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The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities
In The Future of the Global Church , Patrick Johnstone, author of six editions of the phenomenal prayer guide, Operation World , draws on his fifty years experience to challenge us with his bold vision of the global Christian church. The Future of the Global Church weaves together the strands of history, demographics and religion to present a breathtaking, full-color graphical and textual overview of the past, present and possible future of the church around the world. Through a thought-provoking glimpse into likely scenarios humankind may face in the next 40 years, The Future of the Global Church identifies significant trends that are rarely or never addressed by today's media. The Future of the Global Church highlights the impact of evangelical Christianity over the past two centuries, as well as the astonishing growth of Evangelicalism over the past half century. Johnstone focuses clearly on the unfinished task of world evangelization, with a special emphasis on the world's 12,000 people groups--especially those that have had least exposure to the gospel. Inside this work, you will This book examines trends that will have a major impact on the course of world events for a generation to come. God is in control--He holds the future in His hands--yet invites us to be His coworkers. How effective are you and your church or your organization as participants in His plan for the peoples of the world?
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2011
7 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Johnstone
26 books12 followersPatrick Johnstone was brought up in England as the eldest of six siblings, children of an Irish father and a Dutch mother. He was converted to Christ in 1959 during his first year as a student at Bristol University, while reading Chemistry in preparation to become a research scientist. At a Christian Union meeting, he heard Glyndwr Davies speak about the evangelistic work of the Dorothea Mission in urban townships in southern Africa, and he rose to the challenge and committed his life to serve as a missionary evangelist. He went to South Africa in 1962, completing his theological training at the Dorothea Mission Bible College in Pretoria.
It was during this time that he met Jill Amsden, a fellow worker from the UK serving in the Dorothea Mission. Patrick and Jill eventually were able to marry in 1968 on their first home leave. Thereafter, they served together in Zimbabwe, where their three children, Peter, Timothy and Ruth, were all born.
During his first six-year term on the field, Patrick served in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). In the last of these, he led the first Dorothea Mission team in evangelistic outreach in towns and cities across the country. He learnt a number of African languages, including siNdebele, chiShona and Afrikaans, and also became involved in translating part of the New Testament into chiNambya, a language spoken in northwest Zimbabwe.
It was during this time that he also began the work of gathering data about the world both to inform prayer and for the first editions of Operation World. The first printed booklet with that title, which came out in 1965, was just 30 pages long. The second edition appeared in 1973 and covered nearly every country of the world. It was reprinted several years later by Ralph Winter of the USCWM, and also prompted George Verwer to set in motion an OM-backed rewrite of the book for global distribution. This was completed in 1978 and led to many openings for wider ministry. The impact of Operation World is incalculable. Over 2.5 million copies have been distributed around the world in seven editions and some 16 languages, and the book has played a key role in developing the global vision of African, Latin American and Asian missions.
The 1978 edition also led to some big changes in Patrick's ministry. The first was to join the OM ship, the MV Logos, for a year in Asia and the Pacific in 1979. The second followed an invitation to become part of the leadership team of WEC International, a large pioneer church-planting mission. Patrick's main responsibilities in 1980 were strategy and research and he worked in that role for the next 22 years, playing a part in the considerable growth of the mission as it addressed new unreached peoples and countries. For six years, he was also WEC's deputy international director.
Patrick was long involved with the Lausanne Movement. During the 1980s, he was a member of the Strategy Working Group that helped to formulate many of the definitions for its ethno-linguistic peoplegroup databases. In the '90s, he was co-leader with John Robb of World Vision of the "unreached peoples track" of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement. He has worked closely with David Barrett and Todd Johnson of the WCE and other researchers in sharing information and developing databases, and also played a part in the formation of Global Mapping International (GMI) and the Joshua Project and its listing of people groups.
Jill became ill with cancer in 1990 but she continued to write her children's version of Operation World and had almost completed it by the time of her death in 1992. The book was published as You Can Change the World, and later (by Daphne Spraggett) as Window on the World.
In 1995, Patrick married Robyn Erwin from the US, who had been a co-worker with Jill before her death. Patrick and Robyn now live in Cambridgeshire, England, where they currently serve as regional directors for WEC's European bases.
It was during this time that he met Jill Amsden, a fellow worker from the UK serving in the Dorothea Mission. Patrick and Jill eventually were able to marry in 1968 on their first home leave. Thereafter, they served together in Zimbabwe, where their three children, Peter, Timothy and Ruth, were all born.
