Last month, I was in a room in Central Pennsylvania with North American leaders and kingdom practitioners from around the country for a retreat. After lunch we centered our conversation around this question:
“Where is the Church in North America heading and what are the implications?”
For those who know me, you know I am passionate about discussing a great question. And this certainly is a significant one.
Many missiologists, theologians and scholars believe the Global Church is becoming more diverse and moving south (that is, the center of Christianity is no longer in North America, but its greatest movement is in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly South America and the southern part of the continent of Africa.)
But what about North America? What does the future of the Church look like here? Well, we don’t know for sure, but we are seeing it become more diverse (ethnic, racial, gender, etc.), more urban, and more post-Christian/postmodern. With all this as the foundation, we dug deeper. We broke down our answers into three categories:
-
Sociological (what does this mean for how we interact with others)
-
Ecclesiological (what does this mean for the Church and localized churches)
-
Missiological (what does this mean in how we join with God and His mission)
Here is what we surmised for each category….:
Gathered with leaders from around the country around this question this morning: “Where is the Church in North America heading and what are the sociological, ecclesiological and missiological implications?”
Utterly fascinating, enlightening, exciting and hopeful. pic.twitter.com/lnuJiTJfnU
— J.R. Briggs (@jr_briggs) July 11, 2019