GLOBAL FORCES SHAPING YOUTH MINISTRY



Global Forces Shaping Youth ministry in the 21st Century

by Dr. Arthur W. Deyo

International Liaison Director, Asia-Pacific

YFC/USA World Outreach Office

adeyo@

August, 2000

Englewood, Colorado

U.S.A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Current Trends and Projections for Eight Change-Drivers 3

Demographic Changes 3

Implications of Demographic Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 11

Technological Changes 12

Implications of Technological Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 18

Social/Lifestyle/Cultural Changes 19

Implications of Social/Lifestyle/Cultural Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 30

Idea Shifts 30

Implications of Idea Shifts for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 33

Environmental Changes 34

Implications of Environmental Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 37

Economic Changes 37

Implications of Economic Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 47

Religious/Theological Changes 48

Implications of Religious/Theological Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 60

Political Changes 61

Implications of Political Changes for Youth Ministry in the 21st Century 65

Conclusion 66

Endnotes 68

Acknowledgements 71

GLOBAL FORCES SHAPING YOUTH MINISTRY

IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Introduction

Youth Ministry is a relatively recent phenomenon when compared to all of church history. It all started when the Sunday School concept was created and integrated into churches between 1780 and 1800 A.D. Then in 1851 the YMCA came to the United States, and in 1881 Christian Endeavor was founded. When the U.S. Supreme Court required high school attendance in 1875, the way was paved for the formation of organizations that centered around the U.S. high school student.

To cite a few: In 1906 the Boy’s Club of America; 4-H for farm boys and girls in 1907; in 1910 Camp Fire Girls and Boy Scouts of America; in 1933 Miracle Book Club; in 1940 Young Life; in 1943 Youth For Christ; and in 1955 Fellowship of Christian Athletes.[i]

A few visionary churches in large metropolitan areas stepped to employ full-time youth directors in the late 40’s. But it wasn’t until the 1960’s that most local churches began experimenting with hiring part-time youth directors. Then in the 1970’s progressive local churches began hiring full-time youth pastors, and by the 80’s full-time youth pastors became prominent in many churches. It’s almost viewed as a necessity today for a church of 200 or more to employ a professionally-trained, full-time youth pastor.

It was organizations like Youth For Christ and Young Life that promoted the concept of church youth ministry, and even trained hundreds if not thousands of youth ministers. Organizations like Youth Specialties and the National Network of Youth Ministries began to carry the torch for youth ministry. The concepts of partnering and networking began to emerge because each church and parachurch ministry began to see that they alone could not reach all the young people in their communities. [ii]

In his book The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry,[iii] Dr. Mark Senter put it bluntly:

“The stage is set for the coming revolution in youth ministry. It must happen. A spiritual vacuum exists. Fewer than one in four public high schools have a Christian presence focused on their campuses. The most effective youth groups in the nation rescue only an average of nine converts each year. The student world is facing a spiritual crisis of gigantic proportions.”

The problem was clear: With “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men” (all the churches and parachurches) we were not reaching enough students with a quality, culturally-relevant, relationship-based presentation of the Gospel. Thus, in the last ten years, both in business and in Christian ministry, the idea of partnerships – teaming up to form “strategic organizational alliances,” – has been on the cutting edge of productive activity. More than 20,000 alliances were formed worldwide during 1997-98.[iv]

Even dominant Microsoft Corporation and struggling Apple Computer, Inc. formed a broad product and technology development agreement. Mike King, of YouthFront in Kansas City, commented on this major alliance in the computer industry:

“If Microsoft and Apple, who have, in the past, had a genuine and deep disdain for one another, can set differences aside for the purpose of making money, how much more should the Church of Jesus Christ be willing to focus on the core of what it believes to be most important? Our partnering is for eternal results.”[v]

In his high-priestly prayer just before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed for unity among his disciples (Jn. 17:20-23). Soon after that the first century church demonstrated that unity in Acts 2:42-44. “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” The resulting power of their unity is quickly revealed in Acts. 2:47: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

As we begin the 21st Century, many churches and youth ministry organizations are being forced to make great paradigm shifts. This means not only changing our outlook but changing our whole personal view of the world and how we instinctively believe that it works. One of those shifts is to begin to bring all of those involved in youth ministry in a given community together for one purpose of youth evangelism and discipleship.

Kansas City Youth For Christ did this in 1998-99 when they changed their name to YouthFront and formed the YouthFront Alliance, in which over 300 churches and 200 youth workers partnered together to reach the secondary school students in the greater Kansas City area. As a result there were more than 1500 decisions for Christ in 100+ clubs from January to June, 1999. Within a five-month period of the same year they held two city-wide YouthFront Alliance/Club 121 events with a combined total of 15,000 in attendance. Over 600 students came to Christ at these events.[vi]

But there are other paradigm shifts that we must be ready to make if our youth ministries are to survive. Today, virtually every area of our personal and organizational lives is being twisted and turned, seemingly at the whim of forces beyond our control. Political, demographic, economic and technological changes are unraveling the very social and spiritual fabric of the family and society at a staggering rate.

In the business world, the top 500 companies form the Fortune 500. But between 1985 and 1990 alone, 143 corporations on the Fortune 500 list were dropped and replaced by new up-and-coming ones. Most people agree that their demise was a result of their inability to see, understand and respond to change. Likewise, many “” companies disappear almost as fast from the internet as they appear. They are unprepared for such rapidly changing markets in such a lightning-paced medium.

In I Chronicles 12:32 we are told that the men of Issachar “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” If it was necessary for these men to understand and comprehend the times 1000 years before Christ, how much more must we understand these changing times in the 21st Century!

Current Trends and Projections for Eight Change-Drivers

The last two decades have witnessed the breaking down of a world order that had been in place since World War II. Early expectations were that the post-Cold War period would see increased prosperity and reduced levels of conflict. Instead, the beginning of the 21st Century is a time of great uncertainty and fear in many parts of the world. Hope for a better future seems threatened by a combination of economic, political, religious, cultural and environmental factors over which people feel little control.

The fall of Communism was a major, unexpected turning point in world affairs. With very few nations hanging onto the Communist ideology, it appears that market-oriented economics now dominates politics and will be a major contributor to the future of mankind on this planet. This economic determinism not only seems to govern politics, but also the shaping of values, social relations and the way people plan for the future. For any youth ministry organization to stay alive in such a world, it needs to develop an understanding of the forces reshaping the globe as well as the effect of those forces on its ministry.

Change-drivers are the major forces of change at work at this time in human history. Like the ocean tides, change-drivers cannot be controlled, nor can they be ignored. But they can be used. Effective organizations are the ones who recognize these forces and position themselves so that the change-drivers push the organization toward fulfilling its mission.[vii] We will discuss in this order the following change-drivers: Demographic changes, technological changes, social/lifestyle/cultural changes, idea shifts, environmental changes, economic changes, religious/theological changes and political changes.

Demographic Changes

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the world’s population reached one billion people at the start of the nineteenth century. By 1950 there were over 2.5 billion people on the planet. A new milestone was reached in October, 1999 when the world’s population passed the 6 billion mark. Projections are that 7.8 billion people will be alive in 2025, and 9 billion in 2050. See figure 1 for a graph of the world population in historical perspective[viii] and figure 2 for a graph of the world population from 1950 to 2050.[ix] Figure 3 shows the world population growth rate,[x] which in 2000 was 1.25 % per year – down from a high in 1963 of 2.2.

