The Future Church

How different will the world of 2050 be compared with today? We can’t know, but we can project some possibilities based on what is happening now. This can shape our prayers.

Some projections for 2050:

• One third of the world will still call itself ‘Christian.’

• Islam will grow fast (because of high birthrates) and will become almost the same size as the Christian community.

• Every other faith community – Hindus, Buddhists, followers of Chinese religions – will be a smaller slice of the population than today.

• The non-religious part of the world will also shrink because of low birthrates.

• There will the same number of under- 15s as there are today (around two billion), but over-60s will climb from under a billion today to more than two billion in 2050.

• Half the world lives in a city today; in 2050 that could be two-thirds.

• Four out of ten Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa, and eight out of ten will be from the Global South. The growth or decline of a faith community is mostly due to birthrates and not

conversions.

How will the world be different in 2050? Apart from all the unknowable things (including plague or war or mass turnings to Christ) it looks like the Church should expect a world with many more Muslims, elderly people and city dwellers.

• Christ has been building his Church for 50 generations. Pray that in this coming generation the Church will grow wider and deeper than ever before.

Church in Africa Today

In Africa today, the burden of poverty has eased in the last 20 years. Mother and child health, take-up of primary education, and access to clean water and electricity have been transformed in most countries. Deaths from malaria have halved, and the AIDS epidemic is being tamed. But this follows decades of stagnation. Africa is still the poorest continent. Thirty-seven of the world’s 40 poorest countries are African – a lingering injustice.

Africa’s youth are a fifth of all the young people in the world and they may grow to be a third by 2050. These young people as disciples of Jesus could be a power for good; unemployed and angry they could be the fuel for civil wars. Africa’s Church is a light to the world. Already, one in four of the world’s Christians is an African. This could rise to four in 10 by 2050. In great prayer meetings, in faithfulness to the Bible, in starting new churches at home and overseas, Africans are changing the world.

• Pray for wise, honest leaders in every African sphere, in politics, church and business.
• Pray for Africa’s women. More than a third suffer domestic violence, and they are denied equality almost everywhere: in education, health-care, employment.
• Pray for a great turning to Christ in Africa’s many Muslim peoples.

Sources: Africa Development Bank; Pew Research Center; Status of Global Christianity 2018; Human Development Report 2018; Operation World.

Praying for the World is a free weekly prayer guide to inspire and inform the whole Church to pray for the whole world. Visit www.lausanne.org/pray to start any week. Created through

the partnership of Operation World and the Lausanne Movement.

Christian Persecution in Christian Colombia?

Would you be surprised to know that a country where more than 90% of the people claim to be Christian is also one of the top 50 countries where it is the most dangerous to follow Jesus? Open Doors, an organization that tracks persecution of the church puts out a yearly list of the 50 most dangerous countries to follow Jesus – in 2019’s “Watch List,” the country of Columbia, in South America, comes in at #47. How can a country that is almost entirely “Christian” still be a dangerous place to be a follower of Jesus?

One of the main reasons that Christians in Columbia are targeted is because they choose to genuinely follow Jesus. Even though a historic peace agreement between the government and anti-government rebels was signed after more than 50 years of fighting, there are troubling signs that the peace deal is not working as well as hoped, and in September of this year the president of Columbia launched a new crackdown against the opposition groups.

So, what does a government conflict have to do with Christians? These anti-government groups often rely on brutal guerilla warfare to survive, and plenty of illegal activity to fund themselves, such a drug production and trafficking. When someone from one of these groups, or someone who lives where they have control begins to truly follow Jesus, they won’t take part in any drug deals anymore, and will encourage others not to do it. Those who have participated in the violence will denounce it, and will try to defend the weak and the powerless. In areas where everyone has to pay protection money, some pastors will refuse to do so on behalf of their churches, and will encourage young men not to join these groups. As you may imagine, decisions like these “ruin” the business. The situation is serious: at least four pastors in Columbia have been assassinated this year already. A recent study by the mayor’s office in the capital city of Bogotá show that over a 3-year period almost 13% of all pastors in the capital city have received death threats.

Another challenging issue unrelated to the drug cartels is that even with the majority of the people at least claiming to be “Christian,” a significant minority of people are indigenous, following ancestral beliefs, including witchcraft. When people from these groups come to faith in Jesus, they face significant persecution from their communities, which can include harassment, threats and violence.

Pray for believers in Columbia, both for those making bold stands against the guerilla groups and drug cartels and also for those who are persecuted by their own indigenous communities. Pray for peace in the country, and an end to the injustices that exist there!

The State of our World Today - 2020

If the world was a village of 100 people, 33 would claim to be Christians; 24 would be Muslims, 14 Hindus, 7 Buddhists, 6 would follow Chinese religions, 11 would be non-religious and there would be a handful of others.

The proportion of the world that claims to be Christian has been much the same for a century or more. But many things have changed through that time:

1. The Church has spread more widely. There are now groups of believers in every country.

2. The Christian faith has grown much stronger in the Global South. Millions of Christians have
been born across Africa and Asia. Many cultural Catholics in Latin America have met Christ in
Pentecostal, charismatic and other evangelical churches.

3. In its former heartlands, particularly in Europe, the Christian movement has declined.

4. Pentecostals and charismatics have changed the composition of the Church. Almost zero in 1900,
they now make up more than a third of all Christians.

5. The Church has grown despite opposition and persecution in countries like China, India, Sudan,
Vietnam, Iran, Algeria, Albania and Mongolia.

6. Some of the fiercest persecution has been followed by the largest church growth. The Cultural
Revolution in China was a deadly attack on all religions. Fifty years later, around
100 million Chinese have joined the Church, the greatest turning to the Christian faith in history (so
far).

7. Thousands of people have turned to Christ in Muslim countries in the last 30 years. This has
never happened before.

Let us pray that this year we will ‘always give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing
that our labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (see 1 Corinthians 15:56).

Information from Praying for the World