“Soon, the phrase "a white Christian" may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as "a Swedish Buddhist." Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied.”
Phillip Jenkins
Phillip Jenkins
Many of us have heard that the global centre of Christianity is shifting away from Europe and towards Latin America, Africa and Asia. The global church has become non-Western. Countries like Nigeria and South Korea have become the new hotspots of Christian growth, whilst nations such as France and the Czech Republic have become thoroughly secularized. This has had a flow on effect to the West through migration. Thus some of London’s most successful churches have been planted by missionaries from such places as Ghana, South Korea and Brazil. The Anglican Church of Nigeria has began planting their own congregation in the United States, much to the chagrin of the local and more liberal American Episcopalian Church. It is now not unusual to wander into a medieval Catholic church in the Italian countryside and find a priest from Sierra Leone or the Philippines administering mass to a Tuscan congregation in Italian. European churches that once sent out hundreds of missionaries are facing the irony of being pastored by ministers from the two-thirds world.
However many of us are not as aware how this shift is affecting the make up and shape of the church here in Melbourne. Let me start with a story.
My usual Saturday shopping routine was interrupted by my curiosity. A large crowd had gathered to listen to a group of Chinese people giving a speech and painting children’s faces and handing out pamphlets. Not being able to read or speak Chinese was no hindrance to me realising that this was a Christian group putting on an evangelistic event. The next Saturday the crowd was there again, however they were watching a different kind of evangelistic event. They were watching a meditation display being put on by the Chinese apocalyptic Buddhist sect known as Falun Gong. The unusual thing was that all the Falun Gong members were white European Australians.
Just a weird one off? I don’t think so. Let’s start a walking tour of the neighborhood in which I grew up. Something unusual has happened at the church I walked past on my way home from school as a boy. The traditional congregation has dwindled in numbers and a new worshipping community is moving in, the Mar Thoma Church. Well before you ask who? They are one of the only churches who in their liturgy use Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The Mar Thoma church or Indian Orthodox Church is one of the most fascinating cultural groups in Christendom. They claim their heritage back to the mission activities of St Thomas, the apostle of the ‘stick his fingers in Jesus’ side’ fame. The legend goes that St Thomas traveled to India to convert the Cochin Jewish community of India. Jews in India I hear you ask, well they claim their heritage back to King Solomon’s time when the Jews established a trading hub in India.
So let’s recap. We have a church for white Europeans struggling in the heart of the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne’s bible belt and yet we have congregations being planted by Indian Christians who are descended from converted Jews.
Still not convinced that something is going on? Let’s keep walking through my teenage haunts. The church I grew up in has been slowly bleeding members from its congregation for years, but has recently begun to rent its hall out to a growing and energetic Indonesian congregation. The Church across the road from the shop where I bought milk has a shrinking white congregation, yet the building is now rented by a growing Korean congregation. The church next to the library I used to do my study in has the same story - a shrinking white congregation reenergized by an influx of African migrants and the old Baptist church nearest my house is now home to a large and growing Chinese church with multiple congregations. All of a sudden the idea of white European Christians crossing the sea to do mission has been turned on its head.
So what does this mean for us as leaders? Does it just mean that the traditional ‘after church lunch’ will now offer Tikka Masala and Rice Paper Rolls, instead of just the chicken casserole Mrs Witherington’s been cooking for the last 49 years? Well in case you have little or no spiritual conversations with unchurched people. We are not that popular. One of the biggest challenges facing the church in the West is the phenomenon known as Post-Christianity. Meaning that a large percentage of unchurched people in the West are not going to come to church no matter how funky or friendly we make our church services. They see that Christianity, through its current and historical abuses of power, has negated its message and thus written itself off as a serious life choice. Most Aussies are either apathetic about Christianity or antagonistic towards the faith. These are the people who read the Da Vinci Code knowing that it was most likely highly historically suspect. They didn’t care that it was a load of rubbish. People dug the book because it confirmed to them their suspicion that Christian was a religion of powerful, European, white, corrupt men.
But when the person doing mission in Australia to cynical post-Christian, secular Aussies is a non-European a glitch is infected into the politically correct machine. Maybe, just maybe the best people to Evangelize the next generation of postmodern, individualist Aussie consumers are actually, at this moment sitting somewhere in a dusty refugee camp in Darfur, or in a slum in Rio, Manila or New Delhi with a bible in one hand and a postcard of Australia in the other.
posted by Mark Sayers @ 1:59 PM
