“Man has held three views of his body,” writes C.S. Lewis in the “Eros” chapter of his 1960 book The Four Loves.

First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the “tomb” of the soul, and [others] to whom it was a “sack of dung,” food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans, the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass.”

Lewis then says, “All three may be . . . defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.” He continues,

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. (93)

And so we now move to address the topic of body stewardship, which may seem like a surprising turn in our spring chapel series on the virtues. And, as Lewis saw 60 years ago in his day (and as he summarized three main enduring views of the human body throughout history), so we see them too today. We have our ascetic Pagans, or digital Pagans, who feel their body to be a prison. The body holds them back; screens and virtual reality create new possibilities. Life, for many, has become shockingly sedentary.

On the other hand, those same screens show image after image of meticulously sculpted and enhanced bodies — Lewis’s Neo-Pagans, half-nudists, at least, for whom the body is glorious, or must be glorious no matter how much dieting and exercise and surgery it takes.

And third, we have the road perhaps least traveled. Saint Francis’s road. Lewis’s road. Our road — the road of Christian Hedonists — Christian Hedonists. Today’s non-Christian hedonists may divide themselves up pretty well between sedentary, digital Paganism and semi-exhibitionist Neo-paganism, while we Christian Hedonists are gladly left with “Brother Ass.”

Now, I know the word Ass is arresting and hard to ignore. It accents our natural, sinful laziness and obstinance — the “infuriating beast” deserving the stick, as Lewis says. But I don’t want you to miss the affection and warmth in the word Brother. I don’t think Lewis says “Brother” lightly. Just as Jesus doesn’t say “brother” lightly. I don’t say it lightly. Brother accents the usefulness, sturdiness, patience, and lovability of these bodies, which are, Lewis says, “absurdly beautiful.” And he steers a careful course between reverence and beauty — they are not to be revered, but acknowledged and appreciated as “absurdly beautiful” — or as the psalm says, “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

As Christian Hedonists

Let me just say, I’m a pastor (and adjunct professor). I’m not a personal trainer. I am not a dietician. In fact, I don’t know if I have anything to say here about diet — except a general plug for moderation, and a general warning about drinking sugar — but as a Christian Hedonist, I do have an interest in how the body serves not just natural joy but supernatural joy. And because this is a college and seminary chapel, it might be good to say something about the mind as well. And I hope, as Christian Hedonists, that the flavor of these next few moments would feel far more like the carrot than the stick.

“Working and pushing these bodies, as God designed them, serves Christian learning, joy, and love.”

Question One of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, as many of you know, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer is this: “That I am not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” We could talk about how the soul affects the body. But in these moments together, I’d like to focus on stewarding the body — and in particular moving the body, exercising the body, even training the body — in service of the soul.

So let me take you to one of many important texts in the Bible on the body, make some observations, and then consider how working and pushing these bodies, as God designed them, serves Christian learning, and Christian joy, and Christian love.

First Corinthians 6, start in the middle of verse 13:

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. . . . Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:13–14, 19–20)

Four observations:

1. Your Body Is for Jesus

“For the Lord” means for drawing attention to Jesus, for making Jesus look good. Verse 13: “your body is for the Lord.” Verse 20: “So glorify God in your body.” We are made, Genesis 1 tells us, in the image of God. Images are irreducibly visible. We were made to image the invisible God in his visible world — to draw attention to him, not have it terminate on ourselves.

As Jesus says in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Speak in such a way, and live in such a way in these bodies that others see what you do in your body — they see your good deeds — and they give glory, not to you, not to your body, but to your Father in heaven, and his Son, Jesus Christ.

2. Jesus Is for Your Body

He designed it. He gave it. He took a human body himself — and still has it. He is for your body’s good. Which means he is for us stewarding our bodies well. He is not against some modest efforts at upkeep. He is for that — wind in our sails.

3. God Will Raise Your Body

He raised Jesus’s body. Jesus is the firstfruits; we are the harvest. If you are in Christ, God will raise your body, and glorify your body. It will be changed, and far better, when he raises it. But it will be your body and modest upkeep now, especially in the service of learning and joy and love, is not a waste.

4. God Dwells Now in Your Body

If you are in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. He is “within you.” Your body is a temple, a dwelling place, for God. So your body is yours but not “your own.” You didn’t make it. God did. You didn’t buy it back from sin and Satan; Jesus did. And you don’t dwell alone in it; God the Spirit dwells “within you.”

