Global Christianity Needs a Reformation

The Puritan Richard Sibbes described the Reformation as “that fire which all the world shall never be able to quench.”[1] The Journal of Global Christianity exists because the fire of the Reformation still burns today. As an Indian pastor and teacher serving in the 10/40 window, I write with deep concern for the brightness and longevity of this flame in the Global South.[2]

Readers of this journal hardly need an introduction to the concepts “Global South” and “Global Christianity.” Nevertheless, some clarification might be helpful. The term “Global South” has been emerging and developing for the past fifty years and has generally come to refer to countries in the Southern Hemisphere—nations in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Philip Jenkins concluded his landmark article on the Global South in 2006 with these words: “Christianity, a religion that was born in Africa and Asia, has in our lifetimes decided to go home. Our traditional concept of the Christian world as a predominantly white and Euro-American world—of western Christianity, in fact—is no longer the norm. Christianity should enjoy a worldwide boom in the coming decades, but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European nor Euro-American.”[3] In 2009, evangelical historian Mark Noll observed “the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last fifty years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history.”[4] The term “Global Christianity” has therefore come to refer to this geographical redistribution of the Christian church in the Global South.

Add to this a changing global landscape with urbanization, globalization, and new technologies, and it becomes undeniable that the gospel is advancing into frontiers and to peoples in unprecedented ways. My own context testifies to this reality: the congregation I pastor meets in the flagship evangelical church building of the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. Our building is home to 59 other congregations, and about 15,000 people traverse our building on a weekly basis for worship. At the Anglican church building down the road, another 40 congregations meet for worship—the number of people in the 10,000s. 

And this is not TEXAS! This is Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Most of the Christian worshippers in my city are African and Asian. Most of the 100+ churches that meet in and around my church building are evangelical / charismatic and Pentecostal.  My own congregation is an international church, and a majority of the 1200 people who attend our worship services each week belong to what has been called the “Global South.”  Global Christianity is exploding, the face of world Christianity is changing, and in our lifetimes, we will likely see more churches and Christians in the Global South than in Europe and North America combined.

How do we respond to this phenomenon? In all of this, our first impulse must be to give praise to God for His sovereign move among the nations. We can be encouraged that over the last decades, Christ has been gathering his sheep from the nations. We can rejoice that people are indeed turning to Jesus from every tribe and tongue and giving up all to follow Him!

I frequently meet first-generation believers who are sincere, passionate, regenerate Christians, and the Lord is at work in their lives. The gospel is going forth in unprecedented ways, people are coming to know Jesus, churches are being planted, and the nations are coming to know the Lord—what we’re seeing in the Global South is truly remarkable.  

1. A Revival?

The growth of Global Christianity is remarkable, but can it be called a “revival”? If by “revival” we mean unprecedented growth, a generic spiritual fervor, and enthusiasm—then yes, the Global South is experiencing a revival of historic proportions. But if by “revival,” we mean revival in the more theological and historic sense—a spiritual awakening in which the glory of God is displayed brightly through His church, the Word of God is cherished and proclaimed, and the people of God are marked by a passion for holiness and a hunger for righteousness, then we still have a long way to go. Kevin DeYoung rightly says of revival: “True revival will always be Bible saturated through and through.  Revival is not simply renewed fervor for spiritual things.  Buddhists have a fervor for spiritual things . . . God-wrought revival brings a fervor for the Bible, that we might live, feel, sing, pray, work, and worship according to the word of God.”[5]

If we’re seeking spiritual fervor that is Bible-saturated and a renewal of Christ’s church such that it stands as a pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), then it is probably better to say that what Global Christianity needs is a reformation. If we desire true revival in the Global South, then a biblical reformation is what we must first seek.

2. Why a Reformation?

Why a reformation? Sadly, the growth of Christianity in the Global South has been accompanied by the growth of heresies and spurious doctrines of every kind. From the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel to legalistic do-it-yourself piety, to hyper-grace antinomianism, to syncretistic insider-movements and hyper-contextualized heretical Christianity, to superstitious and mystical demonology, the Global South is home to every form of unbiblical mumbo-jumbo you can imagine. 

