AD 2025 Global Monitor

New Commentary

Missions research: the analogy with flying
Any trained airplane pilot knows the difference between VFR (visual flight rules) and IFR (instrument flight rules). By one typical set of standards in the USA, only an instrument-rated pilot is permitted to fly an airplane above 18,000 feet or whenever there is less than three miles visibility (whether due to weather or darkness). It is catastrophically dangerous, under such IFR conditions, to try to "fly by the seat of one's pants" (to fly by instinct or gut feeling)--to try to determine whether the airplane is tilting left or right, moving up or down, by the "feel" of it. It is an easy way to experience vertigo--complete disorientation-- potentially resulting in a crash.

What about those who are "piloting" the world missionary enterprise--mission executives, denominational leaders, and other decision-makers_ Global religions, global Christianity, global mission, and the global context of countries, peoples, languages, and cities are all vast, diverse, and complex subjects. Competence in church and mission leadership requires "instument-rated pilots", those who seek, understand, and act upon relevant data, facts, information, statistics, and numbers. Unfortunately, many (maybe most) are instead seeking to "fly by the seat of their pants"--to make strategic decisions on the basis of what "feels" correct. The results (in misdeployment, waste, duplication, missing of opportunities, and outright failure) are far more disastrous than mere airplane crashes.

New Events

Faith and reason in America
A columnist attended a recent conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and returned with a collection of facts and observations, including:

1. One-fourth of Americans believe in ghosts and nearly half believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and extrasensory perception (ESP).
2. Astronomer Carl Sagan estimates that 25-50% of Americans donOt know the earth revolves around the sun.
3. By one measure, 94% of Americans are scientifically illiterate.
4. A Harvard psychiatrist said he believed that 90% of his patients have been abducted and molested by aliens.

One speaker asked the attendees how many of them believed in God. Reportedly, not one hand was raised (Jack Smith, Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1994).

These items illustrate an alarming paradox in the Western world: skepticism and disbelief about Christianity (in favor of "science") and, at the same time, vast scientific ignorance, and vast credulity about a wide range of things unaccepted by scientific authorities. The columnist also noted that while the conference was going on, in Seattle, the streets outside were clogged with 100,000 Christians in a "March for Jesus", part of a global event. His wry observation: "None of the marchers were invited to address the convention".

Truth versus claims
In their written literature, ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) claims 3 million members in the USA. 20-25 attend the weekly meetings in Richmond, VA (Times-Dispatch, 18 November 1993:E1). The national claim is extremely generous. There will, most likely, be only 700,000 Hindus, of all kinds, in the USA in AD 2000. Unfortunately, many will read the claim of 3 million members and believe it. Who knows how many American pastors may have already quoted this inaccurate statistic from their pulpits_ This serves as another reminder of the importance, and value of, basic familiarity with accurate, reliable religious statistics.

Kurds watch "Jesus" on TV
Six TV stations have broadcast the Kurdish-dubbed "Jesus" Film over the last Christmas season. An estimated 1 million Kurds watched it, mainly in Kurdistan/Northern Iraq (FMB-SBC Prayer Alert, 21 December 1993).

New Futurism

The perils of prophecy
The 1893 World's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, proved to be an extremely significant religious event in history. Not only were major non-Christian religions introduced to the Western world as never before, but it also provided an opportunity for wide-ranging, authoritative assessments to be presented on the global status of religion in a myriad of htmlects. What of the future_ Not many of the official presentations ventured far with that topic, though one speaker said, "A French author of great repute has written a book entitled L'irreligion de l'avenir (The irreligion of the future), in which he declares that religion will eventually disappear..." (The dawn of religious pluralism, Robert Hughes Seager, ed., Open Court, 1993:297).

This statement is consistent with a large body of futurist literature that has appeared from the early 1800s to the present, predicting the disappearance of religion. The thriving, powerful endurance of religion as a major human force now more than 100 years after that prediction provides us with a perspective from which to assess present, similar prophecies and predictions.