During his first six-year term on the field, Patrick served in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). In the last of these, he led the first Dorothea Mission team in evangelistic outreach in towns and cities across the country. He learnt a number of African languages, including siNdebele, chiShona and Afrikaans, and also became involved in translating part of the New Testament into chiNambya, a language spoken in northwest Zimbabwe.
It was during this time that he also began the work of gathering data about the world both to inform prayer and for the first editions of Operation World. The first printed booklet with that title, which came out in 1965, was just 30 pages long. The second edition appeared in 1973 and covered nearly every country of the world. It was reprinted several years later by Ralph Winter of the USCWM, and also prompted George Verwer to set in motion an OM-backed rewrite of the book for global distribution. This was completed in 1978 and led to many openings for wider ministry. The impact of Operation World is incalculable. Over 2.5 million copies have been distributed around the world in seven editions and some 16 languages, and the book has played a key role in developing the global vision of African, Latin American and Asian missions.
The 1978 edition also led to some big changes in Patrick's ministry. The first was to join the OM ship, the MV Logos, for a year in Asia and the Pacific in 1979. The second followed an invitation to become part of the leadership team of WEC International, a large pioneer church-planting mission. Patrick's main responsibilities in 1980 were strategy and research and he worked in that role for the next 22 years, playing a part in the considerable growth of the mission as it addressed new unreached peoples and countries. For six years, he was also WEC's deputy international director.
Patrick was long involved with the Lausanne Movement. During the 1980s, he was a member of the Strategy Working Group that helped to formulate many of the definitions for its ethno-linguistic peoplegroup databases. In the '90s, he was co-leader with John Robb of World Vision of the "unreached peoples track" of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement. He has worked closely with David Barrett and Todd Johnson of the WCE and other researchers in sharing information and developing databases, and also played a part in the formation of Global Mapping International (GMI) and the Joshua Project and its listing of people groups.
Jill became ill with cancer in 1990 but she continued to write her children's version of Operation World and had almost completed it by the time of her death in 1992. The book was published as You Can Change the World, and later (by Daphne Spraggett) as Window on the World.
In 1995, Patrick married Robyn Erwin from the US, who had been a co-worker with Jill before her death. Patrick and Robyn now live in Cambridgeshire, England, where they currently serve as regional directors for WEC's European bases.
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March 15, 2018
Patrick Johnstone is best known as editor of the first six editions of Operation World, a prayer guide for Christians interested in fulling the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20). Now in its seventh edition, and edited by Jason Mandryk, Operation World presents data on the geography, peoples, economy, politics, and religion of the regions and countries of the world, which is drawn from sophisticated databases maintained by WEC International, an interdenominational missions agency. This data helps readers pray intelligently about the needs of those regions and countries throughout the year.
In The Future of the Global Church, Johnstone has drawn on those databases to create succinct narratives about and visualizations of the growth of global Christianity. The book can best be described as an historical atlas of the past, present, and possible future of world Christianity. It is a helpful resource for readers who want a concise presentation of the relevant information.
Johnston divides his material into nine chapters. Chapter 1 describes nine global challenges currently experienced around the world: population growth, migration, urbanization, pandemics (such as HIV/AIDS), climate change, income inequality, sustainable energy, political and social freedom, and water resources. Throughout the book, he highlights how environmental challenges such as these affect the movements of people—physically, intellectually, and spiritually—both in the past and at present. Doing so reminds readers that the course of history is not shaped merely by human thought and action. Larger forces are at work (such as natural disasters, pandemics, and birthrates), shaping the context in which people receive and propagate religion and nonreligious ideas and practices.
Chapter 2 summarizes the global growth of Christianity from its first-century origin to the present. Each of Christian history’s twenty centuries is summarized on two pages (except the twentieth century, which receives more extended treatment). These pages present maps depicting the faith’s global growth, tables summarizing relevant demographic information, and bulleted lists summarizing major events in the world at large and the church in particular. For readers interested in a quick summary of Christian history, this chapter is invaluable.
Chapter 3 identifies six major streams of Christianity. Listed in descending order by size, they are Christian (32.5 percent of global population as of 2010), Muslim (22.6 percent), non-religious (14.8 percent), Hindu (13.7 percent), Buddhist (6.5 percent), and ethnic/other (10 percent), the last category including religions such as animism, Sikhism, and Judaism (65). Johnstone provides several pages of data and visualization for each religious stream on succeeding pages.