Consider, then, how working and pushing these bodies, as God designed them, serves Christian learning, and Christian joy, and Christian love.

For Christian Learning

As I have aged, I’ve sensed more and more tangibly how much better I feel after I’ve exercised. And in particular, I feel like I can think clearer, and more effortlessly, and more creatively. I feel like I have more energy, not only to move but to think and work hard with my mind. But is this just in my head, or is it real? I’ve heard other people talk about it too, but I want more clarity about my perceived mental clarity.

A few years ago, I found a book by a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, John Ratey. He had spent most of his career on ADHD and co-written some of the key texts on ADHD. He was a former amateur athlete and took notice over the years of what amazing medicine exercise proved to be for his patients. So eventually, he put his findings together in the 2008 book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Now, if any of this sounds too good to be true, remember what his prescription is: exercise. Apparently, many want to just take a pill. Few want to exercise. Here’s how he opens the book,

We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important — and fascinating — than what it does for the body. Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain. (3, emphasis added)

He continues, “To keep our brains at peak performance, our bodies need to work hard” (4). “The brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity” (5) — and movement activates the brain. And Ratey explains how it is that exercise improves learning — which matters to us as Christians. We call ourselves disciples, which means learners. Christianity is a teaching movement, and a learning movement — in Christ, we are no less than lifelong learners. Learning matters to me as a pastor and editor and adjunct professor. And I hope it matters to you as a student, and as a Christian. So, here’s “how exercise improves learning on three levels”:

first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells. . . . (53)

Active bodies improve learning. I’ll say more in a minute about how. But there’s the first reason: for Christian learning. Second, then, for Christian joy — that is, natural joy leading to supernatural joy.

For Christian Joy

Hippocrates, the father of medicine (four centuries before Christ), said, “Eating alone will not keep a man well; he also must take exercise.” Hippocrates also learned to treat depression with a long walk. And if that didn’t seem to help, he advised taking another: “Walking is the best medicine,” he said — in the pursuit of joy, a happy soul.

One of the key truths for which we stand at Bethlehem College & Seminary and Desiring God — and perhaps the most distinctive one — is that we believe enjoying God is essential to glorifying God as we ought. To be bored or uninterested in him is to dishonor him, whatever motions we go through with our bodies. And so, vital for our fulfilling the very purpose and calling of our lives is our enjoying, delighting in, being satisfied, in our souls, with who God is for us in Christ.

In terms of the carrot, the angle that has proved most helpful for me over the years in motivating and sustaining body stewardship through regular exercise is reckoning with how it supports the pursuit of joy in God. The little bit of intense exercise that I do is, in its highest and best form, about enjoying God, which glorifies him.

Getting Energy from Expending Energy

I am not mainly motivated by living longer. “To depart and be with Christ . . . is far better” (Philippians 1:23). And I am not motivated much by looking fit and healthy. For me, those motivations are inadequate. For me, the driving motivation under the banner of enjoying more of God is the energy I get from expending energy. And that’s first emotional energy (we’ll talk about the other in a minute). When I exercise regularly, I feel better. Not only do I feel like I think clearer, but I seem to sleep better, and I’m generally happier.

“Regular exercise puts my body and soul into a better position to clearly see and deeply savor who God is in Christ.”

Regular exercise puts my body and soul — and their complicated and mysterious relationship — into a better position to clearly see and deeply savor who God is in Christ. And so I want to put natural joy (and alertness and attention and energy and resilience) to use to serve spiritual, Christian, supernatural joy.

I said I’d say more about how this works — how bodily movement and exertion serve our natural joy. Back to the Harvard psychiatrist, who says,

Going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters — along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain. (38)

Miracle Grow for the Brain

But let’s go one step deeper, and stop here. Knowing a little bit of the mechanism helps me:

“BDNF [Brain Deprived Neurotrophic Factor, “Miracle Grow” for the brain] gathers in reserve pools near the synapses and is unleashed when we get our blood pumping. In the process, a number of hormones from the body are called into action to help. . . . During exercise, these factors push through the blood-brain barrier, a web of capillaries with tightly packed cells that screen out bulky intruders such as bacteria. . . . [O]nce inside the brain, these factors work with BDNF to crank up the molecular machinery of learning. They are also produced within the brain and promote stem-cell division, especially during exercise. . . . The body was designed [!] to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. (51–53)

We know that “bodily training is of some value,” and godliness all the more (1 Timothy 4:8) — but one of the reasons I take “bodily training” with such seriousness, rather than ignoring it, is precisely because of how it serves the joy and strength and stability of my soul.