New Statistics

Church growth items

• Hong Kong continues its role as a Christian powerhouse. Recent totals include: 20 Bible seminaries, 20 Christian publishers, 40 Christian bookshops, over 200 Christian organizations, and 1,100 churches.
• The two largest Protestant groups in Romania are the Pentecostals and the Baptists. In the two years following the fall of communism, over 1,000 new congregations were added to these.
• The Zaire Mennonite Brethren Conference now has 48,300 members. They also report 975 "recorded decisions for Christ" in the last two years.

World military and social expenditures
Ruth Leger Sivard has written the latest edition of the above title (World Priorities, Inc., 1993). It includes many interesting global statistics, such as:

• In 1990 the developed countries gave $56 billion in aid to the poorer "underdeveloped" countries and sold $36 billion worth of arms to them.
• World military spending in 1992 exceeded $600 billion (in 1987 dollars). US military spending accounted for half of the total.
• As of mid-1993, there were still 26,700 active nuclear warheads in the inventories of the "big five" nuclear states, representing more than 1,600 times the destructive force of all the firepower used in World War II.

Census enumerates religion in Canada
From the 1991 Canadian census: 82% Christians (47% Catholics, 35% Protestants), 3.7% other religious affiliation, 13% no religious affiliation, 1.3% atheists or agnostics.

Land mines: a global menace
There are 100 million land mines planted in the world, scattered in 60 countries, notably Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique and Somalia. In Cambodia, 30,000 people have lost limbs, mostly due to such mines. Human rights groups are calling for a global ban on mines, like that on chemical weapons. Mines cost an average of $20 to make and $300-1,000 to remove (the latter a UN estimate). Most mines today are mainly plastic (Pulse, 10 December 1993:6 and the Economist, 27 November 1993:42).

Hazards on the road of statistical analysis
Problems with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the index on which inflation statistics are based:

• It does not adjust fully for improvements in the quality of goods.
• It tends to be based on household spending patterns that are years out of date.
• It fails to take into account that consumers tend to buy cheaper alternatives, when available, to standard goods.
• It has failed to adjust to the global consumer pattern of a shift from standard retail purchasing to discount shops and catalogs.

Therefore, the global drop in inflation rates, much more marked in the West, is probably more extreme than the standard statistics reflect (Economist, October 30, 1993:19).

On the importance of research: the Economist, in an article pointing out several commonly-known ways in which current Consumer Price Index statistics are flawed, asked why governments, notably the United States', do not correct their statistical methods. The answer: the cost of change. "This approach is about as sensible as building a jumbo jet and leaving out the navigation equipment, for the sake of a few shillings" (October 30, 1993:20).

New Peoples Data

Work among unreached peoples spreads
Unnoticed by the Western Christian media, work among World A peoples continues to spread across Asia. In India, the Church Growth Missionary Movement is working among the Vasava Bhil Adivasis in Gujarat. The Friends Missionary Prayer Band is working among the Maltos, Kuknas and Gonds. The Indian Evangelical Mission is reaching the Dangi tribals of Dangs district, south Gujarat. The Naga Mission is reaching the Tangnyu Nagas of Burma and India. And the Peniel Gospel Team is working in Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan and parts of north India (Indian mission, October-December 1993:8).

Another World A people emigrates out of World A
The Bukhara Jews have lived in Central Asia for centuries. Their mother tongue is a dialect of Persian, clearly distinguishing them from the European/Russian Jews. Most who were in Tajikistan have left since the bloody civil war of 1992. The three largest remaining communities are in the cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent, all in Uzbekistan. More than 20,000 have left in the past three years, with about half headed for the USA and the other half for Israel. Bukharans have been living in Jerusalem since the 1890s. Further, a small community has grown up in the Forest Hills section of Queens, New York. Some 4,000 remain in Bukhara, and some 13,000 in all of Central Asia. Experts predict that all will have emigrated within a few years (Los Angeles Times, 12 July 1994).