The Reformation martyr William Tyndale, in criticism of the medieval Roman Catholic Church asserted, “God gave his sheep to be pastured, not to be shaven and shorn.” Tyndale’s words are prophetic for Global Christianity today. What we’re seeing in Global Christianity is, in many ways, a complete undermining of the very heart of the Protestant Reformation—the total antithesis of all that the Reformers hoped for. And the ones that suffer the most are Christ’s “little ones,” his beloved sheep for whom He bled, who are left shaven and shorn and starved. The various flavors of Christian theology and experience in the Global South are collectively the antithesis of the foundational truths of Protestantism—the five Solas of the Reformation.

Here I want to briefly illustrate how each of the Reformation Solas is undermined in Global Christianity.

2.1  Sola Scriptura

The churches and Christians of the Global South are not marked by a reliance on the authority of Scripture alone. Rather, they seek an experience of God entirely divorced from the Bible. Most African and Asian Pentecostals, indeed most Christians in the Global South, wholeheartedly affirm Scripture’s inerrancy, but in practice, they deny its sufficiency. Scripture is affirmed as wholly true, but it is seen as irrelevant for preaching, for discipleship, for counseling, for spiritual growth, for Christian piety and experience.

If the Bible is ever used, it is used like an Ouija-board, where random verses completely ripped out of their context are used as “Rhema words” by which God commands believers to do this or that—often in contradiction to the clear teaching of Scripture.       

Here is an unedited e-mail I recently received that represents the kind of thinking that is ubiquitous in my part of the world:

Praise the Lord brother in Christ Jesus.

Our God is a purposeful God. He had brought me to this country on eagle’s wings. He ensured that I don’t leave this country, though I tried going back to India many a times out of fear. But the Lord renewed my strength like an eagle. God came to me like a wind, a cloud, fire and electrum.

During these 4 years stay in this country. I have experienced God's mighty hands. Through dreams and visions and whispers He has spoken to me.

Prayers were answered. 

Whenever the enemy came in like the flood the Spirit of the Lord put a standard against Him.

I experienced a pillar of cloud protecting me when a black car came from no where on my visit to the bookstore while I was carrying the word of God home(artifacts).

For the gospel did not come to me in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance...1Thes 1:5

My pray to the Lord is that I meet a brother who is full of grace and filled with the power of Holy Spirit. 

To share the burden and work together for the building up of His Body.

Amen brother/ sister in Jesus.

The writer emphasizes experiences with God through wind, cloud, fire and electrum! And in the couple of places that the Bible is mentioned, it’s denigrated as an “artifact.”

Extra-biblical revelations, dreams, visions, and spiritual experiences take the place of Scripture and its power.

And sadly, many North Americans are also enthused by this sort of Bible-denigrating mysticism. We forget that the most supernatural work of the Holy Spirit is in bringing dead sinners to submit to His supernatural Book. Instead, even Reformed evangelical churches in the West are glad to give heaps of mission funding to those ministries that boast of supernatural encounters, dreams and visions, and so-called miracles—and get duped in the process by frauds and charlatans who fatten themselves on Jesus’s sheep and on Western missions funds. 

Another way that Sola Scriptura is undermined is through postmodern contextualization methods, insider movements, born out of the cradle of North American missiology. Western missionaries serving in the Global South constantly follow the maxim that they must not teach their converts what the Bible says about how churches are to be ordered, about how Christian identity is to be formed, or about what it means to be disciples; instead fledging believers from pagan backgrounds are encouraged to develop their hermeneutic and praxis from within their own cultures and worldviews. These mission methodologies undermine the sufficiency of Scripture by gutting the Bible and using indigenous and cultural forms and worldviews to form Christian identity.[6] Such missiologies are not merely deficient; they are demonic, for they enslave people to the elemental spirits of this world (Col 2:8).