Population growth has continued throughout the past several decades in spite of the decline in fertility rates that began in the mid-1960’s and, in some countries, in spite of the toll taken by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Even though the current increase in world population reflects a slowing of growth, in absolute terms world population growth continues to be substantial. World population increase is currently equivalent to adding a new Israel, Egypt, Jordan, West Bank and Gaza to the existing world total each year.[xi]

The baby boom of the United States was a precursor to a global boom – and we are going to be living with the consequences for many decades to come. Of the projected increase in population between now and 2025, 99% of that increase will occur in Africa, Asia or Latin America.[xii] Fully 50% of the increase is projected for Asia. At the turn of the century, China had 1.25 billion people and India passed the 1 billion mark. India will pass China in population sometime between 2035 and 2050. India could reach 2 billion by century’s end, and the United States could double in population to 571 million by 2100. Figure 4 shows the population growth distribution between the less developed and more developed countries.[xiii] See figure 5 for a list of the populations of the ten largest countries in both 2000 and 2050.[xiv]

Fertility and mortality continue to decline in most of the world’s regions, and both have reached levels unprecedented in human history. However, substantial gaps still exist, and will continue to exist, between the world’s more developed and less developed regions in two areas: 1) numbers of children born to a woman, on average, and 2) the risks of dying at every age faced by those children. On average, the number of children born to a woman in the developing world is double the number born to a woman living in one of the world’s more developed regions. Fertility remains especially high in sub-Saharan Africa where there are nearly six births per woman. This year about 7.7 million children worldwide will die before their first birthday. See figure 6 for the total fertility rates per world region in 1998. See figure 7 for specific child mortality rates in developing countries.[xv]

Elderly on the Increase

Over the course of the next 25 years, the age structure of world population will continue to shift, with older groups comprising an ever-increasing share of the total. For example, in the next 25 years, the world’s elderly population (those ages 65 and above) will more than double while the world’s youth (population under age15) will grow by only 6%, and the number of children under age 5 will grow by less than 5%. Thus, the world community as a whole will face an elderly support burden (the ratio of people ages 65 and over to the working age population – ages 15 to 64) nearly 50% larger in 2025 than in 2000. See figure 8 for a comparison of overall dependency ratios between youth and elderly for less developed countries (LDCs) and more developed countries (MDCs).[xvi]

Even with the rapid growth of the elderly, however, the bulk of the dependent population worldwide will remain children during the coming quarter-century. Nearly 9 in every 10 people making up the combined dependent age groups in the less developed regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America are under age 15 today. And children will still account for three-fourths of all dependents in these regions in 2025. Only in the United States and other more developed countries will the elderly come to outnumber population under the age of 15 over the course of the next 25 years.[xvii] Thus, less developed countries need youth ministry more than ever – but very little youth ministry exists there.

Migration to the Cities

As population doubles, urban population triples as people move to the cities to find food and work. In 1994, 45% of the world’s people were urban dwellers, but by 2025, that proportion is likely to exceed 60%. The population density is highest in the world’s poorest cities. Could it be that God is allowing vast numbers of people (youth) to accumulate in cities so they are easier to reach with the Gospel?

According to the demographic yearbook of the United Nations, there are currently 558 million youth ages 10-14 in the world and 514 million youth ages 15-19. The total number of youth ages 10-19 is 1.07 billion, or 17.8% of the world’s population. Projected totals by 2010 for youth ages 10-19 are 1.25 billion. There will be 1.34 billion youth (17.2% of the total population) in that age bracket by 2025. The sheer numbers of young people around the world appears to be a Macedonian call to reach them with the Gospel. See figure 9 for official United Nations youth statistics by year and age category.[xviii]

Devastating Toll of HIV/AIDS

Current estimates indicate that 34.3 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS, which has already caused at least 18.8 million deaths. AIDS will cause early death in as many as half the young adults in the hardest hit areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The current number of people infected in Africa - 25 million - is about three times higher than predicted in 1991. The areas of greatest concern are the seven countries in the southern cone, clustered around South Africa, where 20% of all adults are in infected with HIV. South Africa has more HIV-infected people than any other country - about 4.2 million. India is second with 3.7 million. The nation with the highest prevalence is Botswana, where 36% of adults are infected.

“The demographic effects will only be getting worse in the coming years, even if by some miracle HIV infection suddenly stopped,” said Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, the United Nations program on AIDS. “I believe we are only at the beginning of the actual impact on societies of AIDS.” Researchers predict that in any country where 15% of the adults are now infected, at least 35% of current teenagers will die of AIDS.[xix] See figure10 for life expectancies with and without AIDS in 1998 for selected countries.[xx]

The rate of HIV infections among gay and bisexual men in San Francisco has nearly tripled over the past two years. Health experts said that powerful AIDS drugs are making people complacent and that the “safe-sex” message is no longer getting through. “We think this needs to be a wake-up call for the rest of the nation,” said Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of the National Center for HIV, STD and TB prevention in the U.S.[xxi]

Great Need for International Youth Workers

It is a fact that 97% of the world’s professionally trained youth workers are in North America and that they are working with only 3% of the world’s teen population. This startling discovery should motivate existing youth workers to train thousands more international youth workers. Noted sociologist Tony Campolo has commented,

“In most of the ‘two-thirds nations,’ youth work is almost completely ignored by missionary organizations. Ironically, we’ve ignored youth ministry as a form of

foreign missions, even though 90% of the population in the Two-Thirds nations are under age 25, and more than 30 percent of the population are teenagers.” [xxii]

It is a new day in youth ministry – with networking and partnerships between churches and parachurch ministries city-wide, nationwide and worldwide. No longer can we afford to be directed inward, but we must be directed outward as we work together to reach more young people for His Kingdom.

Implications of Demographic Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. In the next 25 years the world’s elderly population will more than double while the world’s youth population will grow by only 6%. Thus, the world community as a whole must be more prepared than ever to minister to these elderly and even utilize some of them in youth ministry.

2. Even with the rapid growth of the elderly, the bulk of the dependent population worldwide will remain children and youth during the coming quarter-century. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America nine out of ten dependent people will be children under the age of 15, while only one in ten will be elderly (over age 65). Thus, less developed countries need youth ministries more than ever – yet these vast continents have less than 3% of the world’s trained youth workers. This should motivate existing youth workers to train thousands more youth workers in all the developing countries.

3. There is phenomenal migration from the rural areas to the cities. By the year 2025 the urban population will increase from just over 45% to over 60%. Perhaps God is moving vast numbers of people (youth) to the cities so they are easier to reach for the Gospel. All the more reason that ministries need to focus on major cities.

Technological Changes

The Computer Revolution

Computers are now a part of almost every aspect of life--telephones, watches, cameras, TVs, washers, dryers, ovens, cooling and heating systems, and automobiles all have them. New homes in the West are being wired so that all electronic equipment is run by a centrally-controlled computer. And this is only the beginning of the revolution.

If we needed one word to describe the twentieth century, it would be the word technology.

Technological improvements are coming at a dizzying pace. Computer and communication advances lead the way. The production of transistors, the most basic unit in a computer, is rapidly increasing. As the density of the chips increases, the cost of computers decreases precipitously. Computing power is now increasing at the rate of 4000 times per decade for a given unit of cost.[xxiii]

Exponential Speed Increase

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore had observed as far back as 1965 that the number of transistors on a chip had been doubling every year. “At that rate,” he predicted, “the industry could cram 65,000 transistors on a chip by 1975.” That was unthinkable then. As companies rushed to keep ahead, “Moore’s Law,” (doubling every year) became a self-fulfilling prophecy. See figure 11 for Moore’s Law so far. Some have pointed out that within 10 years Moore’s law could come to a screeching halt, as transistors will get so small that they will be only a few atoms apart, and after that they can’t get any smaller.

At least three new technologies, however, are proving not only that Moore’s Law is alive and well, but they are leaving it “in the dust.” In recent years computer graphics, storage and networking have been zipping ahead at a clip that makes Moore’s “doubling” look downright sluggish. In 1998 a $250 state-of-the-art graphics board could generate roughly one million polygons per second – a pretty sharp image. But by the end of 2001, industry insiders expect a minimum of 100 million polygons per second – a 100-fold increase in three years – far faster than Moore’s Law.

