by Kevin Rodgers
Historian Richard Bulliet suggests that early Muslims recounted the story of the spread of Islam as if it had one center, like an inkblot diffusing outward from a center that remains set and inexorably stained.
In contrast, when we look at the story of the spread of God’s Kingdom, we see something more like shifting epicenters of earthquakes. Sudden, tectonic shifts occur and then shock waves go out from the center to spread the Gospel far and wide.
Once the waves subside, the Kingdom quakes again. The epicenter moves to a new location and shock waves ripple out from there.
Interestingly, many of the quakes in history have tended to be more intense, longer lasting, and farther reaching than the previous, as if we are moving toward a final culmination of history.
Thinking of the spread of Christianity in those terms, Jerusalem and Antioch were the first locations in the early church where believers spread out in successive missionary ripples from their initial epicenters.
Later, the heart of the Kingdom shifted to North Africa, which later gave way to Rome, then Constantinople and eventually Northern Europe and the United States.
The process was similar in each place: The Gospel came with great dynamism, was followed by a huge missionary sending push, then successive waves and aftershocks eventually subsided until the next event in a different place.
Often, the center was squelched by some physical, religious or cultural opposition such as Islam in North Africa, barbarians in Rome or secularism in the West.
In each case, the Kingdom seemed as if it had been stopped and then suddenly the next epicenter emerged in a new place.
For decades, missiologists Andrew Walls and Philip Jenkins have been reminding the world that the epicenter of Christianity has subtly moved from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere.
Recent data from the Pew Research Center, meanwhile, indicates a decline in evangelical Christianity in the North and the West while the number of believers is drastically increasing in the South and East.
One of the most pronounced examples of this shift is Sub-Saharan Africa. Pew projects that nearly 40 percent of the world’s Christians will reside there by 2050.
The West, it seems, may no longer be the center of significant Kingdom growth.
When one considers the pattern of Christianity, the history of Christian witness in Africa, and the statistical predictions of Africa’s exploding Christian population, it seems clear: Potentially one of the greatest waves in all of history could be carried out by the African church.
The beautiful feet that bring good news to the last unreached people groups in the farthest corners of the world could very well be African feet.
As someone who has spent half of his life in Africa, that brings me great joy because I believe African Christians are not only some of the sweetest people on the planet, they’re also some of the most zealous, toughest and most resilient.
They have the heart, the passion and the DNA to finish the task and lead the worldwide church to the very culmination of history before Jesus returns.
Yet, this realization also gives me pause. Although Africans embody many of the necessary qualities to lead the next wave of missions advance, they will need to be theologically equipped for the task.
It’s necessary to ask, not as a matter of paternalism, “Can they go into all the world?” and if they go, “What gospel will they export?”
The window of opportunity is temporary and the African church needs to be mobilized now. Perhaps the greatest gifts we in the West can give to them, and in turn give to the Kingdom, are the gifts of mobilization and theological education.
We need to co-labor with the next generation of African missionaries who will take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, but we also need to help them find ways to be self-sustaining and unlock their own resources and potential in the African church.
In addition, we need to partner with them in theological education and help check the natural drift toward Neo-Pentecostalism and syncretism.
We must come alongside them and contribute to African thinkers, writers and theologians by working with African seminaries and providing theological education at the grassroots level.
Developing African theologians, church leaders and missionaries will increase their missionary impact with breadth and depth as they ripple out from their own epicenter.
The Lord has well positioned the African church to finish the task, and we are poised to be the facilitators, the mobilizers and the equippers who empower them to complete what we helped perpetuate as a part of our country’s own ripple effect.
Let’s not ignore the signs and the rumblings but prepare Africans to lead out in the next great Kingdom movement.
KEVIN RODGERS and his wife Suzie have served in Eastern and Southern Africa for the past 20 years. He currently leads church planters and theological educators as they seek to empower the African church to finish the task. This story originally appeared at Baptist Press.
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