Two-Thirds World birthplace of new Christendom

ATLANTA — A new Christendom, originating from the Two-Thirds World, is rising to take the place of the old, according to George Bullard, church consultant and former executive director of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. Bullard spoke of his conclusion at the executive committee meeting of the North American Baptist Fellowship (NABF) in Atlanta in January.

The NABF, which unites most of the major Baptist conventions and unions in North America, has 30 member bodies representing more than 21 million baptized believers.

"The next Christendom will not be organized in a centralized or decentralized way, but in a distributive way," Bullard said.

More and more will be done through congregations than through denominational structures, he explained, including ordaining pastors and other leaders directly out of congregations. These developments, among others, may lead to the questioning of the existence of denominational organizations themselves, as there may be the view that much that is done through these denominational centers can be done better through the local church.

He added that greater fragmentation would emerge. Among the factors pulling in this direction is the freer, expressive worship that characterizes Two-Thirds World Christians as against their contemporaries in the North.

Healings, exorcism and spiritual warfare will gain greater prominence. There will be more emphasis on holiness, spiritual development and prayer. Baptists from the Southern Hemisphere are missions-focused and do not, for the most part, see a dichotomy between social action and spirituality.

According to Bullard, "[e]vangelism and social ministry will not be divided. They will be one, seamless in their execution and indivisible conceptually. Caring for the whole person will be the hallmark of congregational ministry. A driving force will be life transformation and its implications for community transformation."

Christians in the Two-Thirds World are gaining majority influence on the rest of the world, too — whereas 85 percent of all Christians were in Europe and North America in 1905, the number of Christians changed dramatically to more than 60 percent in the Two-Thirds World by 2005.