The Power of the Global South

Here's a really good article about Scottish church historian Andrew Walls that appears in the current issue of Christianity Today. Walls, as the article explains, was one of the first historians of Christianity to recognize the power and vibrancy of the faith in the "Global South," i.e., Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For decades - or centuries, in some cases - the church understood such areas only in terms of a decidedly paternalistic colonialism. But as it is now clear, these are exactly the places where the Holy Spirit is most powerfully at work.

According to the article, it was Andrew Walls who first began to look at the church in Africa on its own terms rather than through the lens of condescending European colonialism. His willingness to set aside his cultural prejudices in order to see more clearly the creative work of God allowed him to open that perspective up to others.

The article, written by Tim Stafford, explains how Walls came to view the spread of the Christian faith: "The spread of the gospel is often presented as inexorable progress outward, like an inkblot, but Walls saw that time and again the real story was of ebb and flow. The loss of Christian territory happened not just on the periphery but at the heartland. Jerusalem was the first heartland until the Romans leveled it, and the Jewish church all but ceased to exist. Then came Rome, until the northern Vandals sacked it; Constantinople, until Islam overran it; northern Europe, before Enlightenment skepticism cut its heart out. At each turning point, the gospel made a great escape, crossing over into an unknown culture just before disaster struck. History suggested that Christianity lives by this pilgrim principle."

Great stuff. And by the way, I am convinced that disaster has struck in the American church as well. Anybody want to guess what that disaster is?

A personal note: I have experienced the church in the "Global South" primarily in two areas - Peru and Egypt. I have been in ministry with the Iglesia Metodista del Peru on several occasions, and just last year I got to spend a couple of week studying Coptic Orthodoxy in Egypt. The way the church goes about being the church in those two locales is wonderfully different, but in both places I have seen the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in powerful ways.

The church in the good ol' U.S.A. has a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters in other countries. Whenever I am asked how I can justify taking mission teams to foreign countries when there are needs right here at home, I respond, "Go with me and you'll see." When you leave your 'comfort zone,' go to a different cultural context, and surrender yourself to ministry, you are able to see God and the church with new eyes. It changes you. You find out that American Christians (or Americans in general) don't have all the answers. And you begin to realize that the relationship we all share in Jesus Christ is a heck of a lot more real than any ties of nation or culture. In paricular, I think American Christians can be helped by going to the Global South and seeing what God is doing there. It might be the first step toward revival closer to home.