[Church History] Discussion post: "Future International Mission Super Powers From Where & And Why?" (Received 50/50, 8/4/2025)

         From William Carey (1761-1834), Lottie Moon (1840-1912), to anonymous voyagers who braved the unpredictability of rising untamed ocean waves and the wild barbaric indigenous tribes, only to have their worn-out and assaulted bodies buried later thousands of miles away in foreign graveyards, the nineteenth and twentieth century international mission efforts and endeavors were undertaken  and dominated mostly by the stalwart star-spangled and maple leafed continent of North America in particular—from the Presbyterian and the SBC to name a few. Whether their zeal, passion, sacrifice, conviction and the vision in the World Christendom at large (Cf. Matthew 28) were successful and realized  or not, one would only need to look at the latter part of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty first century, where the emerging international  mission send-off powers are said to be from the once the receiver Third World Nations as Elwell and Yarbrough wrote,  “Meanwhile, belief in Jesus on the global scene has expanded dramatically. In non-Western contexts and through the efforts of Western missionaries who still believed the Bible, “local people adopted the teachings of Jesus and made them their own. This often resulted in loss and persecution. But it changed and uplifted hearts, minds, and communities. “Today most missionary work is being done by Koreans, Chinese, Brazilians, Nigerians, Indians, Ghanaians, and even Egyptians, Lebanese, and Costa Ricans.” While Western elites doubted Jesus, other regions have found reason to affirm his historical and contemporary lordship.” (Elwell & Yarbrough, p. 175.)

Going back to the local converts from the early twentieth century by the band of courageous Occidental missionaries from America, who graced the shores of the Hermit Kingdom as in Old Korea, one of their main targeted stops, was a young unwed woman--grandmother of this obscure writer--who through her own conversion to Christianity would change the entire course and fortunes of her future family and descendants for the next hundred years—from the centuries-old idolatry to the Eternity.

Chateau d'If

        As the sun sets in the west, it rises in the east, and when the old hope dies off, the new vision begets out of unshelled self-afflicted wounds: imagine how the fictional vigilante Edmond Dantes consoles in the final chapter of the epic saga to his young protégé Maxmilien Morrel, “All human wisdom is contained in these two words--Wait and hope.” Indeed, the humanism, postmodernism and Darwinian evolutionary naturalism have wreaked havoc in the West as the privileged culture gets sunken and drowned ever deeper into the toxic swamp of aspirituality, hedonism/materialism and relativism. Is the Great Revival forthcoming gonna drain it? At least regionally splitting the Red Vs. Blue?

      McGrath points out, “The shaping of Protestantism in the later twentieth century was dominated by the United States, which became the intellectual and entrepreneurial powerhouse of the movement after the Second World War. Yet the recent history of Protestant America is only part (although a very important part) of the greater story of the movement as a whole.” (McGrath, p.439.) As America is shaken up, with its glorious memories of the recent dominant past as the beacon of hope for the world evangelism perhaps fading into the background, Asian tigers like  South Korea, China, and rising South Asian evangelical power in India seem to be carrying on the torch of international missions. Really? If so, how?

       For example, the story of much-westernized South Korea is a complicated one, and its fate is really intertwined with those of the America, in particular, and its adversaries, the heavily tariffed axis of evil: its status as de facto # 1 nation for sender of international missionaries per capita is in serious jeopardy now because South Korea’s ever so dwindling population and huge political turmoil with Marxist-Socialist regime’s full takeover in the backdrop of its rapidly collapsing economy as the hosts of its Chaebol corporations are mass exiting the country altogether including Samsung, Hyundai, Geumho Tires among others plus the wealthy citizenry.

      In the midst of all upheavals rising on the global scale, really, the expansion of “the franchise models such as Calvary Chapel”, the private enterprises and wealthy individual churches and institutions could be prominent and noteworthy due to the expected continued downward progress of large (national) denominations and decentralization as the stagflation sets in deeply.

     McGrath wonders, “So what of the future of Protestantism (and its international missions)? Those who base their answer on its fortunes in western Europe, its original heartlands, may offer a somewhat negative answer. But for those who have reflected on its remarkable advances elsewhere, such an answer is inadequate. Yes, the sun may not set on a movement—but it is too easily forgotten that the sun rises again in the next day. Protestantism has had its moments in the past; it will have them again in the future.” (McGrath, p. 478).  

     The story of international mission has mostly been the indigenization—at least the successful ones: For example, a highlander from luscious Scottish hills won’t know the best for the locals living in the flatlands in Congo or how to behave best among the indigenous in the coastal town of Cape Cod in  South Africa. Those who humbly and wisely adopt the local cultures AND attend to their everyday needs first and foremost will always win out. But then, how PURE and uncontaminated can one keep the faith among the new converted culture—that might become a bigger issue which will surface in due time. In the end, a few nations in Pan-Pacific rings, South Asia and Latin America and even Africa will be a force to reckon with on current pace, with a group of well-funded private organizations to play a major contributing role as well.

[Resources]

Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First, (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007)

Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough, Encountering the New Testament: A Historical and Theological Survey, (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2022)

**My reply to someone named William:

Dear William; thanks for your post. Absolutely, I enjoyed reading it and I agree with you wholeheartedly on several critical points, which were also expressed by yours truly methinks rather emphatically and unabashedly.

