The title of this presentation would have been a non-question had it been asked as recently as the middle of the 20th century. The churches in the non-Western or Majority World (MW) were by and large still under Western tutelage. The big fear in Africa then was that the end of the colonial era would lead to Islam sweeping across the whole continent. The struggling Chinese church was just entering the darkest hour of its modern history. In South Asia, Christians were a tiny, and often despised, minority in the midst of hundreds of millions of Hindus and Muslims. Yet in just 70 years, there has been a massive change, with some two-thirds of the global church now living in the MW.  

Even so, the title of this presentation still appears presumptuous today to many for various reasons. First, the theological centers of power are largely found in the West, with multitudes of students from the MW still treading there on pilgrimage for their PhDs. Although excellent seminaries are now found in the MW, in terms of faculty, financial and library resources, and drawing power, they are no match for the Western institutions.  

Moreover, regretfully many churches in the MW still function as appendages and extensions of the churches in the West, consciously or unconsciously. Organizationally and financially, they may be independent. But in terms of theology, ways of thinking, and doing church and mission, they still adopt Western models and answers uncritically. The problem is not only because many churches in the MW have been birthed through Western missions or movements, with many in the leadership trained in Western methodology and theology. It is also because, globally, the political and cultural dominance of the West has been so overwhelming throughout the 20th century. These factors have combined to hold back many Christians in the MW from articulating alternative understandings and narratives of their faith that are firmly rooted in Scriptures on the one hand, and culturally sensitive and contextually relevant on the other.  

However, the fact remains that around 1980 the center of gravity of the church had moved out of the West into the MW. With this shift, some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Western Christianity versus those in the MW have become increasingly clear. Against this background, I offer my presentation as a fellow pilgrim and learner because Christianity in the MW still faces a multitude of challenges. At the same time, I believe that in at least six areas the Western church can learn something from Christianity in the MW.  

1. Recovering the Supernatural Dimension

In referring to the advance of the gospel in his work, Paul speaks of “what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God” (Rom 15:18f). Over the past hundred years or so, the rapid growth of churches in the MW has been driven largely by the same “signs and wonders” that Paul speaks of. These include deliverance from demonic powers and healing, miracles and prophecies, dreams and visions, and the like. It should be emphasized that this is not due to the influence of American Pentecostalism from Azusa Street making inroads into the MW. In many cases, it was simply indigenous believers taking the Bible seriously and acting on its teachings, or the Holy Spirit coming in revival and manifesting His awesome power to the church.  

A comprehensive and careful examination of the records will bear this out again and again. This is true of the growth of many grassroots churches in the Indian subcontinent, the growth of Christianity in Africa, the breakthroughs among tribal groups all over the MW, the Chinese revival in the last 60 years, the historically unprecedented and ongoing breakthroughs among Muslim peoples all over the Islamic world today, and so forth.  

A most interesting illustration of this is the powerful healing ministry of the Korean Presbyterian pastor Kim Ik-du (1884-1950) in the 1920s. The official position of the Presbyterian Church then was that “in the present age, the authority to perform miracles is suspended”—a cessationist position presumably taught by American missionaries. But the impact of Kim’s healing ministry was such that it brought about a fundamental shift in thinking and recognition within the church that God continues to work miracles in the present age. In direct contrast, one observer of Brazil's emerging churches said, “Most Presbyterians have a God that’s so great, so big, that they cannot even talk with him openly, because he is far away. The Pentecostal groups have the kind of God that will solve my problems today and tomorrow.”  

Under the influence of the Enlightenment, Western Christianity in the modern era has either rejected the supernatural as outdated superstition, as with liberals, or treated the miraculous as something that happened in the past but no longer happens today. Consequently, much of the Western church has failed to address this whole subject adequately. It has blinded the church to the power of the Holy Spirit and His signs and wonders, as well as to the reality of demonic activity in the world today. The result, as Fuller professor Charles Kraft describes it, is that “Enlightenment Christianity is powerless.” Herein lies a major flaw in Western Christianity—its captivity to an anti-supernaturalistic Enlightenment worldview.  

2. Managerial Missiology versus Dependence on the Spirit

The Latin American theologian Samuel Escobar has critiqued a trend within evangelical missiology in the later part of the 20th century, associated especially with the Church Growth School and movements like AD2000 and Beyond. He calls this “managerial missiology” and describes it as “an effort to reduce Christian mission to a manageable enterprise.” To achieve this, reality is simplified into an understandable picture: “Missionary action is thus reduced to a linear task that is unfolded into logical steps to be followed in a process of management by objectives.” Thus, for example, mission goals are quantified by the number of converts won or churches planted, and strategic plans are laid to bring about the desired results. The whole exercise is based on secular strategic planning approaches, built on the scientific method which produced our technological age.  

I would like to suggest that Escobar’s critique of managerial missiology is part of a much wider problem in the modern church. Is it not the case that much of our thinking has succumbed to modernity’s scientific-technological approach to doing church and mission? Do not most of us assume that if only there are sufficient resources such as suitably trained personnel, money, proper strategic planning, and sound management, the church will invariably grow and our mission goals will be achievable without fail within our human time frame?  

Ultimately, there are two major problems with this approach. The first is that reducing our mission goals primarily to quantitative measures falls far short of Christ's command to “make disciples.” As one writer puts it, “When we aim only at what we can measure, we ignore the most important goals of character, discipleship and holiness... Lukewarm churches are the results of this assembly line mindset.”

