» 2008 » March

We all know that Christianity is in decline in the West evidenced by plummeting church attendances.

Or is it?

It certainly is true in Britain, Continental Europe and Australia It is not true in the United States.

A study by Stanley Presser of the University of Maryland and Mark Chaves of Duke University has found that that religious [...]

For the last 24 years David Barrett and Todd Johnson at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity have released updated statistics on Global Mission.

Included is a table of 50 new facts and figures. Here are some that caught my attention.

95.6% of people have access to Scripture in 6,600 languages, leaving 286 million in [...]

Every day, around the world, 372,000 babies are born.
Every day 153,000 people die.
Every day the world’s population grows by 219,000 people.

Every day 170,000 people are converted to the Christian faith.
Every day 91,000 people leave the Christian faith.
Every day the Church grows by 79,000 people.
Every day over 90% of the global increase in the number of [...]

Update on the The curious incident of the barking dog in the night.

I’ve been able to track down the 2007 attendance and growth figures for the Australian Christian Churches (formerly Assemblies of God).

They currently have 1,120 churches with over 215,000 constituents up from 905 churches and 166,408 constituents in 2004.

Looks like the rate of growth [...]

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”Lately I’ve become obsessed with stats, especially those related to the rise and fall of movements. [...]

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet Communist leader, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time in a surprise visit to the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, he spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb. “St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the [...]

Allan Anderson has a new book out: Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism.

My copy is still on the way but I have read a summary article. Here are some highlights . . .

According to Anderson, Pentecostalism is probably the fastest expanding religious movement ever. Here are five of the main features of Pentecostalism [...]

Ghana has a Presbyterian church of up to a million people thanks to the work done by some Moravian missionaries in the 1820s. Since then they have made a great contribution to the life of the nation and now they are planting churches in Australia and in other parts of the world. Apparently Ghanaians like [...]

I know nothing about church planting movements except what I’ve picked up from people who do know something because they’ve been doing something.

Here’s a recent example from an undisclosed location somewhere in Asia. It’s from a practitioner who I have christened “Barney” for security reasons.

Church Planting Movements

painting the house was a great distraction

Sometime in August last year the wheels came off the wagon.

I have a history of depression but I can ‘manage’ it and keep functioning until the cloud lifts. Not this time.

I found myself in a very dark and frightening place, not knowing if I would ever climb out of [...]