So, there’s the Harvard psychiatrist. What about Christian voices? Well, I haven’t been aware of many, at least in our circles, over the years. But I did edit a chapter one time on exercise in a book called Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. The chapter was called “Brothers, Bodily Training Is of Some Value.”

John talks there about “the correlation between the condition of the body and the condition of the soul” (183); he says that “consistent exercise has refining effects on our mental and emotional stability” (185). And one of the motivations he points to, and now other Christian voices are chiming in, is energy — in the service of doing good for others. So not just Christian learning, and Christian joy, but finally Christian love.

For Christian Love

Not only does regular exercise make me feel like I think clearer, and I feel happier, and more ready to pursue spiritual joy, but I also feel stronger and more ready to exert bodily effort, whether mental or physical, for the sake of others. I’ve also found that pummeling or disciplining (Greek hupōpiazō) my body, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:27, strengthens my will, and chases away laziness, in all of life. Regular exercise makes me more active, rather than passive or lazy, in every sphere and every relationship — not the least of which is relating to God through his word and prayer. But also for others.

Too Tired to Love

Here are the other voices. In 2019, we published a short article at Desiring God, called “Remember the Body,” by pastor Mark Jones in Vancouver, speaking, like Piper, to fellow pastors, with clearly broader applications:

Physical exertion is an important part of normal human life. . . . [I’m] persuaded that a lot of pastors should jump on a bike, go for a run, walk, or build some modest muscle, and they’d likely get more work done. A lack of discipline in areas such as food, exercise, and drink typically reflects a lack of discipline in other areas of the Christian life. . . . Exercise is a friend [Brother?] of the Christian, and one that, unless prohibited by health reasons, should be part of the ordinary Christian life.

About the same time, I came across the 2017 Crossway book Reset by David Murray, pastor and professor. He says, “Exercise and proper rest patterns generate about a 20 percent energy increase in an average day, while exercising three to five times a week is about as effective as antidepressants for mild to moderate depression” (79).

Finally, in his late 2020 book on church leadership, Paul Tripp writes about his newfound appreciation for stewarding well the bodies God gave us. He realized, beginning with himself, that “widespread church and ministry leadership gluttony is robbing us of both gospel consistency and physical energy.” He continues,

Regular exercise boosts and builds energy. Perhaps many of us are tired all the time not because of the rigorous demands of ministry but because of the lack of rigorous physical exercise in our normal routine. . . . [T]hese are not ancillary issues. (Lead, 82)

Modest Path

Now, before we get going down any Neo-Pagan paths, let’s bring it back to “Brother Ass” — beloved, obstinate, useful, not revered and not hated, pathetically and absurdly beautiful, Brother Ass.

Mark Jones uses the word modest which I appreciate. He says, “build some modest muscle” — which I think will serve most of us well in our age of extremes related to our bodies. On the one hand, we feel the pull of our world’s sedentary patterns: riding in cars, mesmerized by screens. We have indulged ancient instincts, designed for days when food was scarce, to intuit how to move as little as possible. But thank God, we’re not living in times of famine. Just deadly excess.

On the other hand, we find the fitness junkies, pushing back against sedentary assumptions, but for what reason? “Well-being” as enjoying life more today, not just someday far off, is doubtless more honorable than a brazen pursuit of self-glory. But as Christians we have more to say, critically more, about fitness as stewarding these remarkable creations of our Lord we call bodies.

Fit for What?

I do think “fitness” is a word we can work with as Christians. We just need to ask, Fit for what? Fit to draw attention on Instagram? Fit to draw eyes on a stage, or half-clad? Or fit to do others good? Fit to live up to the modest and important calling we have as Christians to love others and use these bodies to serve and bless and help others?

Paul twice uses a phrase — in 2 Timothy 2:21 and Titus 3:1 — that might be a good rallying cry for the modest upkeep of these physical bodies: “ready for every good work.”

