ATLANTA (ABP) — Western Baptists need to leave Christendom behind and become more like the early church, Denton Lotz told about 150 persons attending a Baptist World Alliance dinner June 23.
Lotz, who is general secretary of BWA, said many Westerners still hold a “Christendom-based” model of thinking — characterized by the dominant cultural role played by the Christian church in Western history, particularly in Europe, where national churches were granted privileged status.
“But the fact is, there is a new paradigm,” said Lotz. “Christianity has moved to the southern hemisphere.”
Baptist World Alliance, now a global network of 213 Baptist organizations, was formed in 1905, when 85 percent of all Christians lived in the northern hemisphere, Lotz said. Now 60 percent of Christians live south of the equator.
“Baptists work best outside of a Christendom model,” Lotz said. As a result, Africa and Asia are on their way to becoming the center of Christianity, he said. And a day will come, he said, when America and Europe will need to be re-evangelized.
The establishment of Christendom moved Christianity from the margins of society to the center, leading it to rely on the church's power rather than on divine power, he said.
The early church was voluntary but Christendom made it compulsory, Lotz explained, making it at home within the culture. The image of Christ changed from that of a loving shepherd to that of a cosmic Lord, he said, and the energy of the church was shifted from mission to maintenance.
Lotz illustrated a movement from the Christendom model to the early church model by describing rapid church growth in Moscow, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Aremenia, and China. “There is a great movement of the Holy Spirit around the world,” he said.
The Western church should learn to think of itself “as a colony of faith, as a prophetic movement,” Lotz said.
Earlier, Lotz interviewed visiting Baptist leaders from Romania and Liberia. Paul Montacute, director of Baptist World Aid, talked about recent disaster-relief work following the earthquake in Indonesia, and continuing recovery work in Sri Lanka, where a Baptist children's village now serves orphans left by the tsunami that struck Dec. 26, 2004.
BWA was also instrumental in arranging a meeting with Vietnamese officials to discuss religious liberty in that country, according to Alan Stanford, president of the North American Baptist Fellowship, one of six regional groups within BWA.
Using funds contributed by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, several Baptist leaders traveled to Vietnam and arranged to sponsor a celebratory dinner for about 600 Vietnamese Baptist leaders who had not been able to meet together since the fall of Hanoi in 1975, he said.
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