Justin Browne made some keen observations about the 2007 statistics, "Status of Global Mission, 2007, in the Context of 20th and 21st Centuries", published by Gordon Conwell’s Center for Study of Global Christianity. His quick observations include:
- The huge global urbanization trend.
From the 1800’s when only 4% of the world’s population was urban to
even the 1970’s when slightly more than a third of the population lived
in cities, in 2025, its projected that nearly 60% of the world’s
population will live in cities.
- And not just small cities, but very big cities. In 2025 its projected that there will be over 650 cities in the world that have a population of over 1 million people.
- In the future, the majority of the world’s poor will live in cities. In 2025, the urban poor will number 3 billion people. That’s 38% of the world’s overall projected population.
- These cities are huge mission fields.
I could write a lot about this, and perhaps will in a future post, but
the statistic in this report does it pretty well by showing that right
now, in 2007, 146,000 non-Christians come to cities every day!
- The percentage of Christians to the total population is projected to remain fairly flat. Its 33% right now and projected to rise to only 34%.
Read Justin's full post for the rest of his observations. What other trends did you see from the statistics table? What do you think this means for your church?
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