Today a typical new PC comes with up to 20 gigabytes of storage, but by the end of 2000, 180-gigabyte versions will be available. By 2003, a single hard drive the size of a thin paperback will have a terabyte of storage – that’s 1000 gigabytes. Optical fiber networking is a third area of lightning growth. That’s the underground cable that will someday bring an ultrafast broadband

Internet communication to homes everywhere. The magic here is something known as “wave-division multiplexing.” In the past a single fiber-optic cable could send one message on a wave of light. Now, technology divides that light wave into two, four, eight, or even 16 colors, sending a different message on each. That technology is doubling every six months.[xxiv]

In June, 2000, IBM announced that it had built the most powerful supercomputer in the world. It is able to perform 12.3 trillion operations per second. An earlier version proved capable of defeating the world’s greatest chess player in a 1997 tournament. The latest machine is intended to continue the advance toward matching and eventually surpassing the computing capacity of the human brain – estimated to compute about 1000 times faster than this computer, dubbed “ASCI White,” which covers the equivalent of two basketball courts and weighs 106 tons. At IBM’s current rate, a supercomputer could exceed the brain’s capacity in ten years.

In time, IBM claims ASCI White could lead to the end of nuclear testing. The Clinton Administration argues that such supercomputers can be used to simulate nuclear explosions, and that these are a reliable way of appraising the U.S. weapons stockpile. When a supercomputer reaches 100 trillion operations per second, it will be able to perform a full three-dimensional nuclear simulation in a month. That is expected to happen by 2004.[xxv]

The world is being wired up. Global networks of tens of millions of personal machines, connected to each other by fiber-optic and satellite links, will allow almost instantaneous communication. Entire countries are wiring every home, school and business. Japan expects to be completed by 2015.[xxvi] Singapore now has a computer in every home and has a goal to have one in every room.

Growth and Use of the Internet

The Internet is growing at a phenomenal pace worldwide – with the number of users doubling every six months. In the U.S. senior citizens are the fastest-growing age segment of the Internet community – especially when it comes to buying online. Altogether, 68% of online buyers are over 40 years of age. Of those over 65, 16% currently buy online. In April, 1999, it was estimated by the Nua Internet Surveys that the online population worldwide was at 152 million users. They further estimated that 320 million people will be online by the end of 2000, and over 720 million by the end of 2005.

But young people, especially children, are most comfortable using the web for a variety of reasons. Many toddlers start using computers, CDs and the web at age two or under. About 47% of the total U.S. population of kids age 2-12 are projected to be online by the year 2002. The Internet is rapidly overtaking television as young peoples’ favorite media pastime. In the U.S. children age 9-11 said they log on about three times a week, while teens age 15-17 said they log on about five days a week. Both adults and children say that if they were stranded on a deserted island, they’d prefer to have a computer with an Internet connection rather than a television or a phone.

Computer Economics, Inc. in California, expects the number of Internet-using minors worldwide to surpass 77 million by the year 2005. North America and the Asia-Pacific Area will continue to experience the most growth in Internet usage among children. The number of Internet users in the Asia-Pacific Area will increase nearly fourfold from 2001 to 2005.[xxvii] Figure 12 shows the projected growth of Internet users under age 18:[xxviii]

A survey of 6500 Chinese youth between the ages of 14 and 28 in nine Chinese cities and provinces showed that 69% of China’s urban youth have no access to the Internet. Only 1.9% considered themselves Internet “fans,” and 3.4% said they surf regularly. As of January, 2000 there were 5000 Chinese web-sites on the Internet. There are currently 1.5 million Chinese online, but it is estimated that they will have 9.4 million online by 2002. This will make China the second biggest Asian Internet market after Japan. Internet access costs the average Chinese user 10% of his or her income, while in the U.S. Internet users spend less than one percent of their income on Internet services.

By the end of 2002 Australia is expected to have 5.8 million users, up from just over three million in 1997. Australia is expected to be the largest generator of electronic commerce revenue – about $7.7 billion by the end of 2002. As of December, 1998, it was estimated that India had about half a million internet users, but by the turn of the century they would have about 1.5 million. South Korea will be the third largest Asian Internet user by the end of 2002, with about four million surfers, compared to less than two million in 1997. Taiwan is expected to be next with about three million. The rest of Asia is expected to have about two million users logging on.

As of December, 1998 Germany was the largest Internet market in Europe with seven million users online – over 10% of the population. Only 4% of the population, or 420,000 were online weekly in Belgium. Many European countries are seeing growth rates of 200% per year.[xxix]

Youth Ministry and the Internet

Some youth ministries are using this technology to reach more young people with the Gospel. For example, Singapore Youth For Christ sponsored a two-day program for 3500 eager young people called “Youth Got I.T.!” The youth descended upon various parts of Singapore surfing the net with such high tech gadgets as HP jornadas, then “beaming” messages to one another, and “defusing bombs” – all this to track down a cyber-hacker. In the late afternoon buses transported the kids to a city-wide E-Festival. The evening climaxed with a concert called “Youth Beat,” where winners were treated to 45 minutes of song, dance and mimes. Winners were also announced, and walked away with such prizes as HP palm-top computers, Canon printers and scanners, and Iomega zip drives, all of which were provided by the event sponsors. The Gospel was presented and many responded positively.[xxx]

Worldwide Reach of Television

Television has brought the world (mostly Western) to some of the most remote places on earth. It has made millions of poor people aware of their condition, and it has made others aware of it too. MTV, BBC, CNN, American sit-coms and soap operas are all beamed to most countries of the world. An MTV vice-president has said, “India is the most enthusiastic audience we have.” Star TV, which beams these programs from Burma to Beijing, has been cited as the chief reason for major changes in Indian culture, including popular music and fashion.[xxxi] But there is growing unrest because TV makes it more difficult for religious groups and ethnic cultures to maintain their traditions.

Through interactive TV people can talk back to their television sets. They can shop, express opinions, get involved in issues, and eventually they will even vote for political candidates from their living rooms.[xxxii] Distance learning is becoming more and more popular as people in remote places are able to access the web or obtain training CDs. It is now possible for major institutions to offer complete degree programs over the Internet.

But one writer, Richard Cohen, of the Washington Post believes the “virtual campus” is a mistake. Reacting to the announcement by high-tech billionaire, Michael Saylor, that he plans to donate $100 million to create an online university, he states,

“The Internet cannot replace what happens when people rub elbows with people. That is the reason culture and knowledge have always come from cities. The Internet can be no role model. It can offer no chance remark that will set you thinking. Virtual is not the same as real.”[xxxiii]

Whether people are in favor of such distance learning, it is already happening and will continue to become more popular.

Beneficial Outcomes of Technology

Technology is neither good nor bad in and of itself, but it can be used for either beneficial or destructive purposes. One benefit is that technology helps put countries like India to work from afar. Prompted by the success of the country’s world-class software industry, a booming $5 billion a year business, Indian officials and entrepreneurs are making extraordinary efforts to invite Western companies to bring their office jobs there.

Chances are, your file, dictated over the phone by your doctor, could be typed up in India and shot back overnight into the physician’s computer. Miss the monthly payment on your refrigerator and the person who calls to remind you may be sitting in an office in New Delhi. British Airways beams a scanned copy of every one of the 35 million tickets it sells each year to India, where workers reconcile the tickets with billing information sent from travel agents. The cost of manpower is so much cheaper in two-thirds world countries, and the quality of service is so high that U.S. companies will find it hard to stay away. About 40,000 Indians are now working in this remote service industry, but it is predicted that by 2008, 700,000 Indians will be employed in this way.[xxxiv]

In June, 2000, Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, visited Denver and predicted that the world will go digital in the next five years. He predicted that “the digital economy is an unstoppable thing.” He went on to predict that within the next few years, people will have computer displays hanging in every room of their house that will be programmed to flip through pictures of family photos, art or the family schedule. They’ll hold online chats with their buddies on the same screen as they watch television, and will see their TV programs whenever they have the time. Business executives will take digital pictures of meetings, he said, so they can go back and see them whenever they want; or they can email clips to other people. Computer viruses will be eliminated with smart cards and biometric devices that will be used instead of passwords for computer security.[xxxv]

Another benefit of technology is the improving health care around the world. The World Health Organization in a June, 2000 report issued a highly contentious first attempt to compare the world’s health systems. It concluded that France provides the world’s best health care, with Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Malta, Singapore, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan rounding out the top ten. That doesn’t mean that the French and Italians are the world’s healthiest people. Japan actually won that distinction.

