We are privileged to be witnessing the greatest transition in world mission ever in history. 

The gospel is exploding in the Majority World. Missionaries from countries closed to the gospel when I was born, exactly 75 years ago today, are going to the least, the last and the lost in every corner of the world. 

YWAM Together 2024 convened 4500 folk from 110 nations this week in Manila. United in worshipping Jesus in many different languages – Maori, Mongolian, Portuguese, Russian and more – this week was the closest many had experienced to the scenario of Revelation chapter seven of that great crowd before the throne from all tribes, peoples, nations and tongues. 

This week has reminded me of what historian Philip Jenkins wrote a decade or so ago in his book,The Next Christendom: that the rise of the Majority World church would be the single greatest factor in shaping the world in the 21st century – socially, politically and economically. 

We have rubbed shoulders this week with Nepalis working in Sao Paolo; Indians working in Istanbul; Brazilians working in Central Asia; Papuan New Guineans, Chinese, Koreans, Moroccans, Ugandans, Russians, Ukrainians, Mongolians, Fijians, Belarusians, South Africans, Kenyans, Pakistanis, Argentinians and many, many more nationalities engaged in integral missions on all continents. Those Mongolians had travelled by bus and boat for five days to join the gathering in Manila. 

The Nepalis present reminded me of the YWAM team imprisoned for proselytism in the Himalayan state some three decades ago. Even today conversions are still officially illegal. Despite these restrictions, the Nepali church is reported to be the fastest growing in the world. Some estimate the church to be three million strong, engaging one in ten Nepalis – a 30-fold increase since 2000.

Increase

As I looked around the church auditorium where we met, an 8000-seat multi-space complex bigger than any church I have seen in Europe, I pondered the dynamic growth and vitality of the Majority World church. White faces were the minority in the auditorium and thus of today’s YWAM, a reality reflecting the global church worldwide.  

Political scientists, we were told, predict that the population growth in Africa in next 30 years will change the course of human history. Now 1.5 billion in 2024 – a more than five-fold increase since 1960 – Africa’s population is projected to touch 2.5 billion by 2050. One in every four Christians is an African and many are ready to engage in world missions.

My thoughts went back to my first meeting in 1967 with Loren Cunningham, YWAM’s founder, as I wrote about last week. Literally only a handful of Americans were then involved with Loren’s dream of mobilising youth for missions. None had completed the now-mandatory Discipleship Training School which did not yet exist. Who could have imagined what the future held, with over 20,000 workers who have been active in every country of the world? 

Loren passed away exactly eleven months ago, on the eve of the infamous Hamas attack on the Israeli kibbutz. This gathering was the first without the founder. ‘Moses’ was dead; we had not been this way before. No clear succession plan had been in place. However, as the week unfolded, it became clear that we were transitioning to a new ‘Joshua’ generation of gifted and capable young leaders who had prepared this gathering and would competently lead the mission into the future.  

Collaborative

A global YWAM gathering of 1500 workers in 1988 was the occasion for my first visit to Manila. There we committed to the goal of two-thirds of YWAMers coming from the Two-Thirds World by 2000. This week’s gathering certainly reflected that goal. 

The following year, Romkje and I returned to Manila with the Dutch delegation to the Second Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Over 4000 mission leaders from all corners of the earth convened there just as the fall of communism was effecting major changes around the world. The congress brought together a broader representation of the whole church than ever before to take the whole gospel to the whole world.

Coincidentally, the The Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization will begin in Seoul in just two weeks. That event is the culmination of the Lausanne 4 ‘polycentric’ journey involving gatherings in different centres which began in 2019. Dr Michael Oh, Lausanne’s Global Executive Director, describes the journey as ‘a multi-year, global process towards catalytic collaboration of the global church, for the discipling of all nations and the shaping of the world in 2050.’ 

The goal is to promote comprehensive, coordinated and collaborative global mission. There too the aim is to pass the baton to a younger generation of mission leaders, mostly from majority world. 

Never in world history has there been a century like this last one for world missions. 

We can expect the next to be even greater.

Jeff Fountain, Director of the Schuman Centre for European Studies. This article was first published on the author's blog, Weekly Word.