Chapter 4 then turns its focus to the Christian stream. Johnstone divides Christendom into six megablocs: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Anglicans, Independents, and Marginals, by which he means “[a]ny group that claims to be Christian but displays one or more of the following characteristics,” characteristics that focus on heterodox doctrine, non-biblical sources of revelation, and extreme sectarianism (114). Johnstone predicts that in the future, Christian growth will slow “due to the slowing of population growth” generally, but also that “Christian areas [such as Europe and North America specifically] will see their majorities eroded by secularism and diluted by non-Christian immigration.” This will be offset, however by “continued growth in Africa and Asia—especially China, India and [Southeast] Asia.” And Johnnstone predicts that there “are likely to be increasing numbers of conversions to Christianity in some countries with large Muslim populations,” Islam being the chief religious competitor to Christianity globally (118).
Chapter 5 examines “renewal movements” in Christianity, which Johnstone divides into three broad categories: Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics. Evangelicals are “characterized by a theology based on the inerrancy of the Bible, a personal experience of salvation by faith through grace and a desire or obligation to witness to that salvation” (121). Given this definition, all Pentecostals are evangelical, and most Charismatics are. Elsewhere, Johnstone defines Charismatics as “those who testify to having had a renewing experience of the Holy Spirit and who exercise the gifts of the Spirit, such as speaking in tongues, healing, prophecy and miracles” (xii). Given this definition, all Pentecostals are charismatic. What distinguishes Pentecostals and Charismatics is largely denominational affiliation. The rapid growth of these movements is noteworthy and will likely continue well into the future. “If present projections prove accurate, by 2050 charismatic Christians will comprise one-third of all Christians and one-tenth of the world’s population” (125). This is remarkable growth, given that however one dates the history of modern Pentecostalism, by 2050 it will only be approximately 150 years old.
Chapter 6 outlines the history, growth, and geographic distribution of Evangelicals Evangelicalism in its many forms (including Pentecostals and Charismatics) provides “the main thrust for world evangelization” today, Johnstone contends (139). One of the most notable trends among the world’s Evangelicals is the demographic shift from North to South. As a share of regional population, Evangelicals are declining in Europe, North America, and the Pacific, but growing exponentially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite the fact that Christianity is the largest religious stream globally, and that the most evangelistic components of that stream are its fastest growing segments, major regions of the world still exist without effective evangelization efforts by Christians. The unevangelized are the focus of chapter 7. “In the 1990s,” Johnstone writes, “5% became accepted as the dividing point between ‘unevangelized’ and ‘evangelized,” by which he means 5 percent of the population that “professes Christianity” in some form. He concedes that this is an inadequate definition, but it is nevertheless illustrative of the challenge of evangelization. Using that definition, in 2008 numbers, 2.5 billion of the world’s inhabitants are unevangelized because their people group consists of 5 percent or fewer Christians. Another 2 billion inhabitants live in people groups where Christianity is a statistical minority. And approximately 2.3 billion live in people groups where Christianity is a statistical majority (172).
Chapter 8 then turns to a consideration of what kind of missionary resources are necessary for the world’s people groups to be effectively evangelized. Unfortunately, there is a mismatch between the number of missionaries serving each of the six religious streams. Most missionaries serve in countries or regions where Christians constitute the majority of the population. Thus, 43 percent of Christians serve in Christian-majority countries. In descending order, 17 percent of missionaries serve among the ethnic religions, 15 percent among Hindus, 9.7 percent among Buddhists, 8.1 percent among Muslims, and 7.2 percent among the non-religious (231). The disparity is especially noteworthy with regard to Muslim-majority countries or regions. Though Muslims constitute the second-largest bloc of religious persons worldwide (after Christians), missionaries to Muslim-majority countries constitute the second-smallest bloc of total missionary personnel. Clearly, that needs to change if effective evangelization is to take place.
Johnstone concludes The Future of the Global Church by quoting the Commitment of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, which took place in South African in 2010:
Given the data Johnstone has presented to this point, the Lausanne exhortation provides the exact right exhortation with which to end the book.
Book Reviewed
Patrick Johnstone, The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2011).
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote "Yes" on my Amazon.com review page.
In The Future of the Global Church, Johnstone has drawn on those databases to create succinct narratives about and visualizations of the growth of global Christianity. The book can best be described as an historical atlas of the past, present, and possible future of world Christianity. It is a helpful resource for readers who want a concise presentation of the relevant information.