2.2 Sola Gratia

In Global Christianity, the grace of God is often perverted into a view of divine blessing that amounts to what D. A. Carson calls “mutual back-scratching”—I scratch God’s back and in return, he scratches mine![7] The grace of God is diminished by a complete redefinition of biblical categories. “Faith” in God is treated as a work by which we somehow merit God’s blessings.  The biblical concept of “blessing” is unhitched from its salvific and covenantal moorings and used to refer primarily to physical, earthly goods that God bestows in exchange for humans doing something that makes Him happy.  In other words, sufficient “faith” or favors to God will induce God to “bless” us. Those familiar with church history will recognize here that medieval Roman Catholicism’s theology of indulgences has been resurrected anew. 

I know of a Buddhist convert to Christianity whose child has had a major organ transplant. This person won’t give the child the medication he needs because of the belief that this would somehow displease God by distrusting his promises. I also personally know a South Indian pastor who didn’t teach his blind son Braille because of his belief that this would demonstrate a lack of faith in God’s ability to heal the blind. I could offer multiple examples from first-hand experience.

            Sola Gratia is further trampled upon by a complete loss of understanding of sin, depravity, and God’s gracious redemption of sinners. Instead, the emphasis is placed on power, healings, and deliverances. I can’t tell you the number of times that professing Christians, even pastors, have looked at me with blank faces when I say that the greatest blessing that God gives us is the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of our sins through his death and resurrection.

Finally, Sola Gratia is lost because the means of grace have been lost in the Global South. Preaching, sacraments, and the local church have all been killed by either false or non-existent ecclesiologies. Sadly, again, it is Western missions funds that proliferate these problems, for massive funding is channeled into missions and ministries that do not emphasize the planting of strong healthy local churches led by qualified men who preach and teach the Word of God.

2.3  Solus Christus

Solus Christus is destroyed in Global Christianity by the “man of God” theology. Many churches and movements in Global Christianity have failed to honor Christ as the only mediator between man and God. John Calvin, commenting on the antichrists of 1 John 2:18–23 wrote: “Christ, is denied, whenever those things which peculiarly belong to him, are taken away from him.”[8] Calvin maintained that the corrupt priests of Medieval Rome were acting in the spirit of antichrist by illegitimately appropriating to themselves that which belongs to Christ alone. We see something very similar in Global Christianity today. The “anointed man of God” or self-appointed apostle or prophet becomes the mediator who dispenses God’s blessings. Many “pastors” in the Global South operate as little popes of their own small kingdoms—kingdoms that have nothing to do with the kingdom of Christ—and their kingdoms continue in perpetuity through nepotism. They devour the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable. They use and abuse the sheep of Christ, the poor sheep who believe that the prophecies and prayers of these “anointed men of God” earn them favor before God’s throne. These evil shepherds have averted the eyes of the sheep from their Advocate and Glorious High Priest.

I attended an event in my city where people thronged to be blessed by one of these self-styled apostles—Chris Oyakhilome, a Nigerian prophet who is one of the richest “pastors” in the world. The auditorium was packed (with Africans and Asians) and the event had to be stopped and restarted because of the danger of fire code violations. With no room left in the main hall, people were pressing against the glass panes of the front doors saying things like “I just want a glimpse of him, so that his anointing will fall on me.” When “prophet” Chris appeared on stage there was chaotic hysteria and a deafening roar from the crowd unlike anything I’ve ever heard or seen (and I’ve been to a Deep Purple concert!). His teaching was rife with heresy, claiming that Jesus had only a human body but a divine (not human) soul; and then asserting that Christian believers today also become inwardly divine upon being born again. And because of this inwardly divine nature, Christians have the power to command blessings into existence. Such teaching is very common in Global Christianity. At another event I witnessed recently, a Kenyan “apostle” sprayed water from his water bottle upon the crowd so that his anointing would fall on them.

