Rediscovering Forgotten Ways I.

In an arresting article found in the October 2002 Atlantic Monthly Philip Jenkins (Penn State, author of The Next Christiendom: The Coming of Global Christianity and Lost Christianities) wrote: "As the media have striven in recent years to present Islam in a more sympathetic light, they have tended to suggest that Islam, not Christianity, is the rising faith of Africa and Asia, the authentic or default religion of the world's huddled masses. But Christianity is not only surviving in the global South, it is enjoying a radical revival, a return to scriptural roots. We are living in revolutionary times. But we aren't participating in them. By any reasonable assessment of numbers, the most significant transformation of Christianity in the world today is not the liberal Reformation that is so much desired in the North. It is the Counter-Reformation coming from the global South. And it's very likely that in a decade or two neither component of global Christianity will recognize its counterpart as fully or authentically Christian." At the United Methodist Convocation of Cabinets in the fall 2007, one of the African bishops spoke eloquently on what they were doing with the resultant transformative social witness and expansive evangelistic growth. A variety of other speakers commented on how much we had to learn from the so call 3rd world. Our best thinkers and practioners call this "missions to the first world approach." It involves translating best practices in missin developed over the last century in the two-thirds world in the first world." (Alan Hirsch) I hope to write a series of blogs Alan Hirsch's insightful book Rediscovering Forgotten Ways. More later.