The WHO report basically measures “bang for the buck.” It compares a population’s health with how effectively governments spend their money on health, how well the public health system prevents illness instead of just treating it, and how fairly the poor, minorities and other special populations are treated. Since the United States spends more per person on health care than any other country, yet has 40 million uninsured Americans amid a patchwork of different quality private insurance and government programs, it ranked 37th in the world. The U.S. spends a stunning $3,724 per person annually on health care, yet its people live 4.5 years less than the Japanese who spend $1,759 per year and three years less than the French who spend just $2,125.[xxxvi]

Future Predictions

Several emerging technologies that will help shape the next quarter century are:[xxxvii]

• Biotechnology: this will be a revolution far more profound and far-reaching than anything we have experienced with automation or computers. When biotech drugs, now in clinical trials, receive FDA approval in the U.S., we will see billion dollar companies spring up overnight, with possible growth rates of 100% per month.

• Nanotechnology: “nano” means really, really small…motors the size of mosquitoes, generators the size of pinheads, and gears so small you need a microscope to see them. These already exist, and it is merely a matter of time and engineering before they are found in our appliances, cars, pockets, and purses, doing things we can hardly imagine in a very space-efficient, energy-efficient, and materials-efficient manner.

• Computers and telecommunications: we are in the midst of a revolution in how we acquire and process information and communicate with one another. These technologies are converging, and no one knows where it will end. The combination of SOHO (small office, home office), virtual offices and the rising cost of central city property will create less demand for high-rise office towers. Cities will take on a more human scale. Virtual reality headsets will allow one to take a client on a tour through six factories with all of their sights, sounds, and even smells, and then visit only the one or two that appear to fit the client’s requirements.

Negative Aspects of Technology

On the negative side of the computer industry, however, Singaporeans are seeing a growing gap between the cyber-haves and the have-nots. Mr. Darke Sani, managing director of Apple Computer South Asia, has voiced concern that technology will create a social rift between the IT-savvy and the rest. This digital divide will worsen as skilled Internet users are able to get cheaper supplies and information on the Web. The “clicked-on elite” will also probably make more in one day buying stocks on the Internet than an office worker earns in a year. The unskilled and unqualified could become an unemployable class, lacking both the ability and the aptitude to keep pace with changes.[xxxviii]

Furthermore, Bill Joy, chief scientist and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Inc., one of the chief inventors and manufacturers of web technology, has written an extraordinary critique suggesting that new technologies could cause “something like extinction” of humankind within the next two generations. He views as credible the prediction that by 2030, computers will be a million times more powerful than they are today. He respects the possibility that robots may exceed humans in intelligence, while being able to replicate themselves. These in turn could unleash self-replicating, mechanical or biological plagues. Joy states, “If we don’t do anything, the risk is very high of one crazy person doing something very bad.” He argues that this threat to humanity is much greater than that of nuclear weapons because the latter are hard to build whereas these new technologies are not hard to come by. Therefore, he reasons, the problem will not be “rogue states, but rogue individuals.”[xxxix]

Implications of Technological Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. Computers are now part of nearly every aspect of life. The world is being wired up, and the Internet is growing so fast the number of users worldwide is doubling every six months. Innovative ministries will use this technology as a vastly improved means of communication to get the Gospel out in new and dynamic ways.

2. Young people, and even small children, feel at home using computers, CD-ROM, the worldwide web, and interactive TV. They make use of these emerging technologies more than anyone else – even in developing countries. Vast numbers of these young people (mostly non-Christians) will soon be found in countries like China and India. This presents a great opportunity to ministries that are “wired up” and ready to communicate with them.

3. Distance learning is becoming increasingly popular for people of all ages. Thus, ministries that can distribute well-produced training CD-ROMs or DVDs to volunteers, staff, and prospective members will continue to grow and flourish.

4. Technology, though neither good nor bad in and of itself, will continue to produce major changes in our world, for both good and bad. Some, like Bill Gates, are very optimistic, while others are so pessimistic that they see “something like extinction” of the human race on down the road. Ministries, both youth and adult, must strive to build good morals into people so that these new technologies have more positive than negative results. But they must be prepared to minister to people who are affected by either extreme.

Social/Lifestyle/Cultural Changes

Technology gives us the tools to do things we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. These technical devices not only make our lives fuller and easier; they also change the way we think and spend our time. They reconfigure the grid through which we see and understand our world.

But not all technology is broadly embraced. As pointed out above, some technology has been used for destruction. But some has simply had a negative influence by changing values and thus behavior and lifestyles. Our social and spiritual values are the very basis for how we live and for the meaning we get from life.

God’s Building Block for Society

Since Biblical times the family has been the basic building block for society. God has worked through families all throughout history. This concept is not strictly limited to the traditional nuclear family. Under the Levitical code the unit of government was the tribe, which consisted of families or clans, and households. These extended families were designed for the support and encouragement of each member.[xl]

Since the family was God’s invention, He protects it in the Ten Commandments, and His Word uses the family as a way to talk about God Himself. Since our dependence on Him is that of a helpless baby to a loving parent, we are told to address Him as “our Father.” Since His relationship to us in Christ is as loving and intimate as that between a groom and his bride, the church is called “the Bride of Christ.” Husbands and wives are told to emulate the relationship between Christ and the church in their relationship with each other.[xli]

The family remained quite intact through the agricultural era, but the advent of the industrial revolution took the father out of the home. More recently, with the beginning of the information or service age, mother is gone too. The divorce rate in most Western societies is higher than it ever has been, and because of technology, the East is rapidly copying the West.

Anything Goes

Today the common view in many parts of the world is pluralism – anything goes. The forces of feminism, humanism, gay rights and children’s rights have joined together for an unprecedented attack on the family.

In parts of Europe, traditional family values have become like “fossils.” In the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, it became socially acceptable decades ago for couples to live together without being married. When they started having children, then and only then would they get married. But now they are not even bothering to do that. More than half the children being born are to unwed mothers – 54% in Sweden, 49% in Norway, 46% in Denmark, and 65% in Iceland. This is twice the rate of the rest of Europe and 60% more than the United States.

Reasons given for the whole society doing without marriage are: (1) The social welfare system provides a security blanket for everyone. “A woman has to be stupid not to realize that she has a better situation if she is not married,” said Erik Kofod, of Denmark, a founder of a fathers’ rights group; (2) the unbridled feminism that has taken hold plays a major role. Ulla Hoffman, a member of the Swedish parliament said, “We can make it by ourselves. We don’t need men to chop wood these days. We have our own money, so now men have to change if they want to feel needed.”[xlii]

In addition to the prevalence of couples doing without marriage initially or divorcing after an initial try, we live in an era of child abuse. Although the popular culture pretends to consider child abuse a terrible thing, the worst form of child abuse, namely abortion, is legally and socially acceptable in many parts of the world. It is God’s intended vocation for parents to care for their children, not to kill them.