Johnston divides his material into nine chapters. Chapter 1 describes nine global challenges currently experienced around the world: population growth, migration, urbanization, pandemics (such as HIV/AIDS), climate change, income inequality, sustainable energy, political and social freedom, and water resources. Throughout the book, he highlights how environmental challenges such as these affect the movements of people—physically, intellectually, and spiritually—both in the past and at present. Doing so reminds readers that the course of history is not shaped merely by human thought and action. Larger forces are at work (such as natural disasters, pandemics, and birthrates), shaping the context in which people receive and propagate religion and nonreligious ideas and practices.
Chapter 2 summarizes the global growth of Christianity from its first-century origin to the present. Each of Christian history’s twenty centuries is summarized on two pages (except the twentieth century, which receives more extended treatment). These pages present maps depicting the faith’s global growth, tables summarizing relevant demographic information, and bulleted lists summarizing major events in the world at large and the church in particular. For readers interested in a quick summary of Christian history, this chapter is invaluable.
Chapter 3 identifies six major streams of Christianity. Listed in descending order by size, they are Christian (32.5 percent of global population as of 2010), Muslim (22.6 percent), non-religious (14.8 percent), Hindu (13.7 percent), Buddhist (6.5 percent), and ethnic/other (10 percent), the last category including religions such as animism, Sikhism, and Judaism (65). Johnstone provides several pages of data and visualization for each religious stream on succeeding pages.
Chapter 4 then turns its focus to the Christian stream. Johnstone divides Christendom into six megablocs: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Anglicans, Independents, and Marginals, by which he means “[a]ny group that claims to be Christian but displays one or more of the following characteristics,” characteristics that focus on heterodox doctrine, non-biblical sources of revelation, and extreme sectarianism (114). Johnstone predicts that in the future, Christian growth will slow “due to the slowing of population growth” generally, but also that “Christian areas [such as Europe and North America specifically] will see their majorities eroded by secularism and diluted by non-Christian immigration.” This will be offset, however by “continued growth in Africa and Asia—especially China, India and [Southeast] Asia.” And Johnnstone predicts that there “are likely to be increasing numbers of conversions to Christianity in some countries with large Muslim populations,” Islam being the chief religious competitor to Christianity globally (118).
Chapter 5 examines “renewal movements” in Christianity, which Johnstone divides into three broad categories: Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics. Evangelicals are “characterized by a theology based on the inerrancy of the Bible, a personal experience of salvation by faith through grace and a desire or obligation to witness to that salvation” (121). Given this definition, all Pentecostals are evangelical, and most Charismatics are. Elsewhere, Johnstone defines Charismatics as “those who testify to having had a renewing experience of the Holy Spirit and who exercise the gifts of the Spirit, such as speaking in tongues, healing, prophecy and miracles” (xii). Given this definition, all Pentecostals are charismatic. What distinguishes Pentecostals and Charismatics is largely denominational affiliation. The rapid growth of these movements is noteworthy and will likely continue well into the future. “If present projections prove accurate, by 2050 charismatic Christians will comprise one-third of all Christians and one-tenth of the world’s population” (125). This is remarkable growth, given that however one dates the history of modern Pentecostalism, by 2050 it will only be approximately 150 years old.
Chapter 6 outlines the history, growth, and geographic distribution of Evangelicals Evangelicalism in its many forms (including Pentecostals and Charismatics) provides “the main thrust for world evangelization” today, Johnstone contends (139). One of the most notable trends among the world’s Evangelicals is the demographic shift from North to South. As a share of regional population, Evangelicals are declining in Europe, North America, and the Pacific, but growing exponentially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite the fact that Christianity is the largest religious stream globally, and that the most evangelistic components of that stream are its fastest growing segments, major regions of the world still exist without effective evangelization efforts by Christians. The unevangelized are the focus of chapter 7. “In the 1990s,” Johnstone writes, “5% became accepted as the dividing point between ‘unevangelized’ and ‘evangelized,” by which he means 5 percent of the population that “professes Christianity” in some form. He concedes that this is an inadequate definition, but it is nevertheless illustrative of the challenge of evangelization. Using that definition, in 2008 numbers, 2.5 billion of the world’s inhabitants are unevangelized because their people group consists of 5 percent or fewer Christians. Another 2 billion inhabitants live in people groups where Christianity is a statistical minority. And approximately 2.3 billion live in people groups where Christianity is a statistical majority (172).