We not only want to learn well, which is critical for disciples. And we not only want to have spiritual joy, which is critical in glorifying Jesus as we ought. We also want to fulfill our calling to use these bodies to do others good — and in such a way that others see our good works, in these bodies, and do not give glory to us but to our Father in heaven, and to Jesus.

“We tend to overestimate what can be done in the short run, and underestimate what can be done in the long run.”

And for most of us, we will be well served by modest upkeep. Subtle changes in our default mindset about minimizing movement, or learning to enjoy it. Walking counts; it gets the blood pumping. Small steps over the long haul. Walking for 30 minutes, five times week, would fulfill the recommendation of many of the experts. And if over time, your body was in enough shape to enjoy regular 30-minute walks, you might find exercise to be an acquired pleasure and enjoy some weights or jogging as well. But we tend to overestimate what can be done in the short run, and underestimate what can be done in the long run.

Brothers and sisters, your body, as a priceless gift from God, is “both pathetically and absurdly beautiful.” It is “a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot.” As Christian Hedonists, let’s pursue the carrots of Christian learning, Christian joy, and Christian love.

ABSTRACT: In the early 1980s, missionary and researcher David Barrett published the World Christian Encyclopedia, a massive survey of global Christianity and missions. Since then, the work of Barrett and others has shaped the church’s approach to missions in profound ways, not least by focusing attention on the world’s remaining unreached peoples. Now, new generations of researchers are tracing the gospel’s spread through the Global South and beyond, showing that today’s church is more diverse than many have imagined — and helping today’s Christians participate more strategically in the gospel’s advance.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked F. Lionell Young III, Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, to describe how new insights and initiatives are shaping the church’s mission.

Evangelicals are serious about missions. To crib a quote from the American historian Douglas Sweeney, “Evangelicals care about nothing more than evangelizing the world.”1 Sweeney may be speaking in hyperbole, but not by much. We are passionate about doing and well-known for our activism. This is an evangelical strength. What evangelicals, as a group, have not always taken seriously is the life of the mind. As Mark Noll wrote in his epistle of a wounded lover, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”2 We have not been as passionate about thinking and are not as well-known for our erudition. This has been an evangelical weakness.3

American evangelical missions during the twentieth century often failed to combine zeal with knowledge.4 In a recent lecture on the history of missiology, Brian Stanley observed that “there is always a tendency, particularly in Christian missions, for the field to divide between the doers and the thinkers.” He rightly referred to the problem as a “fatal separation,” and one that may be more pronounced in missions than in any other area of Christian ministry. Stanley, a highly respected intellectual, is also an evangelical who is very much for missionary activity. As he put it in the same address, “The challenge is to enable practitioners to be less afraid of deep research and reflection, but to conversely challenge the thinkers with the continuing imperative of what the church is actually called to do.”5

There have been times in our recent past when the thinkers and the doers actually did get together. This essay introduces readers to the work of David Barrett and a remarkable story of success that has brought about significant changes in the way evangelicals carry out the Great Commission. A discussion about Christianity in the Global South will follow, interacting with Philip Jenkins’s recent comments about what he calls “the end of the Global South.” What does he mean — and what are the possible implications for the church and its mission?

‘Miracle from Nairobi’

In 1982, Oxford University Press published the 1,010-page World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE).6 It was edited by David Barrett (1927–2011), who served as a missionary with the Church Missionary Society from 1957 to 1985. Barrett was a British evangelical who had prepared for the Anglican priesthood at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He was mentored by Stephen C. Neill (1900–1984), a missionary to India who later became an academic at the University of Cambridge.7 After finishing his studies at Cambridge (BA, MA), Barrett served as a missionary in Kenya (then British Kenya) before continuing his studies at Union Theological Seminary (STM) and Columbia University (PhD). Barrett the missionary, like his mentor, became Barrett the academic.

