This semester I'm teaching "Christianity in the Global Context," a course designed to give the Bible School students a greater perspective on how Christianity is flourishing and adapting around the world. As Phillip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity :
"Over the past century the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today, the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America. If you want to visualize a 'typical' contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela." He adds, "Christianity is indeed doing very well in the global South - not just surviving but expanding." 
The Mexican evangelical church now has the opportunity to minister and operate all over the world. There are many places where American and European missionaries, because of colonial and neocolonial attitudes and barriers, don't have the influence that others such as Mexicans, Brazilians or South Koreans, for example, enjoy. The locus of not just Christendom, but the sending of missionaries has shifted from Europe and North America to the global South. In fact, these missionaries are now even coming to the post-Christian West (Europe and North America). This is truly a seismic shift which will be further developed as this new century progresses.
Pic at right: Pastor David Avila, our pastor here in Mexico, ministering to brothers in Hyderabad, India.
Okay, I admit it, I'm not college educated. I'm also not too dumb to ask a question when I see or hear a word I don't understand.
Just what does "locus" mean? As in "The locus of not just Christendom, but the sending of missionaries has shifted from Europe and North America to the global South." ???
Posted by: Linda | 2008.01.17 at 10:09 AM
No problem, Linda! The word "locus" is just a fancy way of saying "the center" or "focal point of".
Posted by: Greg | 2008.01.17 at 02:51 PM