The Western Church is shrinking in size and importance and the Church in the “Global South,” particularly Latin America and Africa, is growing rapidly. This is the primary thesis that Philip Jenkins defends in his book The Next Christendom – The Coming of Global Christianity. In Chapters 1-4, Jenkins supplies generous facts and figures to back up his claim. Furthermore, Jenkins states that the Christianity of the Global South has been largely ignored by the West to their peril. Jenkins argues early on that there are theological and socio-cultural, political and religious consequences to this shift or sea change (that result in a huge and inexorable change). Jenkins warns that Western projections of Christianity by scholars and church bureaucrats are myopic at best: “And if many writers are neglecting the present-day realities of Christianity, they are still worse on projecting the future.” (pg. 5) This paper further summarizes Jenkins’ discoveries, as he continues to unfold the mysteries of this phenomenon by addressing the many factors and variables that brought about revival in the South and latent dormancy in the North.
The “Third Church” is a church made up of the poor, young and ethnic groups of the Third World. Many of these new Christians are attracted to supernaturalism in general, and Pentecostalism in particular. Perhaps this is why, Jenkins states, that the Western Christians have so widely ignored this new shift in the epicenter of Christian evangelism. What Jenkins failed to state is that this shift is also evident within the borders of Western Christendom. When I attended First Assembly of God in Gainesville, Florida, we often heard over the last five-to-eight years that the Spanish-speaking constituencies were growing faster than their English-speaking counterparts. In fact, the Assemblies of God website reports that in the past 15 years, the growth of the number of Hispanic AG churches has been a “significant factor in the total growth of the Assemblies of God in the United States.” From 1990 to 2006, the total number of churches grew from 11,353 to 12,311 for a net growth of 958 churches. During the same period, the number of churches in the eight Hispanic districts grew from 1,348 in 1990 to 1,856 in 2006 for a net growth of 508 churches. Special offices and programs have been erected to address the needs of this vast growing segment of the Assemblies of God denomination.
“South-south evangelism represents one of the most impressive phenomena in contemporary Christianity.” (pg. 14) Why is this so impressive? There is huge enthusiasm for it, for one. Doors are open to third world country missionaries that are not open to Western missionaries, for two. This rings true on a personal note, because the senior pastor of the AG church in Florida was given access to a very turbulent area of a Third World country on a mission trip, largely because he had dark hair and could blend in better with the natives, than the director of missions, whose long white beard and white hair (he plays Santa at the mall each Christmas) would have sounded off alarms.