The Bible Nerd

Two topics already beaten to death? Check!  Pithy introduction sounding humble yet sarcastic?  Check!  One more thing to go on my list of “Things you have to do when first starting a cool, post modern, Bible blog”.  Convince everyone you have some amazing insight into the future of the church, thereby forcing them to read your blog to see how everything is going to happen?  Here we go.

No, I won’t be giving you the exact date of Jesus return, nor wax eloquently on war in the Middle East as Iran and the United States inch closer to a massive showdown.  Instead, I will attempt to combine some observations on the church globally with what I am seeing in Christian writing now.

1) Decline of Christianity in Europe:  This is no great revelation or secret.  Nominalism, Humanism, and the rise of immigrants bringing other religions have accumulated to greatly weaken Christendom in Europe.  Of course, it is way too early to sound the death toll, and there are many vibrant churches and ministries still there.  Yes, the Emerging Church movement has hit (mainly in England), as I will discuss below.  However, this weakening combined with the move of Christianity to the Global South (also see below), will effectively remove Europe from being in the driver’s seat of Christian theology that it has occupied for over a thousand years (nothing more on this below, in case you wondering).  From the Protestant Reformation to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, church history and theology have seen the greatest influence coming from Europe.  What does the church look like when this is no longer true?

2) Rise of Christianity in the Global South: As Christianity declines in Europe (and possibly the US to follow??), it is on the rise in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.  In his works on the future of the church, Philip Jenkins predicts that by 2050, most of the world’s Christians will be from one of these three areas.  As such, he tells us we must then realize how that will radically change the way theology and the church look in the future.  The charismatic movement and a conservative leaning are just a few of these characteristics of the church of the Global South.  Unfortunately, a lower level of Biblical literacy and understanding of sound doctrine have also been trademarks of these churches.  What does it look like when the world’s top theologians are from the Global South?  when most missionaries are coming from there and targeting Europe?

3) The Emerging Church movement: from Brian McLaren to Mark Driscoll, this movement has challenged and discussed almost every major doctrine and practice of the church.  Yes, it is a Western movement at heart, and yes, it is mostly appealing right now to a very set demographic, but we have to acknowledge WHY it has gained so much traction.  The monoliths that we know as denominations are struggling not only in Europe, but in the USA as well.  Droves are fleeing the mainline denominations, and are finding homes in either the “Evangelical”, “Non Denominational”, or “Emerging” churches springing up everywhere.  This dissatisfaction with how older denominations are running their churches, combined with the Post Modern age we live in, is deconstructing and reconstructing the church.  Isn’t that the essence of a Reformation?

I put all these together and wonder if the church will look back at this time 100 years from now, and give it a cool name like “the New Reformation”.  Ok, so that is a lame name.  “Reformation Next (hasn’t that already been used?)” “Reforming the Reformation”,  or my favorite, “Reformation-o-rama”!  Anyway, I will leave it to someone else to name this thing, and slip into the oblivion of guys who said my mother’s favorite line, “I told you so”.  Tomorrow, we talk about Josiah and if we should actually do something with this information or just take a sip of our latte, and go, “Hmm….. interesting.”