Global Impact of the Gospel: Incarnational Witness of Word and Deed
By Chaplain Darrell W. Wood
For more than 20 centuries, since the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ and His resurrection and ascension to heaven, the Christian gospel has been proclaimed and practiced by millions of Christ-followers around the world. The global impact of this cross-cultural spread of the Christian faith flourishes from the ongoing incarnational witness of believers' faithful word and deed.
Seeds planted have produced much fruit--a rich harvest of transformed lives and structures of society by God's grace and power.
The unfolding drama of this global missional effort--embodied in the lives of believers in the risen Lord and emboldened by the power of God's Holy Spirit--has marked the relentless advance of the mission of God (missio Dei) for more than 2,000 years.
This bold mission thrust through the ages has hinged on the twofold focus:
A Christian manifesto embracing both of these missional methodologies sums up the mission of the church:
The whole mission of the whole church is to take the whole gospel to the whole world for the whole person.
The global impact of Christian educational and charitable institutions is incalculable. Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth were founded to foster Christian higher education in theological disciplines and training for the ministry--gradually moving away from their original charters and primary mission. Hundreds of other faith-based colleges and universities worldwide seek to integrate faith and learning from a Christian worldview. Church-affiliated hospitals and healthcare systems, promoting Christian values, continue to provide quality healthcare emphasizing excellence and compassion consistent with the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
Social agencies, church-centered counseling and enrichment services, and faith-based counseling, minister to dysfunctional individuals and families to restore meaningful relationships. Christian charitable organizations and foundations provide nonprofit services and grants to support local, national, and global initiatives to meet the physical, psychosocial, socioeconomic, educational needs of millions around the world. Many such NGOs and other faith-based agencies feed the hungry, provide shelter to the homeless, and meet other life needs based on the biblical mandate.
Bible translation and publishing continues to make the Word of God available globally. As of 2016, according to Ethnologue, 7,106 living languages currently were spoken in the world. As of 2020, the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages. The New Testament has been translated into 1,551 languages, and portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,100 additional languages.
In 2018, Wycliffe Bible Translators announced its intention to translate the Bible into 600 languages. The organization has stated that more than 7,000 languages in more than 70 countries still need the Bible translated into their languages.
"For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14).
Many Bible publishers have a global vision and mission, including the American Bible Society, World Bible Society, and International Bible Society. Amity Press, in Nanjing, China, a faith-based organization, is the largest producer of Bibles in China, and one of the largest in the world. A joint venture with the United Bible Societies, Amity Press operates under the aegis of the Chinese government, which controls and limits the supply of Bibles printed--100 million since 1988.
Gideons International is an association of Christian business and professional persons dedicated to sharing the gospel through personal witness and Bible and New Testament distribution in hotels, schools, colleges, prisons and jails, hospitals and medical offices.
Most major Christian denominations have their own in-house publishing arms. For example, Southern Baptists have LifeWay Christian Resources' Broadman Press in Nashville, TN, American Baptists operate Judson Press in King of Prussia, PA, and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's publishing house is Smyth & Helwys in Macon, GA. Methodists publish Bible commentaries and other religious literature through Abingdon Press in Nashville. Baptist international missions is supported by several convention-wide publishing houses in the U.S. and publishing centers in Baptist missions (organizations) around the world.
As a Baptist missionary, the author has engaged in missional efforts related to Spanish-language materials published for Latin America at Casa Bautista Publicaciones in El Paso, TX, which also prints French/Creole religious literature for the Caribbean area. While serving in Hong Kong, the author was art director of Baptist Press, international publishing center for Chinese-language Bibles and Christian literature for Hong Kong and Chinese-speaking churches in 30 countries globally.
After missionary service, the author was an editor of Bible study materials for youth at LifeWay in Nashville, working collaboratively with major denominations on the Uniform Series Committee to develop Bible study outlines with adult and youth emphases. He also served on the staff of the American Bible Society in New York City. In addition to editorial, creative, and curriculum development work, the author also preached and served in several churches in the Metropolitan Baptist Association, including New York and New Jersey.
A good example of the gospel being communicated effectively through word and deed is the Billy Graham evangelistic crusades resulting in millions making professions of faith in Christ as Lord and Savior, and Samaritan's Purse, a charitable service organization meeting the needs of the total person--body, mind, and spirit--around the globe, led by Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham.
For an action to be truly Christian it must be done in His name, through His power, for His glory. Giving a cup of cold water or responding in disaster relief must implicitly be done in the name of Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God the Father. Otherwise, it will be de facto pharisaical self-righteousness because the focus is on the provider of the charitable act, not on God whose Spirit empowers, enables, and sustains for effective witness and ministry.
The Christian ethic and agape ethos also relate to creation care. Christian stewardship involves a concern for ecological issues, conservation, and environmentalism. Taking seriously Christ's command to love one another (John 15:12) includes loving all creation. This means supporting advocacy initiatives and mitigating the human-caused factors resulting in climate change, depletion of natural resources, and environmental degradation.
Missional efforts must be global, comprehensive, and synergistic, embracing the apostle Paul's prophetic word in Romans 8:19-22: For the creation waits eagerly...in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
A missional hermeneutic must necessarily be based on the biblical revelation--from Genesis to Revelation. A balanced approach to the missional calling is found in both Isaiah 6:8-9 (Isaiah's Commission) and Matthew 25:34-45 (Ministering to those in need), Matthew 28:16-20 (The Great Commission), John 13:34-35 (New Love Commandment), and John 21:15-17 (The Love Motivation).
For an effective Christian witness in missional efforts, both words and actions must be an integral strategy of outreach.
Hear and see, words and deeds--this is the spiritual dynamic of total communication when word and event are fused in unity of action.
Every word has something of deed in its makeup, and every meaningful action partakes of the nature of word. Jesus Christ--the fullness of revelation, the Word made flesh--becomes revelation to us by communicating through His speech and deeds the word and work which He already is by very nature. In Him the relation of word and deed become as one (Matthew 11:1-6). God in Christ (Logos) is One who acts. And those on mission must allow the Holy Spirit to reproduce in their lives and witness that same inner dynamic if the missional effort is to bear fruit (1 John 1:1-4; Luke 7:18-23; John 15:4-5).
Words without actions can seem insincere and superficial, whereas actions without words can be misunderstood and misconstrued as to motive. Lifestyle evangelism--marked by genuine expressions of love and concern backed by loving actions--continues to be an effective, winsome approach. A positive show and tell strategy--in actions and words--is a lifestyle pattern that can produce much fruit. Speaking of faith and works, James 2:16-17 declares...and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead...
The global context of Christian mission in the 21st century is characterized by new realities of radical change and uncertainty; but a disturbed, unsettled world may also mean a more responsive world. The very time of greatest change and challenge may be God's kairos moment, His favored visitation and time of greatest opportunity for Christian witness and mission--to share the good news of God's saving grace and to feed the hungry and to help the homeless and others in need.
Throughout the biblical narrative, God's kairos contrasts in sharp distinction from chronos, the human reckoning of chronological time according to the clock or the calendar. For example, Paul sets forth the "fullness of time" in the kenotic ("emptying") passage of Philippians 2:5-8--declaring the kairos moment in Christ's laying aside His heavenly privileges--"did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men" (vv 6-7).
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Christ, who existed in the form of God, with the same essence (homoousios) of God, assumed human form as a living, walking, talking incarnate image of God who is Spirit. Likewise, Christ-followers on mission to the world must incarnate the gospel in word and deed (message and ministry) for global impact in the 21st century.
Documenting this worldwide movement of Christianity and giving statistical analysis to the study of world religions, was David B. Barrett, missionary statistician and sociologist of religion. Barrett contributed to the development of world Christianity as an academic discipline in his World Christian Encyclopedia, which he co-produced with Todd Johnson, due to its copious statistical material informing missiology.
As defined here, world Christianity consists of six major ecclesiastico-cultural blocs divided into 300 major ecclesiastical traditions, composed of over 33,000 distinct denominations in 238 countries--these denominations themselves being composed of more than 3,400,000 worship centers, churches or congregations. Within the Christian tradition, Protestants comprise 27% of the total (Barrett, et al).
However, Barrett also provided a new, post-colonial intellectual/conceptual framework in which to understand the cataclysmic amount and nature of change that occurred in global Christian adherence since 1900. The second edition of the Encyclopedia, published in 2001, indicated that a new era of world Christianity had come, and its center of gravity had moved from white Europe to black Africa.
Population and demographic trends have a direct correlation to missional efforts and the global impact of the gospel.
According to the Pew Research Center's "The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050," due largely to high fertility, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to experience the fastest overall growth, rising from 12% of the world's population in 2010 to about 20% in 2050.
The Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region also is expected to grow faster than the world as a whole, edging up from 5% of the global population in 2010 to 6% in 2050. Ongoing growth in both regions will fuel global increases in the Muslim population. In addition, sub-Saharan Africa's Christian population is expected to double, from 517 million in 2010 to 1.1 billion in 2050. The share of the world's Christians living in sub-Saharan Africa will rise from 24% to 38% in 2050.
Pew Research Center's analysis indicates that the Asia-Pacific region is expected to have a declining share of the world's population (53% in 2050, compared with 59% in 2010). This will be reflected in the slower growth of religions heavily concentrated in the region, including Buddhism and Chinese folk religions, as well as slower growth of Asia's large unaffiliated population.