In the context of Global Christianity, such so-called “men of God” are revered and exalted. Moreover, they are above any kind of criticism or scrutiny, for we are told that one “must not dare to touch the Lord’s anointed.” Indeed, this is nothing less than the spirit of Medieval Rome—the spirit of the antichrist. 

2.4 Sola Fide

The doctrine of justification by faith alone is virtually unknown in the Global South. It is instead supplanted by legalistic religion in a variety of forms. The legalistic religion of Global Christianity imposes upon the tender consciences of new believers the traditions of men and forms of worship borrowed from pagan religion.

Pastors in the Global South presume to tell people what they may and may not eat and whom they may or may not marry, while elevating the “prophecies” of men to the status of words spoken from the mouth of God himself!

Justification by faith alone crumbles when a person’s right standing before God is measured on the basis of one’s spiritual experiences—especially “baptism in the Spirit,” speaking in tongues, and other mystical experiences. I recently heard of a woman from a nearby church that went to work with bruises on her hands—and she joyfully showed these bruises to a friend as her evidence of the Spirit’s work upon her — through hysterical clapping in worship!

Justification by faith alone is further undercut by gross misapplications of the Old Testament Law to Christ’s people. The concept of a right standing with God through faith alone is shattered through the teaching that believers live under fear of “generational curses”—paying for the sins of their forefathers, until a “man of God” will deliver them.

And finally, a model of missions recently employed by many Western missions organizations in the Global South attacks Sola Fide by promoting what’s been called “obedience-based discipleship”—that is, centering ministry on achieving obedience—with little more than lip service towards the gospel of regeneration and saving faith that produces gospel obedience.[9]

2.5 Soli Deo Gloria

Finally, of course, Christianity in the Global South often has very little concern for the glory of God. The only time 10,000 people will gather in an auditorium in the name of Christ would be to see a faith-healer or so-called prophet perform his tricks.

The biggest and most famous theologians in the Global South are not John Piper, D. A. Carson, and R C Sproul, but Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and Joyce Meyer. People are stunned when I tell them that these are false teachers.

The concern for health, wealth, and prosperity eclipses any concern for God’s glory and kingdom. The heresy of prosperity theology promotes the glorification of self with wealth, victory, and earthly goods, rather than the pursuit of God's glory through sharing in Christ’s sufferings.

The love of money becomes a huge detractor from God’s glory — ministry becomes all about boasting big numbers and keeping the pipelines open to receive funding from the West rather than laboring faithfully for the glory of God. The very notion of living for God’s glory is virtually non-existent. Most Global South Christians live their lives with their greatest concern being how “God is going to bless me.

3. How Did We Get Where We Are Now?

I have reflected long and hard about the roots of all this bad fruit and have ascertained three primary causes:

            First, the weakness of the church in the Global South is the result of bad missiology and poor missiological methods that fail to emphasize the theological training of leaders and the planting of strong, healthy churches. Western evangelicalism, with its insatiable appetite for numbers and results, has allowed missions to become a cesspool of bad theology and pragmatism. The need for speed reduces the work of evangelism and discipleship to a bare minimum, replicating results without concern for depth and true conversion. Mission organizations emphasize speed over soundness and value the replication of “rabbit churches” that reproduce quickly instead of “elephant churches” that take a long time to establish. And now, the Global South is filled with rabbits—rabbits that are being rapidly devoured by hawks and wolves.

            Second, we must acknowledge that proponents of the Prosperity Gospel have been far more rapid and strategic in spreading their content in comparison to Reformed evangelicals who have been slow to awaken to these realities. Teachers of the Prosperity heresy have been on satellite TV for decades now, reaching even remote villages in Africa and Asia, long before many of our favorite reformed websites even went online!

