TL;DR:
Christianity’s global expansion unfolded in five major 400-year “epochs.” Early missionaries like Patrick, Boniface, and Francis modeled courageous cross-cultural witness, while later figures such as Carey, Taylor, Townsend, and McGavran shaped modern Protestant mission efforts and focused attention on unreached peoples. Factors that have aided the global spread of Christianity include Bible translation, contextualization, trade and travel, influential converts, humanitarian outreach, political and colonial expansion, and even persecution, which often strengthened believers’ witness.
Question:I hate history classes with all of those dates and names and garbage like that. Will this be another boring lecture stuffed with that kind of material?
I could overwhelm you with thousands of missionary names, hundreds of significant dates, and numerous trends that help explain the worldwide spread of the gospel. Instead, I’ll resist the temptation to swamp you with information.
I hope you'll devour and internalize Ralph Winter's wonderful encapsulation of world missions history in his 5 epochs of redemption history. Make this oversimplified historical summary the one thing you take away from this week's study:
Remember that these 400-year periods are very rough approximations. Winter is not using them to pinpoint things precisely. He came up with them as a memory device. (See my PowerPoint presentation on this theme.)
The March 17 celebration of St. Patrick's Day shouldn't be about leprechauns and green beer and rainbows with pots of gold.
Patrick, who lived during the 400s, was a young man from Roman Britain who was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland. While enslaved on a farm there, he was converted. Eventually, he escaped and went home. But Patrick felt called to return to his former pagan captors as a missionary. He did and led much of Ireland to faith in Christ.
According to a longstanding tradition, Patrick used the three-leaf clover to illustrate the Trinity. This story forever tied Patrick and Ireland to the shamrock. Sadly, the shamrock
that's sometimes used in decorating for St. Patrick's Day is the four-leaf kind.
Next time March 17 rolls around and you see leprechauns, pots of gold, and 4-leaf clovers, think how disgusted Patrick would be at what we've made of his life.
"Patrick saw God's fingerprint in the three-leafed clover and used the three-leaf clover to try to explain the Trinity to the Irish. Patrick not only saw God's fingerprint, he became God's fingerprint through his life and the people he influenced." — Veronica Roesley, Northwest Nazarene University graduate student
Another of my heroes of that period is Boniface, who dared to march in a German forest one day and defy the pagan gods by chopping down a huge sacred oak tree. In a further act of defiance, this missionary to some of my ancestors used wood from that fallen tree to build a chapel.
Yes, he was. Francis and Ramon Llull were two of the few people during that bloody period of the Crusades who tried to witness to Muslims. Francis actually went to Egypt, met with the Sultan, and talked to him about Christ. Llull devoted many years to evangelizing Muslims and reportedly died from injuries sustained after being stoned in North Africa.
"To read of Ramon Llull's willingness to leave nobility to reach the Muslims ("the Fool of Love") should challenge each of us to ask if we are that willing to be of use by God." — Kevin Bottjen, Northwest Nazarene University graduate student
William Carey served for seven years before he had his first convert in India. Adoniram Judson worked in Burma for almost the same period of time before he had his first convert.
What about Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, who labored for 25 years and had fewer than a dozen converts?
Or what about Ansgar, the Apostle of the North, who gave his life to preaching the gospel to the Vikings without any visible long-lasting results?
What about the missionaries to East Africa who shipped their belongings in coffins because they knew disease or violent opposition might take their lives during their first term?
What about Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and three other missionaries who were martyred on an Amazon tributary sandbar in Ecuador as they made the first attempts to reach the Waorani indigenous tribal people with the gospel?
I stand in awe of these pioneer missionaries. Many of them died without seeing great results. Yet, many of the outposts they planted eventually flourished as the gospel took root in culture after culture.
It does. Our denomination was born at the turn of the last century. The 1800s were a period that historian Kenneth Scott Latourette calls "The Great Century" of Protestant missions. The early Protestant Reformers had shown little interest in global evangelism. Then, in a 100-year period, Protestant missionary activity swelled to incredible proportions.
At the end of the 1700s, Christianity’s greatest concentrations were in Europe and the Americas, although historic Christian communities also remained in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. By 1900, Christianity had become a truly global religion.
I think the fact that we were born in that atmosphere of enthusiasm for world evangelism contributed much to the missionary spirit of our denomination.
Let's come back to Ralph Winter's explanation of the three world missions eras influenced by four men. There's a poignant phrase attached to three of the personalities involved:
As for Donald McGavran, he became obsessed by several thoughts. Among them:
Here's a question for reflection: Were these people whom I've mentioned, as well as others you encountered in your reading, spiritual giants? Did they reach a level of spirituality that is out of reach for you and me?
"May thy grace, O Lord, make that possible to me which is impossible by nature." — Amy Carmichael, missionary to India for the first half of the twentieth century
— Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
Several factors have contributed to the worldwide spread of Christianity. Here are nine of them:
"My previous education regarding church history focused on notable theological developments and controversies, important figures in the intellectual history of the church, and various schisms, but not the geographical and cultural spread of the church." — Scott Powell, Nazarene Bible College student
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Note: The course web pages on the official Nazarene Bible College site will contain expanded written instructions for each of the assignments.
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