After finishing his doctorate at Columbia, where he did his work on African Independent Churches, Barrett returned to East Africa for an ambitious research project. Using Nairobi as his base, between 1968 and 1981 Barrett traveled to nearly “every country in the world” (he listed 212 countries) to harvest statistics on Christianity and missionary activity throughout the world. He worked with a team of 21 editors and more than five hundred consultants, one of whom was Patrick Johnstone, the missionary-researcher and author of Operation World.8 The project was slated to take three years but was extended to twelve, because Barrett and the entire editorial team “had seriously underestimated the size and complexity of the Christian world.”9 Barrett’s massive survey showed that the vast majority of Christians lived in the “so-called Third World,” and that there were “Christian churches in every inhabited country on earth.”10 Time magazine hailed his work the “Miracle from Nairobi!”11

As a well-trained academic, Barrett used a widely accepted conceptual framework from the study of economic geography. His data was organized around what is still known as the Brandt Line, which divided the globe between the economically developed regions of the world in the Global North and those classified as economically underdeveloped in the Global South. The term Third World was then a shorthand reference to those nations with the least-developed economies, though in the 1980s this term was gradually replaced with the more congenial-sounding Global South. The latter was a reference to most (not all) of the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America (including the Caribbean), and Oceania. The term Global North was used for the bloc of nations with developed economies that are concentrated in North America and Europe. This nomenclature is still widely used in the discipline of global studies and informs important decisions made by governments, NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies (such as the United Nations and the World Bank). The taxonomy still holds, though in recent years, with the rapid growth of some developing economies, the lines have begun to blur.12

Seeing the Unreached

One of the more fascinating applications of Barrett’s work was related to how evangelicals made decisions about where to assign missionaries. His data on missionary allocation showed that the Western church was continuing to send nearly all of its missionaries to parts of the world where Christianity had already taken root. A classic case is Kenya, where Barrett had lived since the 1950s, and had returned again and again for research. In 1900, Christians made up less than 1 percent of the population of what was then British East Africa, though by the year 2000 the percentage had increased to an estimated 77 percent.13 Even though Kenya had been largely Christianized, it remained (and remains) a popular destination for the allocation of evangelical missionary personnel. Many parts of Africa and most of Central and South America also fell into this category. Western mission agencies, Barrett’s research showed, were continuing to send people to places where foundations had already been laid, even to countries in the Global South that were overwhelmingly Christian. Many churches seemed to hold the assumption that effective missionary strategy simply meant acquiring a passport and sending people anywhere they “felt led” to go outside of the United States. This assumption needed to be completely reassessed.

Barrett’s work encouraged evangelicals to think about what they were doing. Soon after Oxford published Barrett’s miracle from Nairobi, the Foreign Mission Board (FMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) hired Barrett to work as a consultant. The FMB (now the International Mission Board) was one of the largest and most influential mission agencies in the world. Using Barrett’s research, the FMB determined that there needed to be a greater focus on what is commonly called “unreached people groups.” Donald McGavran (1897–1990), a WCE consultant, and Ralph Winter (1924–2009), an early advisor, had already begun popularizing the language of “unreached” or “unengaged” people groups in the 1970s, though Barrett’s research was instrumental in its usage.14 The FMB set up a think tank called the Global Strategy Group to reappraise its allocation of missionary personnel. The SBC was so persuaded by the need to act on this research that, in an unprecedented display of interagency cooperation, it invited 36 other missions organizations to give serious consideration to Barrett’s proposals.15 The changes brought about by Barrett’s research over the next few decades have been called “seismic and enduring.”16 When Barrett died in 2011, the global strategist for the SBC wrote, “When David Barrett came to the Foreign Mission Board as a consultant in 1985, less than 3 percent of our mission force was deployed to [unreached, unengaged souls]. Today, as a result of Barrett’s prophetic push, more than 80 percent of the people groups our missionaries serve among are unreached.”17

“The willingness of evangelicals to think about what they were doing has led to greater evangelical faithfulness.”

John Piper made an even wider audience aware of Barrett’s work in his book Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, first published thirty years ago. Piper cited David Barrett, Patrick Johnstone, and Ralph Winter throughout, taking evangelicals to task for what Winter had called “people blindness.” His plea combined rigorous exegetical work with impressive missiological reflection. He corrected misunderstandings of the English word nation and urged evangelicals to place greater emphasis on declaring the marvelous works of God among all ethnic groups.18 Piper’s lively and learned contribution to missiology, which has sold more than 300,000 copies since its first printing, has probably influenced evangelical thinking on missions more than any single work that has been published over the last thirty years.19 The willingness of evangelicals to think about what they were doing has led to greater evangelical faithfulness to the missio Dei.

End of the ‘Global South’?

