If you want to know what is coming to the United States, look south. As a Tar Heel, I’ve always known this. But now, I’m suggesting we look even further south than Chapel Hill — all the way to the global south. North American trends derive from emerging realities south of the equator — and I hope our churches are paying attention.
What we can learn from Argentina, for instance? Well, one thing we can learn is that the action is in the cities. Of Argentina’s 36 million people, nearly half live in greater Buenos Aires.
John Chandler |
The United Nations says that in 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lived in cities. It also predicts that by 2050, 64 percent of the developed world will be urban, and a whopping 85 percent of the developing world will have migrated to cities, particularly the very largest ones.
People everywhere need to be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But to reach the most people, we have to be where most of the people are — and that is in large cities. As Philip Jenkins says, the coming centers of world Christianity will be places like Lagos, Nigeria; Manila, the Philippines; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Places like Buenos Aires.
Fortunately, there is precedent for Christians reaching the cities. Sociologist Rodney Stark in Cities of God cites how fourth century Lucian the Martyr marveled that “almost the greater part of the world is now committed to this truth, even whole cities.” Stark studies the growth of Christianity in the 31 largest Roman cities and ties the remarkable growth of Christianity to evangelistic success in these cities.
And he argues against the conventional wisdom that Christianity spread through mass conversion. It instead grew by person-to-person conversion. There are just lots more of those “person-to-person” encounters in the big cities. And contagious faith in close quarters can spread like an epidemic.
I live in rural Fluvanna County and want to see people reached for the gospel here. But two-thirds of Virginia’s eight million people live on the “elbow” from Alexandria to Richmond to Virginia Beach. If we want to see a pandemic of the gospel in our commonwealth, it will have to happen in the cities.
John Chandler is leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.equip.htm.