Yet many who don’t choose abortion apparently still have unwanted children, and more and more mothers in the United States are abandoning their babies in dumpsters or other obscure locations. From 1996-99 Debi Faris, a California homemaker, worked with various law-enforcement and medical agencies to retrieve and bury 39 babies that had been abandoned. She placed them in a section of the Desert Lawn Cemetery called “Garden of Angels.” Now pending in the California legislature is a bill proposed by Ms. Faris designed to encourage mothers in crisis to turn their babies over to emergency medical workers in hospitals instead of abandoning them. The measure would, if the baby were less than 72 hours old, make such abandonment both legal and completely anonymous. Six states have already passed laws decriminalizing safe baby drop-offs and provide anonymity for the person doing the dropping. Similar laws are pending in at least 28 states.[xliii]

Re-engineering the Family

Today’s society is presuming to re-engineer the family itself. The world asks why men shouldn’t be allowed to marry men and women allowed to marry women. The state of Vermont in the U.S. has now passed a law allowing homosexuals to form marriage-like civil unions, and about 20 couples applied for the privilege on the first allowable day July 1, 2000. Many churches and theologians – whose liberal theology encourages them to throw out Scripture in favor of whatever the dominant culture dictates – are clamoring for same-sex marriage.

People ask, “What business is it of the state to regulate people’s sexual practices and living arrangements? And if two people love each other, why shouldn’t they have the legal benefits of marriage?” The answer is that sex, designed by God for all of His creation, is a family value. That is, sex is designed to engender children. The institution of marriage and the family is about having and raising children. The state’s interest in marriage has nothing to do with people’s sex lives, but with the primal social function of bringing children into the world. A family is not just a set of individuals who have sex with each other, nor is it just a set of individuals who love each other. Rather, it is a biological unit, grounded in how God made us, and a social unit. The state’s authority derives from the family, not vice versa. Human beings cannot simply pass a law to change what marriage is.

Sex Treated as an End in Itself

How have we come to this point? Some of today’s confusions about family date from the time when our culture (primarily Western) began to treat sex as an end in itself, and to separate it from procreation. People have always wanted the pleasures of sex without its result, namely, children. “Sex without responsibility” captured the unique selling proposition of the prostitution industry. But in the latter half of the 20th century, technology made that proposition universal.

Contraceptives had a profound effect on the culture’s mores about sex. Separating sex from procreation meant that each could go his separate way. Sex without the family commitments of marriage became socially acceptable. This led not only to promiscuity but to the acceptance of pornography and the constant sexual stimulation of our entertainment industry. Homosexuality too makes perfect sense, if sex is seen as simply a type of pleasure one can have, apart from its biological purpose.

Often sex becomes an occasion for the breakup of a marriage, if in their lust for unrestrained sexual pleasure, people consider the marriage bond too constraining and start looking for other partners. Most seriously of all, the separation of sex from procreation means that when sex by accident does produce a child, it becomes nothing more than an unwanted by-product. Thus, it becomes perfectly acceptable, under this mindset, to get rid of the unwanted “product of conception” (to use a common medical euphemism) by means of abortion.

Once our culture began approving of sex without procreation, the next phase of our dehumanization could begin: procreation without sex. It is no longer that unusual to conceive children via artificial insemination in a culture dish. When the sperm and egg are from a married couple and the microscopic baby is planted inside the womb of the otherwise infertile mother, this is a valid use of this medical procedure. But increasingly, the baby is placed in a surrogate’s womb, so that the mother who gives birth to the child is not the biological mother. Another option now available is to buy sperm and eggs from commercial businesses that harvest genetic material from Nobel prize winners or beauty queens, enabling would-be parents to have “designer babies.”[xliv]

A Genetic Bombshell

A “bombshell” announcement was made on June 26, 2000 that the human genome is now 85-90% deciphered. The human genome consists of two sets (each inherited from one of the parents) of 23 giant DNA molecules, or chromosomes containing more than three billion chemical units. Understanding the human genome is expected to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Biologists expect in time to develop an array of diagnostics and treatments based on the genome and tailored to individual patients, some of which will exploit the body’s own mechanisms of self-repair. The knowledge in the genome could also be used in harmful ways, particularly in revealing to relatives, employers and others the patient’s disposition to disease – thus provoking discrimination – if their privacy is not safeguarded. Mapping of the entire genome is expected to be complete by 2003.[xlv]

As reproductive technology becomes more and more sophisticated, as the human genetic code is cracked, and as genetic engineering becomes bigger and bigger business, expect more to come. Not just cloning, not just genetic engineering of children according to our consumer preference, but childbirth itself may become a relic of primitive medical practices. Once an artificial womb is perfected, genetic material can be controlled in the lab in a way that it cannot be in the human body. Freeing women from the pains of childbirth may be seen as the final step in the emancipation and full equality of women.

At that point the family will be technologically obsolete. A woman or a man (with no longer any distinction between them) can take a child off the rack, or have one made according to specifications. If individuals are too busy gratifying themselves sexually, the task of repopulating the earth could be taken up by the state, which could manufacture the workers it needs, raise them in 24-hour day-care centers, and socialize them in parentless schools.[xlvi]

The Television Phenomenon

All of these attitudes filter down to young people in various ways, but mainly through the media. Movies, television, magazines, newspapers and the Internet have a profound effect on young people, especially those in homes without much direct parental supervision.

America’s affluence may be the envy of many around the world, but the downside to such a lifestyle is taking a tremendous toll. And because of media and improved travel and communications, the virus is spreading around the world. In the U.S. many prime time TV shows from 7:00 p.m. on have explicit sexual scenes and sex talk that many children and teens watch. In addition to the prime-time shows, there is blatant daytime soap-opera sex, talk-show sex chatter, and sex crimes on the news. The media has become our true sex educator.

The decline of the family has been very apparent on TV in the last half of the 20th century. Once upon a time, father might have known best, but, if so, that was a long time ago. Over the years television dads have taken a drubbing, being demoted from patriarch and pillar to, in the words of Home Improvement’s Jill Taylor, “pathetic.” And judging by Judging Amy, fathers are no longer even relevant. Three very early shows portrayed the father as the pillar of the family: The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-66), TV’s longest running sitcom to date; Make Room for Daddy, (1953-64); and Father Knows Best, (1953-62).

By the end of the 60’s that began to change. When Archie Bunker came on the scene in All in the Family in 1971, he was never a father in the sense that Ozzie Nelson or Robert Young had been. He wasn’t the family’s foundation; he was its oppressor. At best, he was its joke. The new formula became: father no longer helps family members overcome obstacles; father creates or even is the obstacle.

Twenty years later comedian Tim Allen refined the formula with Home Improvement, which began on ABC in 1991. Mr. Allen messes something up and his wife Jill has to sort everything out. Other shows that have had a lower opinion of fatherhood were The Simpsons, Roseanne, and Family Ties. But the beginning of the real sea change was probably with Kate & Allie (1984-89) where two women shared a Greenwich Village apartment and the raising of their children. Murphy Brown (1988-98) continued the slide when at the start of the 1991 season Murphy Brown (Candace Bergen) was sleeping with two men (one an ex-husband), and found that she was pregnant – at first, not knowing by whom. She finally assures both men that she would do fine raising a child without a husband, which was what caused then Vice-President Dan Quayle to object to the show’s “poverty of values.”

One of the few real hits of the 1999 season was Judging Amy, who leaves her New York law firm and her husband, moves in with her mother and takes the bench of a juvenile court in her hometown. The show is relentlessly self-righteous, with the two women stepping in time and time again to rescue children from their families, and in particular from fathers. It’s an endless parade of bad dads – mentally-ill dads, murderous dads, religious-nut dads, female genital mutilating dads, intolerant dads – and worst of all, dads who spank.[xlvii]

Foul Language

According to a recent study by the Parents Television Council in the United States, the number of curse words on TV increased 58 percent from 1997 to 1999. The study found that CBS, to its credit, actually showed a decline in profanity over those two years, while the worst offender was the youth-oriented network, UPN. Even the barrier that kept the networks from using the four letter word that is a term for sexual intercourse is about to come down. When characters or real life guests use the word today it usually gets bleeped, but sometimes it only gets “partially bleeped” so that the word actually becomes completely clear. Ironically the new TV ratings system, which was supposedly designed to make TV clean up its act, is partly responsible. Producers actually hide behind the ratings system. “As long as they label it,” says Mark Honig, Executive Director of the Parents Television Council, “everything is allowable as far as they’re concerned.”