I recently had a conversation with Philip Jenkins about his suggestion that we might now be entering a new era, one that he calls “the end of the Global South and, consequently, of global/world Christianity.”20 Jenkins’s 2002 book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity helped focus the attention of literate laypersons and learned academics on the rapid growth of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As he put it then, “The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.”21 Jenkins helped popularize what Barrett and others had been working on since the late 1960s. In light of Jenkins’s usage of the expression Global-South Christianity and his insightful work on the “coming of global Christianity,” it is reasonable to ask what he means by these comments. Is Global-South Christianity no longer a helpful category? Has global/world Christianity already come and gone?

Looking back now over the last two decades, Jenkins has observed that there has been “real progress in the popular awareness of global affairs among Christians.” He notes that “in recent years, the situation has changed utterly. Publishers have turned out countless volumes in world or global Christianity, a topic that is now very well covered in seminaries and religious departments.”22 The remarkable literary achievements of academics like Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Dana Robert, Brian Stanley, Kirsteen Kim, Kwame Bediako, Jehu Hanciles, Mercy Oduyoye, Todd Johnson, Dyron Daughrity, Scott Sunquist, Paul Hiebert, Gina Zurlo, and Wilbert Shenk (to mention only a few names!) are now enlarging the story of Christianity.23 A younger generation of academics is also standing on the shoulders of giants and writing fresh histories of Christianity with sweeping coverage of nearly every country in the world. The field of global/world Christianity now comprises historians, theologians, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and missiologists, many of them clustered around the Yale-Edinburgh Conference, co-founded in 1992 by Andrew Walls (1928–2021) and Lamin Sanneh (1942–2019).24 These scholars are interested in the broader theme of global/world Christianity, but individuals also specialize in particular regions (e.g., continents, subcontinents) and countries, and also focus on subjects like transnational movements (e.g., evangelicalism, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism) as well as specific topics (e.g., men and women, politics, migration, mission).

Generous samples of their scholarship are found in print and online academic journals published by major research universities in places like Boston, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Princeton. Lengthy bibliographic entries can be accessed in works like the Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity, the World Christian Encyclopedia (bibliographies are listed under every country) and the new nine-volume Cambridge History of Christianity. There is now voluminous coverage of Christianity in every historical period, covering nearly every single country of the world. Gina Zurlo’s recent work Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe is an effort to make some of this scholarly work more accessible for a general readership.25 Hundreds of highly motivated academics, a surprising number of whom are evangelicals, are shedding new light on the church’s story.

Global from the Beginning

This enormous output of research on the history of Christianity from the first century to the present is now showing that the church is more diverse than we have ever imagined. When the Spirit of God came blowing in at Pentecost, the gospel was translated into the languages of Africa, Arabia, Asia, and Europe, spilling out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Sometime around AD 60, the apostle Paul could already say that the gospel is “bearing fruit and increasing” throughout “the whole world” (Colossians 1:6). Christianity has been a worldwide, polycentric movement from its inception, and contrary to popular misconceptions, Rome has never been the sole seat of ecclesiastical authority. In point of fact, Christianity was adopted as the official religion of Armenia and Georgia in Asia and Aksum (Ethiopia) in Africa before it became the state religion of Rome in the West. In the ancient church (ca. 100–450), networks of churches were clustered around places like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople in Asia; Alexandria in Africa; and Rome in the West, with multiple centers of influence all confessing a near-identical creed. For a brief period in the early Middle Ages, these five regions formed a pentarchy (five coequal spheres), but even prior to the usage of this term in the sixth century, new centers had already formed further afield in Asia as far as India and China, across Africa as far south as Sudan, and to the farthest reaches of Western and Northern Europe. The work of historians is helping us see more than ever before that Christianity has been a diverse, global religion for two thousand years.

“Christianity has been a worldwide, polycentric movement from its inception.”

