‘The way forward for Christianity is already here’: Gospel spreading at an ‘explosive’ rate in Africa

Evangelicalism is growing world wide but nowhere more so than in Africa where the rise has been “explosive”, says researcher Jason Mandryk. 

By contrast, growth in Western nations stays “modest”, he told the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) on the primary day of its World General Assembly going down in Seoul this week. 

In an in depth presentation tracking growth, delegates heard how in 1960, evangelicals accounted for under 8% of the worldwide body of Christ. Today it stands at over 25%, said Mandryk, a Christian researcher with Operation World. The total variety of evangelicals worldwide, he estimates, sits between 600 million and 650 million.  

“We are many …, we’re increasing,” he said, explaining that the expansion is right down to a mix of things, including natural reproduction, evangelism, and the “evangelicalisation” of Christians who weren’t previously evangelical. 

Around 70% of Christians on the whole, lots of them evangelicals, live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, he said. In Africa specifically, this growth has gone hand in hand with “rapid urbanisation”, with many rural Christians migrating to cities. 

So long as evangelicals proceed to prioritise family and the proclamation of the Gospel, he expects this growth to proceed. 

Describing evangelical churches in Africa as “vibrant” and “quickly growing”, Mandryk said nearly 70% of all Christian growth world wide was occurring in Africa alone and that the expansion rates on the continent were “astonishing”. 

In some ways, that is “not latest” because the shift in global Christianity away from its traditional strongholds within the West has been in evidence since 1980 – a yr he described as “a tipping point”. 

“The way forward for Christianity is already here and it has already been here for 45 years. This is just not latest news,” he said. 

“The notion of Christianity and Evangelicalism because the white man’s religion is rapidly shrinking within the rearview mirror.” 

This raises some questions for evangelicals, he said, specifically “whether evangelicalism looks and acts and is led by the demographic realities on the bottom or led by the vestiges of the past”. 

What this rapid growth also means is that “discipleship must be amongst our very top priorities” alongside pastoral training and leadership development.

Elsewhere, Mandryk addressed the shortage of agreement over what the term ‘evangelical’ means – something that has been long debated inside the movement. In addition to “a dizzy array of definitions”, the term ‘evangelical’ is typically getting used “unfairly, inaccurately, even harmfully”, he said. 

“There are many tribes of evangelicals, many points of contention regarding what our priorities needs to be and subsequently it becomes mandatory to acknowledge there isn’t a one single definition to rule all of them. It means various things to different people. And even being evangelical means various things to different evangelicals,” he said. 

“And other than jettisoning this term entirely, which I do not think the WEA could be very prone to do, we will need to operate on this reality that there is just not a single understanding of what it means to be an evangelical.” 

What is essential, he believes, is for evangelicals to clarify their beliefs “with clarity and confidence to others” although this has not been made easier by the succession of “scandals” which have affected the evangelical community in recent times, he said. 

“Sadly, we must also recognize that we’re as evangelicals compromised. And this is just not even solely or primarily because that word evangelical has been co-opted by political agendas. It’s because now we have did not live as much as the gospel that we preach. We’ve often presented a poor testimony to a number one world,” he said. 

“And as scandals proceed to come back to light inside the Christian faith, our repute has gone in some parts from being well-regarded pretty much as good people to the term evangelical, becoming considered one of derision almost synonymous with words like hypocritical, bigoted, and hateful.”

Despite this, evangelicalism worldwide has been doing a “good job” of retaining the subsequent generation, particularly in Africa where many young evangelicals proceed into maturity with the evangelical faith they were raised in by their parents. 

Joining Mr Mandryk on the panel was Dr David Tarus, of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, who said that because the Church continues to grow on the African continent, there may be an urgent need to extend access to quality theological education and training for pastors. 

An indication of the dimensions of the challenge, Dr Tarus said that research by his organisation put the proportion of African pastors with none formal theological training at 90 per cent, while 79.5% do not need a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. A majority (87.9%) said that financial lack was a barrier to formal training, while over 1 / 4 (27.4%) said that point constraints were a difficulty.

He said it was “no wonder” that African Christianity was being confronted with challenges like syncretism, the prosperity gospel, and divisions, and that it was “critical” that the Church think afresh about the way it could help more African Christians access formal theological training. 

The Church, he cautioned, should “not wait for people to come back to our institutions for training, but take theological education to the local church and communities”.

Some work is already being done to supply informal training options alongside formal degrees which, at 4 years long, are quite difficult for a lot of pastors to commit to and subsequently “not in a position to meet the necessity of the growing Church” in Africa. 

He gave the instance of his own father who had planted many churches despite never having a proper theological education. What he did have was informal training by Christians from such institutions who went out into the villages and taught “under the trees”. 

“We have to begin imagining ways of developing such sort of leaders because those are the sort of leaders that the Church is dependent upon,” he said.