Reverse missionaries

Ken Sullivan, writing for Washington Post, has this article about missionary pastors from the Global South going to Western nations, where Christianity has stagnated, to do mission work. The balance of power in Christianity is shifting.

Of course, you know I don't think that's a good thing. Too often, these new Christians are locked into rigid ways of thinking that exclude certain groups of people. I would not be proud to see Global South Christians following the bigoted past of Western Christians. Show me the Brian McLarens of the Global South, and I'll be much more bullish.

The Episcopal Church I attend uses jazz music in worship. There was once a clown service at, I think, Trinity Cathedral on Wall Street (don't quote me, but it was a major church), where all the celebrants were dressed as clowns. There is also a U2charist, which is a service set to U2 music. Not all the older crowd is comfortable with such liturgical innovation. But, frankly, if they don't want the Episcopal Church to end at their generation, they will have to get comfortable with it. Every organization's structures need shaking up once in a while, and this can definitely be done while retaining the best parts of ancient tradition.


The "Amens!" flew like popcorn in hot oil as 120 Christian worshipers clapped and danced and praised Jesus as if he'd just walked into the room. In a country where about 2 percent of the population attend church regularly and many churches can barely fill a single pew, the Sunday morning service at this old mission hall was one rocking celebration.

Amid all the keyboards, drums and hallelujahs, Stendor Johansen, a blond Danish sea captain built like a 180-pound ice cube, sang and danced, as he said, like a Dane -- without moving.

"The Danish church is boring," said Johansen, 45, who left the state-run Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church three years ago and joined this high-octane interdenominational church run by a missionary pastor from Singapore. "I feel energized when I leave one of these services."

The International Christian Community (ICC) is one of about 150 churches in Denmark that are run by foreigners, many from Africa, Asia and Latin America, part of a growing trend of preachers from developing nations coming to Western Europe to set up new churches or try to reinvigorate old ones.

For centuries, when Europe was the global center of Christianity, European missionaries traveled to other continents to spread their faith by establishing schools and churches. Now, with European church attendance at all-time lows and a dearth of preachers in the pulpits, "reverse missionaries" are flocking back, migrating from poor countries to rich ones to preach the Gospel where it has fallen out of fashion.

From East back to West

The phenomenon signals a fundamental shift in the power, style and geography of the world's largest religion. Most of Christianity's more than 2 billion adherents now live in the developing world. And as vast numbers of them migrate to Europe, they are filling pews and changing worship styles.

Thousands of missionaries from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, South Korea and the Philippines have come to Europe to set up churches in homes, office buildings and storefronts. Officials from the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal church based in Nigeria, said they have 250 churches in Britain now and plan to create 100 more this year. Britain's largest church, run by a Nigerian pastor in London, attracts up to 12,000 people over three services every Sunday.

The trend is vivid in Denmark, where charismatic preachers from Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India, Iran and Latin America have set up vibrant Protestant and Catholic churches.

"When we became Christians in the East, we read the Bible and it said, 'Go out into the world and spread the Gospel,' " Pastor Ravi Chandran told the congregation at the ICC's hall here one recent Sunday. "And guess what? We came back to the West!"

Chandran, a youthful 42, grinned broadly as he looked out at the rainbow of worshipers.

"Can you say 'Amen' to that?" he asked, and Johansen, his wife and children joined the rest of the congregation in a thunderous "Amen!"

Finding new value

Back home after church, tucking into a lunch of traditional Danish open-faced sandwiches, Johansen said that for most of his life he hadn't bothered going to services at the "state church," as the Lutheran Church is known here.

"As kids, we were not allowed to make any noise on Sundays," he said. The church seemed to him to place a higher value on order and ancient traditions than on tending to the concerns of parishioners. "The church didn't add any value to me. It gave me nothing I could use in my day-to-day life."

Danes joke that almost everyone in Denmark is Lutheran but almost no one is religious. On a typical Sunday morning, most of Denmark's 2,100 parish churches are lucky to attract 20 worshipers each.

Karsten Nissen, one of the country's 10 Lutheran bishops, said that a quarter to a third of all people in church in Copenhagen any given Sunday morning are attending a foreign-run service. "These churches are a gift to our Danish Lutheran Church," Nissen said. "They open our eyes to a more human way of being Christians. It's the way we were Christians 100 years ago -- a very simple way, a good way, a more pious way, and a more open and happy way of worship."