In our own day, the growing ethnic and geographic diversity of Christianity is pushing thinkers like Jenkins to challenge how we use expressions like the Global South and global/world Christianity. Jenkins believes that the classifications Global South and Global North are helpful ways of having conversations about macrolevel trends, but that they fail to do justice as descriptors of Christianity’s boundless diversity. With so much scholarly light having now been cast on Christianity in every country of the world, he wants to be careful about using the term Global South as though it were a religious monolith. He wants to avoid language that simply divides the church into halves. To be fair to my colleagues working in religious demography, they are not using the terms in this way, and Jenkins himself still uses Global-South Christianity in his writing. More controversially, the boundless diversity of Christianity has even led a few academics to adopt the expression “world Christianities” (plural) rather than global/world Christianity (singular), though this language is now being convincingly contested.26

A few examples will suffice to illustrate what Jenkins is talking about. Christianity has grown rapidly in Kenya, as well as in neighboring South Sudan, yet the church in both countries has been shaped by different narratives and disparate political and social realties. Nigeria is roughly divided between Christianity and Islam, creating unique conditions and challenges for the church within different regions of the same country. Christianity is growing in Northeast India as well as in the neighboring hermit-kingdom of Bhutan, but in decidedly different ways, due in part to starkly different political and social contexts. Historians still write about Korean Christianity, though the churches of North Korea and South Korea are undeniably living out their faith in different political contexts. Christianity across Central America has common features, but you can see and feel the differences between the churches of Guatemala and neighboring Honduras — and both countries are distinct from Costa Rica, with its large expat community. Brazil provides one of the most interesting examples of Christian diversity, with evangelicals and Pentecostals now diffused in nearly every tradition, including Roman Catholicism, in a way that has now influenced national elections. These are but a few examples of contrast, and we haven’t even begun talking about the vast continental differences. As Jenkins has put it, “In demographic and cultural terms, the world is anything but flat.”27 Said another way, the Global South is not a country.

Drama of Unfolding Redemption

Scholars will continue their work (and their debates), but what is important to note here is that the academic study of Christianity’s past and present has been a source of tremendous wisdom for evangelical engagement in global missions. This should encourage Christians who have been suspicious of the life of the mind not to be afraid of careful reflection. The increased awareness in our own day of Christianity’s boundless diversity also has implications for missions — a topic that needs further exploration. One implication is clear: the opportunity has never been greater for the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. What is needed is a shift in missional thinking, one that abandons an America-first mentality, and one that adopts a gospel-first mindset. To repackage a Pauline trope, the gospel did not originate with us, and we are not the only ones it has reached. The way of the future is in working together across cultures in cross-cultural missions for the glory of God.

“The opportunity has never been greater for the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”

What we are witnessing today through the work of globe-trotting researchers and travel-worn academics is the glorious drama of God’s unfolding worldwide redemption. The Spirit is blowing where he pleases, the kingdoms of the world are continuing to enter the kingdom of the Lord from the east and the west, the north and the south, and the nations are singing the praises of God. These stories are now being churned out by major academic presses as scholars have turned their attention to understanding the “surprising work of God” around the world. Christian academics have eyes to see the overarching work of redemptive history in their scholarship, even as they delight in the increasing diversity of the church “that no one [can] number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). New research is helping us reimagine the Christian world and widening our gaze to apprehend more fully the glory of God, world without end. Amen.28

By the time I was 21, I had been thoroughly inoculated against any threat of marriage by the wistful comments of my married friends: “Oh, you can do that now, but just wait till you get married and have kids . . .” They painted an image of a small, constricted world with no scented candles (dangerous open flame!), no possibility of travel (too complicated!), and no orderly bookcases (kids destroy everything!).

When I eventually did get married and start a family, I was determined to prove them all wrong. I bent over backward to prove that nothing in my life had changed. Sure, we had a new baby, but we strapped our firstborn into his fifty-pound car seat for long road trips. We dragged ourselves through antique stores and spent Saturdays doing yard work together. We welcomed houseguests into our fixer-upper and fed them from the produce grown in our huge garden. We did it! Life went forward unchanged — except that I was exhausted all the time.

Today, nearly thirty years later, I want to pour that tired woman a steaming mug of tea, sit across the table from her, and whisper to her that no is not forever, but it can be a freeing word when we say it at the right time. I would tell her to get comfortable with uncertainty in the small details and to sharpen her understanding of God’s sovereignty over every season of life. Then I would offer three insights that I discovered on the job, but wish I had known from the start.

Lesson 1: Make the truth your home.