Chapter 8 then turns to a consideration of what kind of missionary resources are necessary for the world’s people groups to be effectively evangelized. Unfortunately, there is a mismatch between the number of missionaries serving each of the six religious streams. Most missionaries serve in countries or regions where Christians constitute the majority of the population. Thus, 43 percent of Christians serve in Christian-majority countries. In descending order, 17 percent of missionaries serve among the ethnic religions, 15 percent among Hindus, 9.7 percent among Buddhists, 8.1 percent among Muslims, and 7.2 percent among the non-religious (231). The disparity is especially noteworthy with regard to Muslim-majority countries or regions. Though Muslims constitute the second-largest bloc of religious persons worldwide (after Christians), missionaries to Muslim-majority countries constitute the second-smallest bloc of total missionary personnel. Clearly, that needs to change if effective evangelization is to take place.
Johnstone concludes The Future of the Global Church by quoting the Commitment of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, which took place in South African in 2010:
Let us keep evangelism at the centre [sic] of the fully-integrated [sic] scope of all our mission, inasmuch as the gospel itself is the source, content and authority of all biblically-valid [sic] mission. All we do should be both an embodiment and a declaration of the love and grace of God and his saving work through Jesus Christ (239, emphasis in original).
Given the data Johnstone has presented to this point, the Lausanne exhortation provides the exact right exhortation with which to end the book.
Book Reviewed
Patrick Johnstone, The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2011).
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote "Yes" on my Amazon.com review page.
January 19, 2020
Invaluable resource for understanding the world, the church, history, and mission. Would love to see an update for 2020!!
April 2, 2012
This year, Biblica (formerly known as the International Bible Society) formally sold the book publishing part of their ministry to Intervarsity Press. Intervarsity has been busy in promoting this partnership, and many of the new books they will be able to offer through the Biblica imprint. One of the first books released in this partnership is a smart, slick book on the state of the church around the world called The Future of the Global Church.
The Future of the Global Church is an excellent resource. It is primarily a statistical book. It begins by informing its readers about population changes and people movements throughout the world. Johnstone then clearly identifies in short bullet points what the challenges are for missions and evangelism in the midst of the changing world we live in. In the process, he clearly shows that the historic Christian West is in decline, and that the Muslim church in Asia and Africa is growing rapidly.
Johnstone also devotes a whole section of his book to the historic development and growth of the church from a global perspective. Want to know where the biggest revivals were in the world in the 20th century? The Future of the Global Church has a couple of pages devoted just to that topic. I am constantly amazed at how much detail and information is in this small book.
The Future of the Global Church also traces historic and global trends in the rise and decline of each of the world's major world religions. It also pays careful attention to how different sects within each of these religious groupings are growing or declining, and what that means for Christian witness in regions where those religious groups are strongest.
Johnstone also does a significant amount of work tracking and discussing the different "megablocs" within Christian circles. I learned, for instance, that that Anglican church is much more populous in Nigeria and Kenya than in the United States. I also learned that by 2050, Johnstone projects there will be more people in the Anglican Fellowship in Uganda and Nigeria than in the United Kingdom. Pretty fascinating information right there!
The Future of the Global Church also pays particular attention to the victories and challenges of the evangelical churches around the world. Did you know that China will have more evangelicals than the United States does by 2050? Johnstone also identifies the unchurched around the world not only by nations and regions within nations, but he also identifies those folks by people groups. For instance, in Africa the Pygmy folks are predominantly Muslim, but the Bantu folks are predominantly Christian.
Do you want to pray for the world? Do you have a passion for evangelistic mission in the church? Do you want to be a global Christian? If so, I would strongly recommend purchasing this fine book, and letting it inform your prayers, your giving, your evangelistic efforts and your worldview. Get to know the world God put you in, and begin to love and care for it with intelligence as a disciple of Jesus.
The Future of the Global Church is an excellent resource. It is primarily a statistical book. It begins by informing its readers about population changes and people movements throughout the world. Johnstone then clearly identifies in short bullet points what the challenges are for missions and evangelism in the midst of the changing world we live in. In the process, he clearly shows that the historic Christian West is in decline, and that the Muslim church in Asia and Africa is growing rapidly.
Johnstone also devotes a whole section of his book to the historic development and growth of the church from a global perspective. Want to know where the biggest revivals were in the world in the 20th century? The Future of the Global Church has a couple of pages devoted just to that topic. I am constantly amazed at how much detail and information is in this small book.
The Future of the Global Church also traces historic and global trends in the rise and decline of each of the world's major world religions. It also pays careful attention to how different sects within each of these religious groupings are growing or declining, and what that means for Christian witness in regions where those religious groups are strongest.
