I've got some more Missions Conference love for you all.
"The Next Evangelicalism"
Dr. Soong-Chan Rah
Acts 15
- Jerusalem Council
- Animosity towards Gentiles
- Changing demographics
The Changing Face of Christianity
By the year 2050 the church will be:
- Africa - 29%
- Asia - 20%
- Europe - 16%
- Lat. Am. - 22%
- N. Am. - 12%
Those are the end of his notes, and now here are my thoughts.
He also threw out some other crazy stats that made it clear that Christianity is becoming more and more minority in population in America, and less white American. What does that mean for us as Christians?
It means we may need change our strategy a bit. Maybe be a bit more sensitive to the African and Asian culture in our churches.
He also talked about how he thinks the church in North America today are conforming to culture in their structure and formats, and especially in their buildings. He made an illustration by comparing an older colonial church with a church of today. This illustration seemed like a bit of a stretch to me, but if you take a picture of a ceiling in an older church and turn it upside-down it looks similar to the shape of an ark, and he made a play on words by saying "ark-itecture." But now today we build our churches to look more like shopping malls, or entertainment venues. His point was that in early history they did not build their churches to conform to culture, but today we want to appeal to the culture so much that we are conforming to it. The "ark-itecture" illustration was a bit of a stretch for me. But I somewhat understand what he's saying.
More thoughts on this later.
Do you agree with these thoughts?
Do you think the American church today has conformed too much to culture?
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