anglicans and Methodists merging to form the
Church of South India.
 But while there are as many as 20 or 30 million
Indian Christians, that still is roughly only 3%
of the population of India.
 More recently, Adventist church growth has
increased in India, and possibly we are facing a
new era of growth there as well.

12.  China is also an ancient civilization with early
Christian contact – Some Assyraian
missionaries in the 7th century planted some
missions, along with some later Catholic
missions.
 But these seem to have been wiped out.
 Modern missions seemed to have started with
Scotsman Robert Morrison (1782-1834), under
the auspices of the London Missionary Society,
who went and made the first Chinese
translation of the Bible.
 Shortly thereafter, the Treaty of Nanking in
1842 between the British and Chinese opened
up the Chinese mainland to foreigners and
protected Chinese Christians.

13.  In 1865 J. Hudson Taylor founded the China
Inland Mission, stimulated by the Keswick
holiness movement.
 It was interdenominational, committed to
starting a “Chinese Church” rather than
spreading competing churches, and worked
from the host’s culture.
 It was remarkably successful, and survived the
anti-Christian Boxer rebellion of the 1900s.
 After 1911 and the fall of the Chinese empire,
the door was opened for thousands of
Protestant missionaries, and local leadership
became well established.

14.  In 1927, a Church of China was established that
merged Reformed, Congregationalist,
Methodist, and Baptists churches.
 When the communists took over in 1949, harsh
persecution began.
 After the cultural revolution of the 1960s, doors
opened a bit to its activity, and it has
flourished, both above ground, and
underground.
 Estimates of membership range in numbers
from 20 to 60 or more million, as it is so hard
to count underground numbers.

15.  Japan compared with Korea – The Jesuits seem
to have been first into Japan in the 1500s, and
planted a community that has continued to the
present, despite Japanese persecution.
 After 1846, Japan allowed foreigners in, but
missions progress has been extremely slow,
and Christians have not made much impact in
Japan.
 But this stands in stark contrast to Korea,
where the doors opened similarly late, not until
after 1866 were Christians freely allowed to
visit and live.

16.  But the early missionaries focused on creating
indigenous churches led by locals.
 But they also made contacts in the elite groups,
including the royal family.
 This top down and bottom up seemed to work
very well.
 Whatever the recipe was, the church in Korea
has enjoyed more success than any other Asian
country, except Philippines, and has the largest
Protestant churches in the world.
 South Korea sends the second largest number
of Christian missionaries in the world.

17.  Sequence - Missions seem to follow a
predictable sequence:
 Outside messenger plants seeds of gospel and
education,
 Period of germination where education takes hold
and locals are trained
 Period of transition caused by a crisis (missionaries
kicked out of country) or internal conflict (locals
annoyed by lack of responsibility)
 Followed by tremendous growth when local
leadership becomes fully engaged.

18.  Success factors –
 Biblical engagement with local language and
culture,
 Focus on education & health
 Equipping and empowering of local
leadership,
 Working for poor/lower class and elite,
 Willingness of individual to be led by the
Spirit, e.g, Hudson Taylor, William Carey,
Samuel Crowther.

19.  All – call for Biblical faithfulness against
western culture influences,
 Africa – supernatural, narrative, worship;
 South America – poor and oppressed, social
justice, community;
 Asia – respect for elders and heritage.