Chinese Christians aim to evangelize Muslim world

Washington Post ^ | Julia Duin

[darrellmaurina]

40 posted on Sunday, September 25, 2011 11:12:38 AM by Biggirl: “Plus there are many areas in the global south where the Christian Church is growing. Most likely they will end up sending missionaries to the west to re-evangelize it.”

Sending missionaries to the West is already happening, and has been for a long time.

Go look at the huge number of Korean Presbyterians and their growth rates.

Then take a look at the state of the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian Church (USA), or most of the Dutch Reformed churches. Those were once the three major powerhouses of Calvinist worldwide missions and church growth, and all are now in steep decline.

Even in the American South with its strongly evangelical commitments, there are interesting situations. The Presbyterian Church in America, which by any standards is an evangelical denomination with deep roots in the former Southern Presbyterian (PCUS) tradition, never had a congregation anywhere near Fort Leonard Wood in south-central Missouri until a Korean Presbyterian pastor who had served with United States soldiers decided to plant a PCA congregation for the wives of American soldiers since he saw from firsthand experience in the military that many American soldiers badly needed the gospel.

Kind of ironic that it took a Korean Presbyterian pastor to decide that American soldiers needed the gospel preached to them near a major American military installation in the South.

(Full disclosure: I happen to belong to an Associate Reformed Presbyterian congregation. I'm well aware of the confessional integrity issues with the PCA. I cite this not to say good things about the PCA.)

My point is that even in the South, it's increasingly common to find third-world missionaries doing church planting. For Presbyterians that typically means Koreans and sometimes Brazilians. For Anglicans, it usually means Nigerians or other African churches. For other historic denominations it may be different ethnic groups, but less and less commonly does that mean whites of European ancestry.