New Trends

"Here's looking at you", computer
Sony is working seriously on a new interface for PCs. It goes a step beyond the desktop analogy to a face- to-face conversation analogy. When you come to the computer, a face (of your choosing) will appear. You will say things to it and it will respond. It will also say things to you, with normal human-like facial motion. They do this by taking a face and dividing into a group of polygons that can then be electronically manipulated for the effect. This head animation system + speech dialogue system is expected to be out in five to ten years. Before then, Sony expects to have this interface for things such as VCRs and camcorders (PC Magazine, October 26, 1993:30).

New Diagram

Comments on Global Diagram 59 (opposite)
In this issue and the next, the Monitor describes the overall situation of Christianity and world evangelization across the 20th century. In the 1880s many Christians anticipated that it would prove to be "The Christian Century" culminating in the total numerical victory of the Christian religion over all others. The diagrams show how wildly incorrect their optimism has proved to be--the numerical status quo has continued virtually unchanged from that day to this. That is, Christians have steadily increased throughout the century and are expected to top 2 billion by AD 2000. Unfortunately, non-Christians have increased at a nearly identical rate and are expected to top 4 billion by AD 2000!

In this issue the diagram's statistics deal with the total numbers of persons involved. A lot can be learned by the simple perusal, with care and imagination, of such statistics of absolute numbers. But further insight, including exact details of what trends have existed in the past and are likely to continue into the future, spring from analysis not of totals but of percentages. In the next issue, forthcoming, these percentages will be investigated for the trends they reveal.

All of these numbers have a special significance to the Christian church and its world mission. Not until this variety of hard facts are in, and are accepted as correct and valid beyond argument, can we missiologists proceed to assess what it all means from the standpoint of Scripture and the normative commission of Christ to his followers.

New Books

Ken Gnanakan's The pluralistic predicament (Bangalore: Theological Book Trust, 1992, 234 pp., Rs 64) is an Evangelical, scholarly, Indian study of the issue of religion and pluralism.

Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi edit Conversion and continuity: indigenous Christian communities in Islamic lands, eighth to eighteenth centuries (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990, 559 pp., $49.50) providing a fascinating historical look at Christians as a minority in Muslim domains and empires.

Frederick S. Downs continues a landmark study with History of Christianity in India, vol. 5, part 5: North East India in the 19th and 20th centuries (Bangalore: Church History Association of India, 1992, 236 pp., Rs. 70).

Evangelization from a liberation perspective by Priscilla Pope-Levison (Peter Lang, 1991, 200 pp., $41) contains definitions of "evangelize", and much more.

History of Hindu imperialism by Swami Dharma Theertha (Madras: Dalit Educational Literature Centre, 1992, 280 pp., Rs 100) exposes Brahminism as an instrument of discrimination; originally published in 1941.

God is green: Christianity and the environment by Ian Bradley (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990, 118 pp., œ6.95) is an introduction that covers the Bible, early fathers, Orthodoxy, medieval spirituality and modern science.

24 Evangelical scholars weigh in on the destiny of the unevangelized in Through no fault of their own_ The fate of those who have never heard (William V. Crockett and James G. Sigountos, editors, Baker, 1991, 278 pp., $15.95).

The second in the "Prayer Warrior Series" is Prayer shield: how to intercede for pastors, Christian leaders and others on the spiritual frontlines by C. Peter Wagner (Regal, 1992, 203 pp., $14.95).

The Dalit Christians: a history by John C. B. Webster (Delhi: ISPCK, 1992, 262 pp., Rs 95) is important to understanding Christianity in India.

Footsteps in the sea: Christianity in Oceania to World War II by John Garrett (Geneva: WCC and Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, 1992, 514 pp., $20) is the second volume (following To live among the stars, 1982) of a three-volume work.

The icon: its meaning and history by Mahmoud Zibawi (The Liturgical Press, 1992, 240 pp., $90) includes a bibliography, a chronology, and a glossary of terms.