Pro-family movie critic, Michael Medved, states, “The one thing that has always struck me in private conversation with people who work in the entertainment industry, is how foul the language is just in conversation. It’s very striking. You will find people in executive suites trying to talk like gang members. That is not typical at Microsoft.”[xlviii]

Abuse of Women and Children

Although the “feminist movement” has taken some negative turns in Western countries, the worldwide status of women is still appalling. In the U.S. a woman is beaten every 18 minutes and raped every 6 minutes. From 20-50% of women worldwide experience domestic violence during marriage. In several countries testing for genetic defects is used to determine the sex of an unborn child for the purpose of aborting females only. On average, by age 18, girls receive 4.4 years less education than boys. There are 50 million abortions worldwide annually – 30 million of them are illegal and 20 million of them are legal.[xlix] An estimated 130 million women, most of them in Africa, have been subjected to ritual genital mutilation - a figure that is believed to grow by 2 million each year.[l]

There is a monumental “slave trade” throughout the world. Estimates used by the U.S. government indicate between 800,000 and 1 million women and children are sexually trafficked (moved to another country and forced into prostitution) worldwide each year; 50,000 of them are brought to the United States. Unlike drug-trafficking, forced prostitution is a seemingly endless source of revenue for successful trafficker-pimps: illegal drugs can be sold just once, but some illegal aliens are sold for sex over and over.

Women and girls from Mexico are promised good paying jobs and help with their immigration papers, but sold repeatedly for sex once they arrive in the United States. Many are involved in an elaborate prostitution ring in south Florida. But the case of two Mexican women was recently successfully prosecuted after FBI agents raided several brothel sites and arrested six of the traffickers. The case led to the creation of a justice department crackdown on the exploitation of illegal immigrants.

Dr. Laura Lederer, director of the Protection Project, has been consumed for 20 years by these kinds of cases. She has developed a set of color-keyed maps showing “male sex tourist routes.” Detailed maps show the origins of women who are trafficked into each country. Although Dr. Lederer has had threats on her life, she continues to push an Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking through the U.S. Congress. She first received her support from feminist organizations, but has watched their interest wane as Christian organizations have climbed aboard. She said,

“I have my ideas about what the women’s movement should be. It should be about improving the lives and quality of life for women, men and children. But the movement has lost the way somewhere along the way. Having faith-based groups come in with a fresh perspective and a biblical mandate has made a big difference.”[li]

TV Violence and Crime

More than 1000 studies have established links between TV violence and the way people behave in real life. A recent poll of 3000 teens in the U.S. asked whether movies influence teen behavior. 53% said “yes.” On July 26, 2000 a “turning point” in the battle against entertainment violence was declared when four U.S. national health associations directly linked violence in TV, music, video games and movies to increasing violence among children. This joint statement was made by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology and was the centerpiece of a public health summit on entertainment violence.[lii]

Indeed, there have been many copycat murders or bombings or other acts of violence based on movies or TV shows. Rowland Nethaway wrote in an article for the Cox News Service in the U.S.:

“Adults have always complained about their youth, but this is different. There have always been wild and rebellious kids who go off the track and do something wrong. But they knew where the track was and what was wrong. Many of today’s youth don’t seem to know right from wrong. Children are robbing, maiming and killing on whims, and with no pity and no remorse.”[liii]

Although the number of students who have been killed by gunfire on school property in the U.S. has remained steady at 21 per year from 1992-99, the intent and the gruesomeness seems to get worse. The Columbine killings in Colorado in April, 1999 “only” resulted in 15 students dead and 23 injured, but Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planted enough bombs to kill over 500 people (their desired minimum number) in the school, had they all exploded. And since that day the number of bomb threats in U.S. schools has more than doubled.[liv]

Violence at schools has been dropping since the early 1990’s, but incidents with multiple fatalities have become more common. And the age of the murderers keeps on dropping. In March, 2000 a six year old boy murdered his six year old classmate, Kayla Rolland, in his first-grade class in Michigan. The boy used a stolen gun from the flophouse where he lived with his uncle and where thugs and junkies drifted in and out. A teacher called him “aggressive,” and a classmate called him a “bully.” His father, who at the time was in jail for a parole violation connected to a burglary rap, told police the boy enjoyed violent movies and fought with classmates because he hated them. Political Science professor, William Allen, who teaches at Michigan State University, observed,

“When you have 6 year olds shooting 6 year olds, you’re not talking about crimes anymore, you’re talking about moral decay…A single message is getting through: children are not valuable. That message is trickling all the way down to the youngest members of society…There is no silver bullet to stop the culture’s spiraling decent into violence, but only the re-establishment of moral principle.”[lv]

“Cyber Slums”

Computers are also having a negative effect on children’s minds. A great deal of inappropriate material is available on the Internet. Teen “chat rooms,” especially where youngsters exchange information, comments and jokes, may contain smutty, degrading, scary or degrading content. One user likened it to dropping your child off alone in a “bad neighborhood.” Although pornography sites are technically for those over 18, many young people have computers on which these sites are not blocked.

A Forrester Research report estimates that cyberporn sales accounted for 8% of 1999’s online sales. Some of these porn websites enjoy a profit margin of 30% or more. According to Nielson NetRatings, 17.5 million surfers visited porn sites from their homes in January, 2000 – a 40% increase compared to four months earlier. There are now at least 40,000 sex-oriented sites on the Web, and probably thousands more. No one has been able to count them all.[lvi]

Crime Rates

Crime rates in the United States have been increasing for over 20 years. But recently a historic drop in violent crimes has taken place in many U.S. cities. According to interviews with people in nine of these cities, neighborhoods where drug gangs controlled the streets, commandeered empty houses and terrorized residents are slowly beginning to seem safer and more livable. In cities like Chicago there have been “extremely large increases in the quality of life”. Reasons cited are that the booming economy has created so much urban development that builders and businesses are venturing into neighborhoods that were once on the edge of livability. Cities are offering tax incentives for businesses to open up in these troubled neighborhoods. They are making major changes in schools and dismantling huge crime-plagued housing projects.[lvii]

Crime rates have always been high in societies such as the United States, but a new phenomenon has appeared – rapidly escalating crime rates in nations that previously reported few offenses. Street crimes such as murder, assault, rape, robbery, and auto theft are clearly increasing.

China and Japan have far less reported crime than other nations. China’s low rate may be due in part to its long tradition of respecting elders and paying attention to family and community. Japan’s long cultural heritage encourages citizens to succeed through teamwork and accommodation. As the need for meaningful relationships increases among youth, so do cliques in the suburbs and gangs in the cities.[lviii] Figure 13 shows crime rates around the world.[lix]

Singapore, one of the safest and most crime-free nations in the world, is having teen problems that result from the “money chase” by their parents. Many teenagers have parents who both work and “are being raised by maids or grandparents, who either spoil them or are not in a position to discipline them,” according to Alexander Lua and Eng Thiam in the January 21, 2000 edition of The Business Week in Singapore. They went on to say, “If we do not review the roles and duties of parents, we will face problems when this generation grows up. In the future young adults may no longer respect the authorities. Teenage pregnancy, delinquency and violence will increase. Our young may not be able to tell right from wrong….there is no reason why a family is not able to live on one person’s salary. But the constant need to upgrade and to have a car or a maid, makes many Singaporeans pursue money. Our young are shouting to their parents for love, not money.”[lx]

The Millennial Generation

Although youth problems are commonly known to be on the increase in most parts of the world, there are recent signs that the new Millennial Generation, or Generation “Y” is mellowing out and not following in the footsteps of the so-called Generation “X”. U.S. News & World Report offers reasons for hope:

• Teen arrests are down. Arrests for violent crimes dropped 19% from 1994-98.