They’ve paid heaps of money to bring over African, Asian, and Latin American ministers to train in their pernicious schools of prophecy. Meanwhile, Bible-believing evangelical churches invest very little in training leaders for the Global South. A minister from Uganda told me that when a recent book authored primarily by prominent African pastors refuting Prosperity theology was launched in Uganda, thirteen copies were made available at the book launch.[10] Whenever I’ve raised questions about these issues with my North American brethren, I am told that the problem is a lack of funds to be able to better resource the global church. Yet funds are amply available to host multiple huge pastors’ conferences largely attended by North American pastors, at which tens of thousands of books are given away, most of which will never even be read. Reformed evangelicalism in the West is glutted with resources—and in my opinion has been very slow to care for theological famine in the Global South.

Third, North American evangelicals, including those of a “Reformed” persuasion, are complicit in the weaknesses of Global Christianity because money from the West—not just from aberrant churches and movements—but money from Bible-preaching evangelical churches has been poured into the worst forms of Global Christianity because of the large numbers featured by such movements. 

But revival cannot be manufactured. Revival cannot be sped up. We must give ourselves instead to doing God’s work, in God’s ways, with God’s resources, patiently laboring to strengthen his church, and wait for the Spirit to move when the truth of God is proclaimed with clarity and authority.

4. A Way Forward?

So is there a way forward? How can we work to make things better? What will it take for us to see true revival and biblical reformation in the Global South?

Praise God for faithful organizations that are trying hard. Praise God for initiatives like TGC’s Theological Famine Relief and the translation of good theological content into languages that serve the global church. But this is not enough. We need to see leaders in Global Christianity who are able to wield the sword of the Spirit to bring every thought captive to Christ by addressing the particular idolatries and worldviews of their own contexts. Praise God for short-term mission teams that make frequent trips to train leaders on the field. But that’s not enough either. We need to see indigenous teachers who are able to equip the saints with the whole counsel of God all-year round!

Put simply, a Reformation needs reformers. Global Christianity needs faithful men who will be trained and equipped to teach and preach the whole counsel of God. For God’s Spirit blows to reform, revive, and renew only where God’s Word is faithfully proclaimed, taught, defended, and cherished. We need to foster biblical Reformation by training and equipping South Asian John Calvins, African Martin Luthers, South American John Owens, and East Asian John Pipers!

I want to be clear here, however, and define what I mean by “training.” By “training,” I do not mean rapid ten-day or ten-week discipleship courses like the sort promoted by several American missiological gurus—whether CPM, T4T, DMM, or whatever the latest methodology is. Nor do I mean “training” by sending books and DVDs, or short-term teaching trips, or bringing men occasionally to North America for a conference.

Global Christianity needs more. It will take a great investment of time and energy and patience to raise up faithful men who are trained to rightly handle the Word of Truth, and who are able to teach others also (2 Tim 2:2, 15). Just like in Elijah’s day, God has his faithful men in the Global South who have not bowed the knee to Ba’al. Some of the best work in the Global South is being done by faithful brothers who have received solid training in exegesis, in biblical theology, in systematic theology, in church history, and pastoral theology. They have studied diligently to show themselves approved workmen and have been equipped to contend for the truth once for all delivered to the saints.

A lot of great work is being done by men who have studied in the West with the best resources that Reformed evangelicalism has to offer and have taken that education back to their home countries to plant and lead and reform churches that are rooted in God’s Word—to proclaim the gospel with the light of Scripture and the glory of God. In most instances, their education has been self-funded or providentially made possible through a few benefactors. My own MDiv education was entirely self-funded; my PhD education was made possible largely by faithful Indian benefactors. Not a single American church partnered with me financially for six years of my theological education.

I firmly believe that the best way forward for Global Christianity to grow in biblical health is for churches in the West to invest in giving faithful leaders in the Global South the best theological education imaginable. A faithful and godly Ethiopian pastor in my region recently said, with tears in his eyes, “People are starving here—they’re starving for the word of God—they’re starving for the truth.” Who will feed them?

