Chapter 8: Expansion to and from Every

Continent, A.D. 1900–2000

Chapter 8: Expansion to and from Every

Continent, A.D. 1900–2000

Chapter OutlineChapter 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

IntroductionIntroduction

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.

Voices Calling in the Desert

Voices Calling in the Desert

• Notable Indigenous Leaders

• Prophets by Divine Commission

• The Fruit of Revivals

Notable Indigenous Leaders

Notable Indigenous Leaders

• Samuel Adjai Crowther (Nigeria)

• Pastor Hsi (China)

• Pandita Ramabai (India)

• Kanzo Uchimura (Japan)

Prophets by Divine Commission

Prophets by Divine Commission

• William Wadé Harris (West Africa)

• Simon Kimbangu (Democratic Republic of Congo)

The Fruit of RevivalsThe 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.

Mission and Christian UnityMission and

Christian Unity

• Mainline Mission

• Cracks in the Unity

Mainline MissionMainline 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.

Cracks in the UnityCracks 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.

Ascendancy of Evangelical Mission

Ascendancy of Evangelical Mission

• Innovative Methods

• Cooperation in Mission

• Parachurch Ministries

• Dying for Christ

Ascendancy of Evangelical Mission

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.

Innovative MethodsInnovative 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)

Cooperation in MissionCooperation 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

Parachurch MinistriesParachurch Ministries

• InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

• International Fellowship of Evangelical Students founded in 1947

• Urbana Missionary Conferences

• World Vision

Dying for ChristDying 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

PentecostalismPentecostalism

• Pentecostal Beginnings

• Lightning in a Bottle

• Charismatic Renewal

• The Third Wave

Pentecostal BeginningsPentecostal 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)

Lightning in a BottleLightning 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?

Lightning in a Bottle (cont.)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).

Charismatic Renewal

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.

Charismatic Renewal (cont.)

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.

The Third WaveThe 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.

Vatican Council II and Catholic Mission

Vatican Council II and Catholic Mission

• Conversation with the World

• Liberating the Oppressed

Vatican Council IIVatican 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.

Conversation with the WorldConversation 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.

Liberating the OppressedLiberating 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).

Global Mission Advance

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).

Global Mission Advance (cont.)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.

Shifting GravityShifting 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.