Updates from Around the Missions World

It was a pleasure to be a presenter at the Evangelical Missiological Society's Annual Conference last year. Here are 10 of my take-aways from the other sessions.

1.      "New Homiletics" is facilitating an experienced event. It's no longer just transmission of cognitive information bits. In other words, preaching needs more experiential elements to it. (See #10.)

2.     90% of Muslims & Hindus do not have a Christian friend.

3.     There are more followers of Jesus in the Rest than the West.

4.     Asian religions (Islam & Hinduism especially) integrate multiple levels of life; not just knowledge as in Christianity.

5.     Global percentage of Christianity in 1910 was 34%. In 2021, it was 32.3%.

6.     In 1990, 82% of Christianity was in the Global North. In 2020, 67% percent of Christianity is in the Global South (factoring in China.)

7.     The languages of Christianity globally are 16% Spanish, 10% English, 8% Portuguese, 5% Russian, and 3% Chinese.

8.     In America in the 1800s, Christians published a Slave Bible that was 1/3 of the Bible. It removed all references to freedom and included all verses related to slavery. It was produced for slaves to obey their masters.

9.     To Blacks, the most powerful Bible story connecting missions and theology is Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. Many view it as the crux of African-American life. They relate deeply.

10.  The arts is the language of worship through expressions. Songs and oral proclamation, yes, but also learning games, thought-provoking riddles, relevant to topic meals, planned and spontaneous dance, casual and formal visual arts, chants, poems, wearing symbolic jewelry, expressive deaf songs, witty proverbs, and video (highly visual) Scripture readings. Merge the digital with the oral = digitoral.

How will you apply these truths in your ministry?

--Mark Snowden serves as director for the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association

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