Sweeping People Movements to Christ - or 1,380 Years?

What happens when people are set free to express their faith in Christ in their own cultural context? Good things! We rejoice that among many cultural groups around the world today the gospel is like a wildfire, spreading out of control throughout a people group. A People Group Movement is a spontaneous occurrence in which the Spirit of God sweeps through a people group without organized, trained, or skilled leadership. An entire town, clan or tribe can come to faith in rapid order, and the social order can be transformed in the process. This is happening today in many parts of Africa, South Asia, the Far East, and Latin America. This kind of rapid Christian growth cannot be orchestrated, but we can pray that it happens.

And then there are cultures where the gospel seems maddeningly slow to take hold. The Japanese are one such culture.

A set of statistics from Peter and Wendi Thomson, Presbyterians from Washington State who serve in Japan with Asian Access/LIFE Ministries, illustrate why we depend on the gospel to grow swiftly from people group movements rather than by additive growth. (The Thomsons can be reached at family@thomsontimes.com.)

The Thomsons report, "The statistics for [Christian growth in Japan in] 2002 are in and, overall, the number of churches and new Christians in Japan are increasing faster than the population growth rate. The number of new churches increased 0.63% and the number of church members increased 0.43%, while the population of Japan increased 0.15%.

"However, at the current rate it will take 600 years to reach a church density of one church per every 1,000 people. The present density in Japan is one church per 16,288. And at the current church member growth rate, it will take 1,380 years for believers in Jesus to constitute 5% of the population. 5% is an arbitrary number to illustrate
the slow growth rate. In any rate, to be honest, we don't have time for this type of growth.

"To reach the above targets in 25 years, we need to see 11% annual growth. The vision to plant churches in networks, across denominations, is catching on. We continue to have more Japanese congregations seeking to join networks than we have missionaries, so now we just do it without the missionaries."

Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship works with congregations and our international church partners to discover ways to indigenize and de-westernize the gospel so that it has its best chance to run free among cultures. And yes, it will be done in large part "without the missionaries." But never without the Spirit of God, who is quite eager to let the church grow out of control!