We have a choice to make every day as to whether we will dwell on the positive or the negative aspects of that day. Will we choose to focus on negative campaign ads, wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, and the parts of our schedule we can’t control — or will we hand our anxieties over to the God of the universe? We might employ the apostle Paul’s language and call this taking “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

If this sounds impossible to you, then you’re on the right track. Paul was not a self-help guru, and while he knew where his bootstraps were and could employ them as needed (and so should we!), nowhere in Scripture do we get the message that Christianity is a self-improvement project. The discipline of our mind, emotions, and will is just one battle in the believer’s ongoing warfare, and God has equipped us with weapons that are effective for that spiritual battle. Psalm 1 describes the way of the righteous as a way that is steeped in biblical truth. God’s word is an object of delight and regular meditation.

During one long February of serial stomach viruses and lonely isolation with my four sick kids, I discovered that regular doses of gospel truth were far more effective than caffeine or a girlfriend chat. Even the Son of God, in his time on earth, used Scripture as a potent weapon against evil, and he’s our example. The point is to give the truth more room in your life than you are giving to the screaming banshees inside your head.

“In the endless monotony of laundry and food preparation, our hearts need a beautiful horizon of truth ahead of us.”

In the endless monotony of laundry and food preparation, our hearts need a beautiful horizon of truth ahead of us to energize our efforts. Love of Christ fueled by biblical knowledge motivates daily obedience and inspires a healthy longing for his return.

Lesson 2: You are more than what you do.

As believers, we embrace the truth that our salvation comes to us by grace, but when it comes to living the Christian life, we’re often not so sure. New mothers can be some of the worst Pharisees. Cloth diapers versus disposables, breastfeeding versus formula, eventually how we educate our children — they all become points upon which we divide and judge one another.

I chose to quit working outside the home after the birth of our oldest son, and since we homeschooled, my résumé went on mothballs for over twenty years. Whenever I allowed myself to “walk . . . in the counsel of the wicked,” I felt apologetic about my choice (Psalm 1:1). Maybe I really could “have it all”? Was I missing out by not having a career?

Then, listening to a different chorus of error, I would begin to define myself as a “stay-at-home mum,” making it the most important element of my identity. I was tempted to condemn the choices of other mums, and that habit of comparison built walls where bridges of understanding would have been so much more redemptive.

Finding grace to “delight in the law of the Lord,” to focus on who God is, enabled me to accept who I was (Psalm 1:2). Whether you stay home full time with your children or continue to be employed in some capacity, your “job” does not define you. You may prepare menus and grocery lists a month in advance, or you may do your best meal planning standing in front of an open refrigerator door. You may vacuum daily, preside over a miraculous two-day laundry turnaround time, and administer a color-coded family calendar on your kitchen wall. Or you may function so well on the fly that planning ahead feels like going to jail.

There is no formula for perfect parenting. You will never be a perfect wife or a perfect mother — but you may drive yourself and your family crazy trying to be. There was free and abundant grace available when God first saved you. Why should it suddenly be scarce?

Lesson 3: Build habits you can fall back on.

When you are tired, emotionally spent, or simply not paying attention, you will fall back on your habits. Strong spiritual practices give your mind a good place to go so that it can direct your heart toward its rightful Object. The blessing of strong roots is promised to the one who meditates on Scripture “day and night” (Psalm 1:2–3). As a young mother, I wanted to be rooted in truth, stable and reliable from day to day, so that my children would be able to make the leap from dependable parent to dependable God.

“When you are tired, emotionally spent, or simply not paying attention, you will fall back on your habits.”

Memorizing Psalm 103 provided praise words for a tired brain. Learning Psalm 91 reassured me that God would be trustworthy. Soaking in the truth of Romans 8 reinforced my trust in God’s persistent, never-giving-up love that would flow to me and my family. Truth from Psalm 1 was fuel for living a righteous life as a mother.

Motherhood is certainly not the only path to sanctification, but its challenges pushed me toward a deeper dependence upon God and the miracle of actual righteousness that the Holy Spirit alone can produce in me. For example, the habit of confession paves the way to clear communication with God and others. The habit of taking God’s new mercies every morning makes it a whole lot easier to extend grace and forgiveness to your family as the day wears on.

Someday your family will be full grown, and you will want to have grown full of wisdom in your prayers for them and in your counsel to them. Your journey of faith will continue. I know this because I am still a work in progress today, still grace-dependent, and still sticking close to truth as the only safe home for my heart and mind. For this and for whatever lies ahead, God has more grace than we can begin to imagine.