• The suicide rate has been declining since 1994.

• Drug use is down, and drinking and smoking among teens has also decreased.

• Teen deaths from drunk driving accidents have dropped 59% since 1982.

• Teen pregnancy is way down. It’s still more prevalent than in other industrialized countries, but fewer older teens are having sex. Birth rates for teens 15-17 fell in 1998, a 21% drop since 1991, hitting a 40-year low.

• Abortions are down because those who choose to have sex use birth control.

• School dropout rates are lower. High school students are taking more challenging courses, and SAT scores are up from 20 years ago. More and more teens are going to college.[lxi]

An Urban Institute study in the U.S. released recently affirms the above. It found that adolescents, except for Hispanic youths, are more likely to abstain from risky behavior now than they have been at any point in the last ten years. The study identified ten risk behaviors and

tracked the proportion of teens engaged in one or more of them. Those behaviors include regular tobacco use, marijuana and cocaine use, suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts, binge drinking and sexual intercourse. The findings show that for the general population the share of teens abstaining from all 10 risky behaviors jumped from 20% to 25% from the beginning to the end of the 1990’s. The most recent data suggests that the vast majority of adolescents engage in either none or just one of them. Moreover, a majority of the youths take the majority of risks – i.e., 28% of teens account for most of the risk-taking done by adolescents.[lxii]

In his book, Third Millennium Teens, George Barna contrasts the Baby Busters (Generation “X”) of the 80’s and 90’s with the Mosaics or Third Millennium Teens (Generation “Y”) of today. These teens differ from Busters in that they are less cynical, skeptical and pessimistic; they are more career-driven; they view education as preparation for life, not a means of acceptance; they view faith as important but limited; and a larger proportion of them demonstrate a mosaic (as opposed to linear) thinking style.

One of the most important of these insights is that today’s teenagers are quite comfortable with contradictions. While their parents tend to focus on reconciling competing points of view, young people are more relaxed about the tensions that reside in the world. They are more likely to allow competing elements to co-exist without forcing a choice or developing a resolution. This comfort level is partially a function of their thinking style (i.e., mosaic rather than linear) and partly a reflection of their comfort with diversity and inclusivity. Here is a sampling of some of those contradictions.

• Teens are optimistic about the future despite feeling unfulfilled in the present.

• Most teenagers feel driven to achieve “success” although they are confused about meaning, purpose and direction in life.

• Most teens are highly interested in spirituality but few are engaged in spiritual depth.

• Millions of teenagers have been deeply wounded by their family yet most of them have a deep commitment to achieving family health in the future.

• Six out of ten teenagers believe that the Bible is accurate at the same time that even larger numbers of them reject many of its core teachings.

• The parents of teenagers leverage the greatest influence upon the faith of teens, in spite of teens and their parents spending little time interacting with regard to spirituality.

• Most teens acknowledge that gaining understanding into moral truth is critical, but relatively few take the time to arrive at a workable conclusion to the matter.[lxiii]

Myths and Answers

What does it all mean? Simply put, what you see is not always what you get; youth work is not logic-based! Today’s youth ministries must be more personal, more thoughtful and more networked than ever before. Barna goes on to describe several ministry myths, which are the reason so many youth ministries in America are not achieving the results that many desire:

• Myth #1: The teen years are evangelistically productive.

• Reality #1: If they are not saved by age 13, they probably never will be. (See figure 14)[lxiv]

• Myth #2: The church is where teen spiritual progress is made.

• Reality #2: Spiritual development in teenagers depends mostly on the family.

• Myth #3: Teenagers are more interested in relationships than spiritual insight.

• Reality #3: Providing relationships without spiritual substance results in turnover.

• Myth #4: Today’s youth group attendees are tomorrow’s church leaders.

• Reality #4: Today’s youth group attendees are tomorrow’s unchurched.

Barna’s answers on how to minister to this new group of teens includes:

• Develop a high level of excellence in your youth ministry.

• Instill a biblical worldview in teens.

• Since the parents of teenagers are so influential in their lives, serve and reach the parents.

• If you want to influence the lives of teenagers, you should be a role model, but to be an effective model your behavior must support your words.

• The souls of two generations are still up for grabs. How badly do we yearn for their salvation? Badly enough to pray fervently and daily? We cannot do it by ourselves; we need God’s help.[lxv]

Implications of Social/Lifestyle/Cultural Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. The media is one of the major influences in the lives of people of all ages, especially youth, all over the world. TV, movies, magazines, newspapers and the Internet bring sex, pornography, violence and deviant behavior into the homes of hundreds of millions of kids. Without turning the kids off, Christian ministries must teach those in their care biblical principles as well as discretion and discernment in the use of media. In addition, they must use the media to create positive alternatives to the usual garbage available.

2. The family is the God-given building block of our society. Secular and pluralistic attitudes toward the family are sick and have created a generation in crisis. Yet where sin abounds, grace abounds – providing Christian ministries with a tremendous opportunity to stand up for family values, share a better way, and make a lasting impact on the future of our expanding global society.

3. Ministry to the disenfranchised and “down-and-out” has never been more needed. In developed countries youth crimes have become more violent and perpetrated by children younger than ever, even though the crime rate has fallen slightly. In a world of materialism and progress, young people are shouting to their parents for love, not money. In developing countries the status of women and girls is appalling, children are exploited through prostitution rings and forced military service, the HIV virus is spreading rapidly, and absolute poverty continues to keep over a billion people in its grip. Opportunities for specialized ministries to “at-risk” people have never been greater.

4. The new generation of “Third Millennial Teens” is less cynical, skeptical and pessimistic than the previous “Generation X.” They are more career-driven, education oriented, spiritually-minded, and mosaic (as opposed to linear) in their thinking style. Yet if they haven’t accepted Christ by age 13, their chances of doing so later are only 10%. Thus, the challenge for Christian ministries is to reach children at a younger age and to do so especially by serving and reaching their parents, who are still the most influential people in their lives.

Idea Shifts

With knowledge doubling in less than 18 months, ideas today do not last very long. Rapidly changing technology breeds new and ever changing ideas, which in turn cause more new technology. Some shifts in our thinking are beneficial, but many are detrimental.

The Global Mind

The idea of the “global village” was satisfactory for the television era, which made everyone a neighbor to everyone else. Although TV supported the notion of a common space, instant data networks abolish both time and space. Thus, they suppress the traditional concepts of identity, both personal and collective. Users seem to cultivate a new kind of anonymity on the Net. The Net promotes all kinds of new associations based not on political but on psychological boundaries. So we are moving out of the “global village” into the “global mind.” The creation of meaning is not homogeneous anymore. This kind of global thinking aligns people of like mind, regardless of their color or country or class.

Positive uses of the “global mind” concept include:

• Youth chat lines supervised by adult staff to follow-up on retreats, conferences and camps attended by the participants.

• Sharing of ideas or reporting progress on projects to the worldwide staff of a given organization or to one’s constituency.

• Foreign language students visiting or developing second-language “virtual world” web sites in order to become immersed in both the language and the culture of the country they are studying.

• High school students pursuing a year of rigorous interdisciplinary, globally networked study of a theme which requires the students to think across traditional boundaries and begin to think critically about global issues.[lxvi]

Students in Germany, New Zealand, India and South Africa may feel more akin to each other because of their interests and talents than they do with students who live on their same street. Satellite TV carrying MTV and many other Western programs have whet the appetite of youth all over the world for Western products, music, sports and ideas.