The elements of Celtic Christianity by Anthony Duncan (Element, 1992, 120 pp.) deals mainly with theology, spirituality, cultural elements and practices.

Toward the 21st century in Christian mission: essays in honor of Gerald H. Anderson, edited by James M. Phillips and Robert T. Coote (Eerdmans, 1993, 400 pp., $24.99) offers unique perspectives on world mission.

Planting churches in Muslim cities: a team approach by Greg Livingstone (Baker, 1993, 71 pp., $14.99) investigates an innovative strategy for this large segment of World A peoples who have received relatively little attention to date.

In Power religion: the selling out of the Evangelical church_, edited by Michael Scott Horton (Moody Press, 1992, 353 pp., $17.99), 12 North American Evangelical leaders criticize the "power evangelism" movement.

Missionary earthkeeping edited by Calvin B. DeWitt and Ghillean T. Prance (Mercer University Press, 1992, 148 pp., $30/$16.95) is a collection of five essays from an interesting range of specialists towards a world missions ecotheology.

How to break growth barriers: capturing overlooked opportunities for church growth by Carl F. George with Warren Bird (Baker, 1993, 232 pp., $10.99) is the latest title from George resembling the material from his popular "Breaking the 300 barrier" and "Breaking the 800 barrier" seminars.

Sent out! Reclaiming the spiritual gift of apostleship for missionaries and churches today by Larry Caldwell (William Carey Library, 1992, 191 pp., $8.95) covers much untilled ground in understanding the missionary vocation.

The cross and the rising sun, Volume 2: The British Protestant missionary movement in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, 1865-1945 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993, 324 pp., Can. $49.95) is an accessible scholarly history.

New Articles

Donatism: schism, heresy, or reform movement_
One of our interests at the Monitor desk is how to make sense of the mind-boggling fragmentation of global Christianity into 24,000 separate and distinct denominations. Many take the line that their denomination is the only true one and all the rest are heretics or schismatics. From our new perspective we find ourselves reassessing many of the judgments of history. Take the 4th-century Church of Donatus, usually vilified by church historians. In an important new reassessment, Calvin Shenk invites a new look at the Donatists and their movement. "They were motivated by the lukewarmness of the Catholic Church, the perception that the Catholic Church was an instrument by which the emperor repressed them, the foreignness of Roman culture, the injustice of the Roman colonial system, and by their desire for a national church... Augustine, who was involved in the suppression of Donatism, did not seem to understand that the Donatist branch of the church was an adaptation of Christian faith to African thought or that Donatism might function as a national church... If treated differently, the Donatist Church might have played a significant role in the establishment of the church in North Africa similar to the way in which Christianity in Egypt became a national church" ("The demise of the church in North Africa and Nubia and its survival in Egypt and Ethiopia: a question of contextualization_", Missiology, April 1993:135).

Computer News

Status of videoconferencing
Desktop videoconferencing is now down to about $2,000 per user, but the software and hardware have not yet become stabilized. One expert predicts widely-usable equipment by mid-1995. In the past year video boards have dropped in cost from $1,000 to $500 each (PC Week, 1 November 1993:1, 3, 16).

Information superhighway budget
The USA government has earmarked more than $1 billion in this year's budget for the National Information Infrastructure, the agency working on the national digital highway. Pieces include existing fiber optic cables, coaxial cables, the Internet, townwide networks, etc. "Gathering these pieces into a nationwide, coordinated, high-speed network with on- and off-ramps for everyone is a project that requires collaboration and commitment" (PC Week, 1 November 1993:91).

Internet growth
On the Internet, the current base of users numbers 25 million, with an estimated growth rate of 1 million per month. Spry Inc. has released a Windows-based suite of Internet access applications. The US government is phasing out its $11.5 million annual subsidy, so greater commercialization is expected. A company providing access to the Internet for Virginia is VERnet at 804-924-0616; similar providers are springing up globally (PC Week, 1 November 1993:91).