It is easy to become so focused on our local ministries, or even the nation’s ministries, that we fail to see what is happening globally.  That is unfortunate because often we need a global perspective to understand what is happening locally. Several sources help keep us aware of the global picture: David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia; The Reformed Family World, edited by Jean-Jacques Bauswein and Lukas Vischer (published by Eerdmans); Marc’s Mission Handbook; or Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World.

Peter Brierley is with Christian Research, and has put together an intriguing, challenging book to help the reader to see what is happening in the church around the world.  George Verwer said in the introduction, “It needs to be read, prayed over, and widely distributed.”  I agree.  Every pastor and teacher would find in this book much valuable information to draw from, not only for teaching but also for seeing the big picture.   For example:  while there are pockets of church growth around the world, by and large the church is losing ground.  There is a global pattern of nominal Christianity impacting the church on all the continents.

The visible church as we know it is changing across the various continents, says Brierley.  The book provides the facts and statistics to demonstrate that.  In North America, for example, “The churches grew by 30 million in the 1960’s and by 41 million in the 1970’s, but they have maintained that level of growth, so that the period of the 1980’s was not especially large.”  In contrast, “In South America the growth has been continuous and while higher in the 1980’s (at 51 million) than the 1970’s (at 46 million) it was not a very great difference.”

There are many interesting statistics that reflect things like reasons for joining and leaving the church across the continents.  The global similarities are thought provoking.  While we are tempted to think that the church is growing, Brierley lists statistics from 1960-1995 and then states that “church growth worldwide…will remain at about this level or a little less than 21% up to 2010 AD.”

The book demonstrates that the “church,” globally is larger than its membership figures reveal, because more people attend church and profess Christianity than actually join the church.  What this means as far as global religious identification is concerned is that: “28% of the population is Christian, 18% Muslim, 13% Hindu, and 59% all the rest.” On the one hand we can proudly say that Christianity is the largest but on the other hand we can say that 28% is far from outnumbering the other non-Christian religions.

Separate chapters deal with the Catholic church, the Anglican church, other institutional churches (including Presbyterians), Charismatic churches, and non-charismatic churches (including Baptists). Brierley and his research team are aware of the need to be extremely careful with statistics (because it is easy to make them say whatever you want them to say), and are very faithful to make us aware of how different statisticians operate and how that impacts their conclusions.

You might think, “I am not into statistics so this book is not for me.”  Don’t do that!  This book is full of commentary, analysis, and other things that keep the statistics in perspective of the whole.  Several examples:  one chapter focuses on the consequences of the global nominalism in the church.  There is a fascinating chapter entitled “Implications from Costa Rica.”   What can we learn from that model to give us insights into our situation?  The last chapter in the book “Culture and Church Leadership” is worth the price of the book.  It contains an interesting section entitled “Christian worldview.” While he doesn’t use “worldview” in the typical sense that we use it, his approach will encourage you to be global and have a bigger perspective of God’s world.  In the same chapter, another brief section on postmodernism gives some creative insights that I haven’t seen in other treatments. 

I was particularly arrested by the thoughts and statistics that show what happens to people who drop out of church: It is almost impossible to bring them back. Though Brierley is distinctly British, his familiarity with North America and other continents is evident throughout the book.  You will appreciate using this book in your preaching and teaching.

- Charles Dunahoo, CEP Coordinator