Johnstone also does a significant amount of work tracking and discussing the different "megablocs" within Christian circles. I learned, for instance, that that Anglican church is much more populous in Nigeria and Kenya than in the United States. I also learned that by 2050, Johnstone projects there will be more people in the Anglican Fellowship in Uganda and Nigeria than in the United Kingdom. Pretty fascinating information right there!
The Future of the Global Church also pays particular attention to the victories and challenges of the evangelical churches around the world. Did you know that China will have more evangelicals than the United States does by 2050? Johnstone also identifies the unchurched around the world not only by nations and regions within nations, but he also identifies those folks by people groups. For instance, in Africa the Pygmy folks are predominantly Muslim, but the Bantu folks are predominantly Christian.
Do you want to pray for the world? Do you have a passion for evangelistic mission in the church? Do you want to be a global Christian? If so, I would strongly recommend purchasing this fine book, and letting it inform your prayers, your giving, your evangelistic efforts and your worldview. Get to know the world God put you in, and begin to love and care for it with intelligence as a disciple of Jesus.
October 4, 2013
When I was a student in university, God used Patrick Johnstone's Operation World and other similar resources to begin to educate me and give me a burden for what He was doing and wanted to do in the world around us. Some years after that, I lived for 16 years as an international worker in one certain corner of the world, Partly due to preoccupation with what I was doing here during that time, and partly due to our organization cutting back on missions resources previously made available to missionaries due to budget constraints, I did not always do a good job in keeping up to date with the big picture which every global Christian should ask God's Spirit to impart and maintain. Thus, my "tunnel vision" grew more and more severe.
Enter Patrick Johnstone's The Future of the Global Church. Reading this resource alongside my daily devotions a page or two at a time, it took me nearly a year to finish this resource book. It's not an easy book to digest (the charts and graphs were sometimes difficult for me to decipher-- maybe due to a minor condition of color blindness) and I found myself plodding through some sections. Two other minor criticisms I have with this work are 1) the tendency to group more by country rather than people group, and 2) projections running out to the year 2050 seem somewhat arbitrary).
Having said that, I would heartily recommend this book as a must-read resource which helps us see the past, present, and future of Jesus' church and the nations amongst which it dwells much more as the God who created the world and everything in it sees it. Leaders may wish to explore the e-books, DVDs, and other resources as well in order to educate church people.
Enter Patrick Johnstone's The Future of the Global Church. Reading this resource alongside my daily devotions a page or two at a time, it took me nearly a year to finish this resource book. It's not an easy book to digest (the charts and graphs were sometimes difficult for me to decipher-- maybe due to a minor condition of color blindness) and I found myself plodding through some sections. Two other minor criticisms I have with this work are 1) the tendency to group more by country rather than people group, and 2) projections running out to the year 2050 seem somewhat arbitrary).
Having said that, I would heartily recommend this book as a must-read resource which helps us see the past, present, and future of Jesus' church and the nations amongst which it dwells much more as the God who created the world and everything in it sees it. Leaders may wish to explore the e-books, DVDs, and other resources as well in order to educate church people.
December 7, 2013
According to Johnstone, by 2050 Christianity in Europe and the Pacific will have continued its catastrophic decline, but Christianity in Asia, Latin America and Africa will have continued its massive growth, largely amongst Evangelicals (especially Pentecostals). The book is a massive statistical project, plenty of fantastic maps, charts etc, more of a reference than one to read cover to cover. I loved the section on Church History, especially the 20 pairs of maps tracing every major & minor empire and the geographic spread of the church. Johnstone is not afraid to express his opinions in the non-statistical segments, which keeps things interesting but takes away from the objectivity of the book. He projects robust growth for Islam also, particularly as a significant immigration driven people-movement which will change the nature of Europe very significantly. The second half of the book focuses on world evangelisation and the 2 billion people who have yet to hear the Christian message.
June 18, 2012
This basically gives a lot of global demographics, along with demographics of the Christian world. For instance, Johnstone takes the region of the Indian subcontinent and shows which people-groups/affinity groups are related. For example, the Himalayan peoples are a different people group from most of the people groups of India, but the Himalayan peoples are further subdivided by tribe and clan. That type of thing. Then he discusses the extent to which each of the groups has been impacted by the gospel. On a few of the pages he comes off as being a socialist, but otherwise, this is a good book and worth perusing.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews