Abstract
Greetings from the IBMR editorial trenches! In February 1992 I received a call from Gerald Anderson, director of OMSC (or maybe it was from Assistant Editor Bob Coote), asking whether I’d be willing to copyedit some material for the April 1992 issue of the IBMR. “Yes,” I said, “be glad to.” The calls kept coming, issue after issue. At some point, it became all the material for every issue.
Now, thirty years later, I have the enviable record of having edited virtually every article and book review that has appeared in the IBMR these past three decades. “Enviable,” because this experience has given me insight into the kingdom of God at work and advancing on fronts all over the world at the hands of men and women of all nationalities, denominations, and historical periods. (Also—not surprising, given the variety of our contributors’ backgrounds—with a range of abilities in expressing themselves in written English!) Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to “a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind,” some good and some bad (Matt 13:47–48). The amazing variety of the “good fish” presented quarterly in the issues of the IBMR is a feast, a treasure that I have had the rare opportunity of examining (and sometimes clarifying) word by word. It points collectively to a loving King who is as gracious as he is relentless in sanctifying and expanding his kingdom.
On a personal level, my experience is enviable also for having dealt with hundreds of you, our esteemed IBMR authors and reviewers. You have been thoughtful in preparing your contributions, and I have enjoyed interacting with you as your editor. Our current editorial team of Tom Hastings, Dan Nicholas, Easten Law, and myself, also all the other OMSC colleagues I have been privileged to work with over the years (Jerry, Bob, Jonathan Bonk, Dwight Baker, Nelson Jennings, and Darrell Whiteman), are most grateful for all of your contributions; we are in your debt. You have been generous in sharing your “good kingdom fish” with the IBMR and the larger body of Christ around the world. Thank you!
“World Christianity” coming into prominence
Over these past three decades I have witnessed the term “World Christianity” increasingly come into prominence, especially at OMSC and the IBMR. Currently, it is embraced explicitly as we—OMSC at Princeton Theological Seminary—celebrate our centennial. 1 But how should we understand this phrase? Does it point to anything more than the truism that Christians can be found all over the world? Yes, it does.
The key element is an eagerness to understand, value, and even be changed by the thinking and life-experience of all other persons who hold Jesus Christ as their Savior and Shepherd. He alone provides our entrance to the Father (John 14:6); he alone tends the one flock comprising all his sheep (John 10:16). These elements are implied in a helpful, comprehensive description offered by Emma Wild-Wood: The study of World Christianity is a synthetic and collective approach to studying Christian peoples, practices, thought and environment across the globe. It attends to diversity and interconnectedness. It often prioritises marginality (in its various forms). It uses a variety of methods and works across disciplines (drawing particularly, but not exclusively, upon history, theology and ethnography). It is committed to engage with Christians worldwide. It is informed by scholarship in other parts of the globe and is based primarily in the North Atlantic as a corrective to western-centric scholarship.
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Notice Wild-Wood’s mention of “interconnectedness” and of “marginality,” also of a commitment to “engage with Christians worldwide.”
“World Christianity” (or related phrases) appeared now and then in the IBMR back in the early 1990s, when I began my IBMR editorial duties. In 1993 the OMSC Research Enablement Program invited proposals for “research projects in mission and world Christianity.” 3 And in 1994, in a major article on the historiography of American Protestant foreign missions after World War II, Dana Robert argued that the dawning awareness of the significance of world Christianity has implications for how postwar mission history must be viewed. 4
In 1995, William Burrows mentioned “the emergence of world Christianity as a communion of local inculturations of Christianity.” In this “communion,” how even-handed are the world’s Christians in knowing, not to mention sympathizing with, those of other “inculturations”? Burrows put his finger on what many have identified as a critical blind spot: “Giving up the illusion that one’s own tradition has a corner on evangelical truth, while remaining committed to that tradition’s richness, necessitates a profound conversion of heart and mind that Western Christianity—in all its bickering factions—is poorly prepared for.” 5 From all the evidence, this conversion is still in process.
Nowadays, “World Christianity” is a commonplace in the IBMR. Earlier this year, we published Joel Carpenter’s pungent review of Kwame Bediako: African Theology for a World Christianity (Tim Hartman, 2021). 6 Where, Bediako (as well as Carpenter) plaintively asks, has Western theology conceded that African theology has a key role to play in shaping World Christianity? And the July 2022 issue contained review articles of Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity (ed. Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood, 2020) and Understanding World Christianity: China (by Kim-kwong Chan, 2019). It also announced the beginning of a new digital curriculum offered by OMSC, a certificate program in “Lived Theology and World Christianity” (359).
Dramatic growth and decline
This emphasis on World Christianity, with its focus on open, even-handed engagement with Christians around the globe, has followed the growing awareness that the geographic center of Christianity has been shifting decisively toward the South. The numbers are clear, as the percentages in the simple table below indicate.
Percentage of Christians Worldwide in Two Areas
Source: Calculated from data in the IBMR’s annual statistical tables: 16, no. 1 (January 1992): 27, and 46, no. 1 (January 2022): 76, 78.
What does this shift southward mean for us Christians in the North? It depends. How deeply are we convinced of the interconnectedness of all Christians? How willing are we to engage with ideas and Christian practices that may be unfamiliar to us? In considering these questions, we would do well to ponder what I would call Jesus’s teaching on World Christianity.
Jesus on the “one flock, one shepherd”
In the midst of contentious interaction with “the Jews” recorded in John 10, Jesus asserts his role as the one Shepherd of a single, worldwide flock, connected directly and intimately with him.
14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Within this one flock of Christ-followers, one could expect to see impartial love of the neighbor (as taught in James 2:1–9) and interactions that lead to “peace and mutual upbuilding,” without making “your brother or sister stumble” (Rom 14:19–21)—in short, obedience to Jesus’s “new commandment” that all his disciples “love one another” (John 13:34–35). 7 Without question, such behavior exists between parts of the one flock. But sadly, it is all too sorely lacking between many other parts.
Given Jesus’s teaching here, we can say that failure to live up to the Shepherd’s standards surely reflects a lack of listening to—that is, actually obeying—the Shepherd’s voice. Here we come to the root of the grievous, well-documented failures within the World Christian family. And for true Christ-followers, we also arrive at the place of hope. This Shepherd Jesus goes after all his sheep, knocking at our heart’s door, seeking reentrance and a restoration of intimate fellowship (per Rev 3:19–20).
In what we could call this season of World Christianity, let us appreciate this invaluable, challenging perspective on the global family of Christians. And even more, let us seek freshly cleaned-out ears to hear—obey—the living words that our living Shepherd has for each one of us today!
Der gute Hirte (The Good Shepherd), German artist Bernhard Plockhorst, mid-1800s.
Craig A. Noll