How the New Testament Did the Great Commission and

What it Means for the Church Today

—by—

Rev. Michael Kelly

Executive Director of the Northwest Church Planting Network

The History of the Future—

Before we draw lesson for our mission, we will do well to remember that our missional fathers and mothers in the faith knew this truth and lived it well for centuries. 

The Irish who saved Western Civilization (see Thomas Cahill) are directly relevant to American’s Post-Christian context.  After Europe was more or less won or during the Roman Empire and virtually lost after its fall, a heroically faithful and not a little odd cadre of monks rebuilt the Church in the West and laid the foundation for another thousand years of Christianity. And while they did that, they also saved classic libraries and priceless treasures of the ancient pagan world.

Not all of Patrick’s methodology is transferable. He often focused on tribal kings and then using their influence would convert the regions they rule. That may not be directly relevant to our situation, but then again how many church planters have quoted Bono in the hope that someone might decide the Gospel is worth a look?  

However, more fundamentally, Patrick’s establishment of monasteries is easy to misunderstand.  First, they were, in essence, churches or the Church as they were and became the center of local and regional ecclesiastical life and energy. Secondly, they became training centers where young ministers were prepared to be sent to the rest of the Isle and beyond. Upwards of a thousand ministers and monks were trained and while exact numbers are difficult to discern, we can find estimates that range from 200 to 700 churches planted, but there is no doubt that countless congregations were born in that family tree.

For the sake of time, we will now skip a millennium in order to come to the defense of the Reformers, who have not been appreciated by many modern missiologists. Leaving aside, the fact that the reclamation of the Gospel led to the conversion of countless lost within the Church, reformation trained hundreds of pastors and sent them back to France where they, in turn, planted hundreds if not more churches (as noted in TGC).

In his work “Spurgeon; Prince of Preachers,” Lewis Drummond notes that Spurgeon’s legendary Pastors’ College raised-up leaders who eventually planted scores and scores of churches throughout London and Briton.

Many of you have read Tim Keller’s “Why Plant Churches.” We will explore his catalog of the value of Church planting later, but he also addresses a historic shift that is relevant to our discussion when he observes,

In 1820, there was one Christian church for every 875 U.S. residents. But from 1860-1906 U.S. Protestant churches planted one new church for every increase of 350 in the population, bringing the ratio by the start of WWI to just 1 church for every 430 persons. In 1906 over a third of all the congregations in the country were less than 25 years old. As a result, the percentage of the U.S. population involved in the life of the church rose steadily… … to 53% by 1916.”

According to Keller, after WWII the church planting rate dropped precipitously for a variety of reasons. Experience tells us that inevitable turf battles likely obstructed missions. In addition, during the same period main-line denominations were degrading theologically while more faithful splinters were fighting for survival. It can also be observed that one potential downside of new denominations is that they can appear to be church planting movements, when they are not.  After all, a new branch of the church that starts with 250 congregations did not plant 250 churches, but the statistics can make it appear that it did.

The Opportunity of the Now—

To put those numbers in perspective according to the Census Bureau the US population will grow by over 80 million by 2050. Leaving aside the profound ethnic changes the Church and Nation will experience; in order to match the pace Keller identifies of 1 church for every 350 new people, the American Church would need to plant 228,000 churches in the next 35 years or about 6,500 per year.

Those numbers seem ridiculous to those of us in the west where the Christian sun seems to be setting.  Before we decide about the future of the American Church, it will help us to do see our past and the world’s present more clearly.  Looking backward, it is easy to romanticize America’s Christian history.  A common mythology exists that tells the story of a hyper-vigorous Christian vortex that drove culture and community throughout our history until perhaps 125 years ago. In reality, the church in North America has always ebbed and flowed.  Biographer Arnold Dallimore catalogs the spiritual landscape George Whitefield found when he arrived in the Colonies in 1706,

The religious fervor which had characterized many of the first settlers of the new world had long since died away. In 1706, Dr. Cotton Mather asserted, “It is confessed by all who know anything of the matter…. that there is a general and a horrible decay of Christianity, among the professors of it…The modern Christianity is too generally but a very spectre, scarce a shadow of the ancient. Ah! sinful nation. Ah! Children that are corrupters, what have your hands done!… So notorious is this decay of Christianity, that whole books are even now and then written to inquire into it. “(Vol. I, pg. 413)

That was condition of our pristine “Christian Colonies” 308 years ago. Still, God did a glorious work.  That should not surprise us because the vitally of the Church’s mission will always issue from the Church, and not from a world begging to be called to repentance. The obedient, faithful, praying Church drives the mission under the rule of its King.

What’s more, we all live in what is far and away the most glorious, fruitful age in the history of Christianity.  As Philip Jenkins established in “The Next Christendom” we live in the most intensive age of Christian expansion in history and that by multiple factors not mere increments. No age has even come close to ours; not the age of the Apostles or the sweeping growth afterwards that eventually overcame Rome and not the Great Revivals of 18^th and 19^th Centuries.

This expansion is having a profound impact on the face of the world and the Church.  Christianity is the only world Faith whose center of gravity has ever shifted- first from Israel to Europe. And Europe for a season shared it with America. And now it is moving again. The result is what missiologists refer to as the “browning of Christianity” as God moves across Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

By way of numbers, in a series of lectures on his book “The Heart of Evangelism” Professor Jerram Barrs of Covenant Seminary compiled conservative estimates. Drawing from data collected by the U.S. Center for World Missions, Professor Barrs graphs the growth of the Church in relation to world population along the following trend.

A.D. 100 –      1 believer to 360 non-Christians

A.D. 1000 –    1 believer to 270 non-Christians

A.D. 1500 –    1 believer to 85 non-Christians

A.D. 1900 –    1 believer to 21 non-Christians

A.D. 1970 –    1 believer to 13 non-Christians

A.D. 2010 –    1 believer to 7.3 non-Christians

The U.S. Center defines its numbers fairly strictly along evangelical lines.  Adherents.com tracks world faith more broadly and including all movements within the broadest Christian tradition, including some very small lines we would not include. Their final ratio comes to 1 believer for every 3-4 non-Christians.

These perspectives should encourage the Church in American during what is admittedly a difficult season in our history. God is moving to build his Church across the world. What are the implications for us?