The second problem is that both the New Testament and church history have demonstrated again and again that the gospel never advances by mere human effort alone. Rather, revivals and major advances of the church are invariably the result of the initiative and power of the Holy Spirit, and on the human side, less tangible factors such as radical holiness, prevailing prayer, obedience, and sacrifice.

In the past hundred years, we see this repeatedly in mission advances in the MW. One of the best illustrations of this in Asia is the ongoing Chinese revival. The most notable Chinese evangelist and revivalist of the first half of the 20th century was John Sung. Sometime before his death in 1944, John Sung revealed that God had shown him that a great revival was coming to China, but first, all the missionaries must leave. As he predicted, every missionary had to leave China with the Communist takeover in 1949. All that the Western missions had brought was confiscated by a hostile government. And then, under intense persecution and left with nothing but God, revival came.  

Human resources, good management and strategic planning all have their proper place in the ministry and mission of the church. But for the gospel to advance, ultimately our dependence has to be on God and on Him alone.  

3. Confidence in the Gospel of Christ as Good News

Many in the West today consider Christianity outdated, stale, and irrelevant. The Good News has now become Bad News! This has contributed to the decline and loss of vitality in Western Christianity.

But the loss of vitality is also the result of the pressures from an increasingly militant secularism, rooted in modernity and postmodernity. In much of public life in the West, there is a prevailing hostility towards any Christian point of view. All these have contributed to a loss of confidence in the gospel as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16) within the Western church. This is most clearly seen in the liberal wing of the church, which has basically abandoned missions.  

But this loss of confidence in the gospel and the Bible’s distinctives is now beginning to be seen even among those who identify themselves as evangelicals. This loss of confidence, however, is not shared by most Christians in the MW. In many societies and cultures in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and MENA, the encounter with Christ is recent and the experience of its efficacy and power is fresh and liberating. Think of the tens of millions that have been set free from the age-old fear of and bondage to demonic powers and evil spirits. Think of the millions of Dalits in India who have been lifted out of cultural and sociopolitical oppression.  

The second point to note is that the beliefs shaped by modernity and postmodernity that underlie militant secularism in the West today are not shared by the cultures and societies in the MW, simply because they are not children of the Enlightenment. Why then should Western Christians be awed and accord them the respect given them by a militant secularism?  

Many Christians in the MW are driven by a vision of a new world founded on the gospel of Christ. With them, there is conviction in and excitement over the saving power of the gospel. I submit that this sense of freshness and confidence in the gospel should serve as a source of encouragement and empowerment to many Christians in the West.  

4. Mission and the Western Guilt Complex

Beginning in the late 1960s, the liberal wing of the church began calling for a moratorium on missionaries. All this gave rise to a pervasive “Western guilt complex” about the whole missionary movement.

Addressing this phenomenon head-on, the late African scholar Lamin Sanneh has demonstrated cogently that the accusation of missionaries being culture destroyers does not find support on the ground. In fact, by translating the Bible into indigenous languages, missionaries actually helped preserve many languages and cultures from extinction.  

More recent studies have vindicated the modern missionary enterprise as a major factor in bringing social and material advancement. As social scientist Robert Woodberry shows, Protestant missionaries made major contributions to socio-political and economic advances. They were a crucial catalyst initiating religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, and colonial reforms.

The wrong conclusion is to suggest that we must forgo Western missions because such missions have lost integrity. The guilt that troubles the Western conscience over past failures points to the moral power and enduring validity of the gospel. Without this burden of guilt, which the Spirit imparts, this world would be far more cruel, heartless, and unjust. Thus, the Western guilt complex properly understood is also a profound call to humble confidence and boldness in mission.  

5. Theological Education and Ministerial Training

When it comes to theological education, almost all the churches in the MW have copied the academic model used in the West. But increasingly it has been found wanting. Among the major issues raised are:

a. Much of the theological education is Western because the textbooks are written in Western contexts.
b. Methodology follows a Western academic model, where students often end up knowing more about critical theories than the Bible itself.
c. Trainees often struggle in practical pastoral ministry because of a lack of integration between classroom learning and field education.
d. The Western model is centered so much on the training of the mind that character formation and the life of prayer get neglected.

One attempt to move away from the Western academic model is the increasing use of Theological Education by Extension (TEE), which brings study much closer to the field of practical ministry. Compared with the traditional residential Western model, the advantages are: lower cost, better integration between study and practice, and training being provided for multiple levels of leadership.

6. How Do We Think of Persecution?

John White suggests that the West has now gone past the period of greatest freedom. “As the biblical influence wanes, it is likely that freedom will not continue.”

How do we respond? First, persecution for our faith should not take us by surprise because it is written all over the New Testament. Second, a simple look at the Acts of the Apostles shows that persecution never stopped the proclamation and advance of the gospel. Could it be that we tend to look at persecuted Christians with a mix of concern and pity because mission for the modern church often begins from the centers of power? In the New Testament, persecution and suffering were simply accepted as an integral aspect of following Jesus.

Should Christians see persecution as setbacks for mission or opportunities for Kingdom advance? Remember that the Chinese church revival in the last few decades came out of state-sponsored persecution. One Chinese leader, when asked about persecution, replied: “Don’t pray that God will remove persecution which actually refines the church. But pray that God will give us stronger backs to bear it!”

Conclusion

In conclusion, allow me to say that we in the MW have been richly blessed by the gospel that many from the West brought to us. My comments above are offered as pointers to what the Western church can learn from the MW churches. I trust that through such exchanges the churches in the West and those in the MW can build genuine, strong, and equal partnerships for the continuing advance of the gospel.