One exception is Hindus, who are overwhelmingly concentrated in India, where the population is younger and fertility rates are higher than in China or Japan. As previously mentioned, Hindus are projected to roughly keep pace with global population growth. India's large Muslim population also is poised for rapid growth. Although India will continue to have a Hindu majority, by 2050 it is projected to have the world's largest Muslim population, surpassing Indonesia.
The remaining geographic regions also will contain declining shares of the world's population: Europe is projected to go from 11% to 8%, Latin America and the Caribbean from 9% to 8%, and North America from 5% to a little less than 5%.
Europe is the only region where the total population is projected to decline. Europe's Christian population is expected to shrink by about 100 million people in the coming decades, dropping from 553 million to 454 million. While Christians will remain the largest religious group in Europe, they are projected to drop from three-quarters of the population to less than two-thirds.
By 2050, nearly a quarter of Europeans (23%) are expected to have no religious affiliation, and Muslims will make up about 10% of the region's population, up from 5.9% in 2010. Over the same period, the number of Hindus in Europe is expected to roughly double, from a little under 1.4 million (0.2% of Europe's population) to nearly 2.7 million (0.4%), mainly as a result of immigration. Buddhists appear headed for similarly rapid growth in Europe--a projected rise from 1.4 million to 2.5 million.
Approximately 4,000 religions of all kinds are practiced around the world. According to Wikipedia, the world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not uniformly accepted. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in different societies. This practice, however, has since fallen into question in many contemporary cultures.
Major religions, based on number of adherents, are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese traditional religions with elements of Taoism, Confucianism, and folk religions, along with animism and other indigenous religions in Africa.
Worldwide numbers of the principal religions based on the global population and percentage of adherents by religion are estimated as follows:
According to Pew Research Center, in North America, Muslims and followers of "other religions" are the fastest-growing religious groups. In the United States, for example, the share of the population that belongs to other religions is projected to more than double--albeit from a quite small base--rising from 0.6% to 1.5%. Christians are projected to decline from 78% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 66% in 2050, while the unaffiliated are expected to rise from 16% to 26%. By the middle of the 21st century, the United States is likely to have more Muslims (2.1% of the population) than people who identify with the Jewish faith (1.4%).
In Latin America and the Caribbean, Christians will remain the largest religious group, making up 89% of the population in 2050, down slightly from 90% in 2010. Latin America's religiously unaffiliated population is projected to grow both in absolute number and percentage terms, rising from about 45 million people (8%) in 2010 to 65 million (9%) in 2050.
Several countries are projected to have a different religious majority in 2050 than they did in 2010. The number of countries with Christian majorities is expected to decline from 159 to 151, as Christians are projected to drop below 50% of the population in Australia, Benin, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Macedonia, and the United Kingdom.
Muslims in 2050 are expected to make up more than 50% of the population in 51 countries, two more than in 2010, as both the Republic of Macedonia and Nigeria are projected to gain Muslim majorities. But Nigeria also will continue to have a very large Christian population. In fact, Nigeria is projected to have the third-largest Christian population in the world by 2050, after the United States and Brazil.
A caveat is offered by Pew researchers concerning projections related to world religions. Assumptions are based on many variables--social, geopolitical, economic, and educational. Projections are only statistical probabilities and must be qualified by the mediating influence of intervening variables.
As of 2050, the largest religious group in France, New Zealand, and the Netherlands is expected to be the unaffiliated. As some countries show population declines, others show increases.
For example, China's 1.4 billion people (as of 2021) loom large in global trends. At present, about 5% of China's population is estimated to be Christian, and more than 50% is religiously unaffiliated. Because reliable figures on religious preferences (and switching) in China are not available, the projections do not contain any forecast for conversions in the world's most populous country. But if Christianity expands in China in the decades to come, as some predict, then by 2050, the global numbers of Christians may be higher than projected, and the decline in the percentage of the world's population that is religiously unaffiliated may be even more salient.
Finally, missiologists and others should bear in mind that within every major religious group, there is a spectrum of belief and practice. The projections are based on the number of people who self-identify with each religious group, regardless of their level of observance. What it means to be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or a member of any other faith may vary from person to person, country to country, and decade to decade.
The modern meaning of the phrase "world religion," putting non-Christians at the same level as Christians, began with the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. The Parliament has encouraged tolerance and interfaith dialogue, greatly influencing the public conception of world religions.
Christ speaks to this global perspective in John 10:14-16: "I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd."
The global impact of the Christian gospel continues to increase with the incarnational witness of Christ-followers in word and deed--shepherding (tending) the sheep and feeding the lambs. Jesus, in His priestly prayer to the Father in John 17:18-21, says, "As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world...I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us,
"so that the world may believe that You sent Me."
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Retired!!!
3yGreat word of truth, Darrell. Thanks