I’d like to quote what you said, “to a growing spiritual crisis within the global church. Rather than focusing solely on unreached people groups or geographical frontiers, the priority will turn inward, toward the Church itself. This change is not born from speculation, but from the sobering warnings found in the writings of the Apostle Paul.”: that is a good discernment of the trend which is happening in and around the evangelical circle itself. I applaud a few bible verses which you quoted as in “watered-down gospel message, corrupted incoherent mambo jumbo cowardly preaching from the pulpit, false doctrines/bad exegesis, etc.”—this can be rather observed weekly right here in a city I live in the state of KY. I don’t have to travel too far to hear it. NO pietism. Even an attempt at Protestant Intellectualism has lost its steam and has been running on fumes as of late…

The turning point in recent memories is 2020 CORONA Worldwide Pandemic, of course, imo, that was clearly the watershed event in the history of mankind; but as some of us know all too well the seeds had been planted a long ago—at least sixty-seventy years ago. In essence, 1) the degradation/disintegration of the unity of the nation/country as a sovereign state, the  acceleration of the powerless cash-depleted much-in-debt refuge-overrun entities of former economically self-reliant nation states all across the West  and their fall will continue on imo, as the new digital currency (crypto is the word on street at the moment) and its systemic and worldwide usage starts a firm shape as it seeps into our economical transactions as the dominant ways to buy and sell for sure, 3) in the midst of all the chaos and bewilderment, and build-up of strong independent private enterprises,  will rise the Spiritual Awakening, which you alluded to. I did too. It is all Biblical. Absolutely, with lots of Mad Max inspired apocryphal undertone.

Jesus worshippers in Brazil

Brazil a major force in international missions? It has the potential being a founding member of the BRICS. China? Lots of underground Christians working hard to spread the gospel as Noll writes, “By the early 1980s, the rest of the world was beginning to learn about the surprising vitality of Christianity that had survived a full generation of all-out persecution…Remarkably, Christianity had not only survived but also seemed to be expanding in many Chinese regions and many strata of Chinese society.” (Noll, p. 308.) Foreign dynasties came and gone, and barbarian-founded empires rose and fell with the last being the Ching Dynasty; but the Han Chinese outlasted them all as the Manchus and the rest 50-some odd minorities have seemed assimilated seamlessly into the fabric of the Han culture and the psyche. And the Chinese Christians are the strongest of them all as they’d outlast them all in my opinion. Ditto for Ghana, Nigeria. As the world turns and disintegrates towards one dominant political rule, out of the ashes the Phoenix like New Zeal and Passio for the Word of God will rise and spread like wildfire for Bolder Braver and One Final Roster call for the citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

[Resources]

Mark A. Noll, David Komline and Han-Luen Kantzer Komline, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2022)**

**My reply to someone named Stefan:

Hey Stefan, thanks for a well-thought out and -researched post. I enjoyed reading it for sure. Obviously, the missionary efforts and its sendoff, not the success or failure of it, depends upon the status of monetary funds (first and foremost), the infrastructure/organizational stability in place, the human resources, and the DESIRES and willpower/willingness of the organization concerned, etc., of which the countries you mentioned seem to hit all the major points as you mentioned, “decades will be from countries with growing churches and monetary resources. Three countries most fitting of this description are Mexico, Brazil, and the United States.” Sure.

Decades? Possibly. Probably.

People will still continue to slumber away in the wake of the slaughtered blood of thousands of rams and rivers of oil which will drench them completely; the justice and righteousness are to be renewed among those faithful who walk with God in the coming decades in era of a possible  full convergence between the iron and clay to have taken place; on the global level, totalitarianism is on the rise as it is being brought closer together than ever before: and it is madly rushing toward what in the end? This emerging but seemingly unavoidable destiny of world tyranny is a different yet same form of old socialism as the individual citizen becomes poorer and poorer, yet the state/the small number of the elite  sitting at the top of the food chain becomes extremely rich and all the more powerful. Hollywood is pumping out droves of them lately as if it will be a reality soon to be thrusted upon us or the next generations. Remember <Animal Farm> or <1984 >? It is sorta the perfect hybrid of the two as the dystopian world could be controlled by the machines, AIs, the hybrids as maids/slaves, with almost zero homo sapiens around—at least the purebloods.

John Locke wondered, “in the propriety of the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it, with some degree of voluntary attention, considers anything…; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving it.” (Locke, Great Book, p.138). So here I go with my random perception as I contemplate how John Wesley (and his pious brother Charles, of whom both are said to occupy a mansion in heaven, respectively Vs. the followers of the two-faced that are being unceasingly incinerated in hell), optimized the secular means available to him: the use of most advanced current technology/tools, communication platform and management skills will be vital in the international missions moving forward built on the healthy monetary funds, of course. It will be a world with no distinct border. Hey, btw, we do respect your hatred towards fitness/sport, staying in tip top shape/health will enhance your value as an asset for the expansion of the kingdom of God at large, as McGrath writes, “Lay in the English love for cricket, and especially the social respect given to its heroes.” (McGrath, p. 369).

     I do have my hopes set on the Hispanics, in particular, as McGrath writes, “Hispanics are already the largest ethnic minority in the United Staes of America, and they are predicted to become the majority within the next fifty years.” (McGrath, p. 452). Whether it was the conspiracy concocted and carried out the CIA covert operations or not (to stir up the pots per the wishes by the Zionists), the fact is that they are here to stay. As the growth of the Protestantism continue to grow among the segment, and their form of worship purged to be free flowing and revelatory, I do look for them to play a major role in domestic evangelization in the next decades to come.

[Sources]

Alister McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: the Protestant Revolution—a History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First, (New York, NY:HarperOne, 2007)**