I contend that the way forward is by the Western church re-channeling its missions funds to sponsor faithful leaders like this Ethiopian brother to be trained at the best seminaries in the West in hermeneutics, theology, and exegesis in Greek and Hebrew, so that they can then write theology in their own languages, address the issues in their own contexts, and confront the idolatrous worldviews of their own cultures. This suggestion, however, is often met with a fear—a well-meaning fear harbored mainly by Western leaders—that leaders from the Global South who are trained in the West never return to their own contexts. In response, we might state that this fear is misplaced for several reasons. First, such a fear overlooks the labors of several faithful men who have been trained in the West and have indeed returned to their Global South contexts where they are doing excellent work. I personally know several faithful men who have bypassed opportunities in the West in order to return home. Second, while some Global South Christians do opt to remain in the West, for every such leader, there exists an equivalent number of Western missionaries who raise huge amounts of support and then return home after only a few years on the field. The fear of Western missionaries who return home quickly (whatever their reasons) does not stop us from funding more missionaries; why should the few Global South leaders who stay in the West stop us from funding the training of others? Let’s also not forget that with globalization and the growing diaspora of unreached peoples even in the West, in God’s providence, there does exist a need for non-Western leaders in Western contexts as well. Third, there are good means to ensure that our funding of Global South leaders will bear fruit in their home contexts. For instance, some churches and institutions have sponsored the education of Global South leaders under a “covenant agreement,” in which the leader agrees to go back to his home context after his education, following which the sponsored amount becomes a repayable loan. Finally, the sad truth is that Western seminaries and Western churches, at present at least, provide much better education in sound doctrine than any institutions in the Global South. I therefore firmly believe that training Global South leaders in the West is a preliminary and necessary step to make it possible to foster healthy churches and faithful theological training centers in the Global South in the future.

Having invested in training indigenous leaders, we must then sponsor the establishment of theological training centers in the Global South run by indigenous leaders with faithful, biblical, Reformation theology. Moreover, we need to sponsor the planting of strong, healthy, doctrinally robust churches led by qualified men—churches that will become hubs of sound theology and pillars and buttresses of the truth—churches that will train and produce the next generation of leaders and reformers in Global Christianity.

We want to see pulpits aflame with the glory of God’s Word proclaimed, which in turn creates churches under the authority of the Word, where Christ is cherished and honored as He should be. If that’s what we want, we must equip and send out men who will become, Lord-willing, the Augustines and Calvins of the urban hubs of the Global South who will then have a ripple effect on the Christianity of the surrounding regions.

We need to invest in training leaders, in planting sound and healthy churches, and in starting strong seminaries in the Global South. We must begin dreaming of where the Genevas and Cambridges of the Global South will be! And to do that, we need to take the long view—invest in indigenous men who will devote the time and effort necessary to study and will work hard to dig deep wells from which many will drink the pure water of God’s Truth.

The Lord promised that He will bless and protect his sheep with faithful shepherds (Jer 23:4)—let’s work to raise up a generation of shepherds in the Global South who will feed and nurture the sheep rather than shear and devour them

5. Conclusion

In 2006, Philip Jenkins prophetically observed:

The churches that have made most dramatic progress in the Global South have been either Catholic (of a traditionalist and fideistic kind) or evangelical and Pentecostal Protestant sects. Membership in Pentecostal and independent churches already runs into the hundreds of millions, and congregations are located in precisely the regions of fastest population growth. Within a few decades, such denominations will represent a far-larger segment of global Christianity and just conceivably a majority. They preach messages that, to a westerner, appear simplistically charismatic, visionary, and apocalyptic. In this thought-world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith healing, exorcism, and dream-visions are all fundamental parts of religious sensibility. For better or worse, the dominant churches of the future could have much in common with those of medieval or early modern European times.[11]

The need for Reformation in Global Christianity is urgent and real. May we work hard to ensure that the shape of world Christianity fifty years from now is not dominated by faith-healers, so-called prophets, and false apostles, but by godly men who preach and teach the whole counsel of God. And let’s pray and hope that by God’s grace and our faithful efforts, the flame lit in the Reformation would blaze bright in Global Christianity, for the glory of God alone.