First Products of a Computer Culture

We now have on our hands a large population of youth and young adults who are the first products of a computer culture. Speed is one of the leading characters in this culture drama. Efficiency and precision are the supporting cast. In a world of technologically accelerated exactitude, where are the zones of contemplation in which art and spirituality germinate? In a world where information technology potentially increases our isolation from direct face-to-face encounter, will art become less and less anthropomorphic? Will computer power even supercede God?[lxvii]

Jane Healy in her book Failure to Connect discusses the needs of children from infancy through adolescence. Extensive research and interviews and observations in schools and homes all over the United States has led her to conclude that computers generally stifle the physical, mental, social and emotional development of children. She quotes Harvard researcher, Howard Gardner, prominent for his work in creativity, as saying,

“If we really want our children to learn to be creative, we should focus on how much imagination is being shown by parents and teachers in their personal dealings with children. If a child is spending too much time with the computer, that is a parental decision…Children would not suffer the slightest disadvantage if they didn’t see a computer until age nine or ten. But these nervous and uptight parents – they’re afraid their kids will lose out.”[lxviii]

Healy points out that early computer use by preschool children blocks the skills of mental imagery and creative fantasy play. Imagery in a virtual computer world is greatly lacking in comparison with the imagery gained by “being there” in the actual world. Healy states,

“At ages two or three, a child who spends a great deal of time pretending is demonstrating maturity and cognitive competence. From ages four to six, children who share their pretend world with peers and play out original scenarios together tend to be more socially and cognitively skilled. From about age six on, pretense diminishes in favor of rule-based games. For good emotional and mental adjustment, children should have their fill of pretend-play in early years.”[lxix]

A nationwide (U.S.) study of adolescent physical activity was conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina and published in the June, 2000 issue of Pediatrics. The study concluded that schools need more mandatory physical education programs and parents need to unplug TVs and video games because most young Americans, particularly blacks and females, are far too sedentary. Researchers found that youngsters who had a Physical Education class five times per week were more than twice as likely to be highly active.[lxx]

Benefits of the Internet

On a more positive note, students who use the Internet have begun to see their place in the world differently. The selection of news in our one-way media has been autocratically controlled up to now by a few media executives. In contrast to this managed flow of information, however, the global Internet is giving millions of people direct access to information in ways the world has never before seen. The quality of news that flows through these global networks is usually more personal and intimate and real. (However, discernment is needed to distinguish whether information being passed around is really true or whether it is obsolete or outdated.)

Anyone with access to a PC and a phone line can share their most personal views on any subject. Millions of people who would never put pen to paper to write a letter will spend evenings writing to dozens of people online.[lxxi] On the other hand, computer buffs are discovering that email is more impersonal than an actual letter or a phone call, and in no way does it substitute for actual face-to-face contact.

Interactive multimedia systems have revolutionized the way we think about education. In a complex world of constant change, where knowledge becomes obsolete every few years, education can no longer be something that one acquires during youth to serve for an entire lifetime. Rather, education must focus on instilling the ability and motivation to continue learning throughout life. The older a person is, the more beneficial interactive multimedia through CD-ROMs or the Internet can be. The younger a person is, the more they need contact and interaction with a classroom teacher.

Additional Idea Shifts

Here is a summary of additional “idea shifts” prevalent at the turn of the century:

• People can now be contacted anytime, anyplace through cell phones without waiting for them to arrive at their home or business phones. Thus, the most important phone number you can have is a person “personal” number, not their home phone.

• People can save money, avoid traffic and be at home more by agreeing with their employer that they can work a couple days a week at home. All they need is a computer, modem, phone and fax.

• You can do anything as long as you don’t hurt someone.

• Body piercings and tattoos are simply a person’s way of expressing individuality.

• One’s choice of sexuality (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, etc.) is amoral because God placed that tendency in your genes.

• You can obtain power to transcend time and space, power to defy presumed moral laws and known physical laws, power to do anything with your mind, even power to become a god – through New Age ideology.

• There is a greater openness than ever before to consider the need to teach Creation and Evolution in U.S. public schools. The Intelligent Design movement is spreading, and Darwinism is on the defensive.[lxxii]

• Women should have roles equal to men and should be encouraged to do anything or everything men do, including military service.

• Your most important responsibility is to take care of yourself. Keep occupied improving your body, your mind, your wealth, and your status in life.

• Syncretism is the best approach to life. Take the best from all the world’s ideologies and religions, because no one has a corner on the truth.

Implications of Idea Shifts for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. We are moving out of the “global village” into the “global mind,” which aligns people of like mind, regardless of their color, country or class. Christian ministries must take advantage of the fact that there are likeminded Christian young people scattered all over the world, and seek to train them to share their faith and mobilize them for ministry and missions. Many positive uses of the “global mind” concept are available to ministries that apply their creativity.

2. We now have a large population of youth and young adults who are the first products of a computer culture. Children need play time with other children who share their pretend world and play out original scenarios so as to become more socially and cognitively skilled. Imagery in a virtual computer world is greatly inferior to the imagery gained by “being there” in the actual world. Plus TV, video games and computers have contributed to a sedentary lifestyle and even to learning disabilities among youth. Christian ministries should encourage young children to hold off heavy involvement with today’s electronic toys and major on relationships, which will woo them to Jesus Christ.

3. Idea shifts are rapidly changing both our youth and adult cultures worldwide. From pluralism to humanism to syncretism to free sex to evolution to homosexuality to the role of women to New Age or any of a number of sects and cults, Christian ministries must be ready to help our young people grapple with the possible devastating results of having wrong views on such ideologies. Our stand must be biblical and uncompromising.

Environmental Changes

At the beginning of the new millennium we are experiencing limits in terms of what our environment will allow. Consumption patterns in the north, particularly North America and Europe, mean a high per capita impact on the environment, which far exceeds the rest of the world. Yet so far, those who for years have preached that we face an extreme food shortage, have been proved wrong. Not only has most of the world’s growing population been fed, but a sizeable minority has enjoyed a rising standard of living. The industrial world is piling up surpluses which it can hardly give away, and pays farmers not to grow food. The only important resource that is scarce in many parts of the world is water.

Today the amount of waste we produce is so great that some scientists believe it could change the behavior of the earth’s ecological system. Those living in developed countries, particularly in the United States, live personal lifestyles that are virtual orgies of waste. On the other hand, much of our technology for producing energy, products, and food generate by-products that at some time during the process are discarded. Ninety-eight percent of the materials used in U.S. manufacturing do not go into the end product, but are part of packaging, transportation, etc. Eighty percent of all products are thrown away after one use.[lxxiii]

Worldwatch Institute Report

The Worldwatch Institute submitted its annual State of the World Report in January, 2000, and concluded that the “earth is in bad shape.” From eroding soil in Kazakhstan to melting glaciers in the Peruvian Andes to depleted fisheries off New England and elsewhere, the world’s ecological health at the dawn of the millennium is deteriorating. Species are disappearing, temperatures are rising, reefs are dying, forests are shrinking, storms are raging, and water tables are falling. “The scale and urgency of the challenges are unprecedented,” said the Worldwatch president, Lester Brown. “The threat of a growing population is especially disturbing. If we continue the irreversible destruction of these systems, our grandchildren will never forgive us.”

Among the Worldwatch Institute’s findings this year:

• Earth’s temperature has risen 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit in 30 years, and glaciers have melted, sometimes with striking results.

• Extinction threatens 11% of bird species, 25% of mammal species, and 34% of fish species.

• Vicious circles known as “feedback loops” are wreaking havoc with nature. For instance global warming is causing more frequent and more damaging hurricanes. They are destructive in part because they cause mudslides, especially in developing countries. Mudslides are more likely where land has been stripped of trees. And when burned, the trees spew greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.[lxxiv]

Brazil, China and the Arctic

The Brazilian Congress is contemplating voting on a project that will reduce the Amazon forest to 50% of its present size. The area to be deforested is four times the size of Portugal and would be mainly used for agriculture and pastures for livestock. All the wood is to be sold to international markets in the form of wood chips. The truth is that the soil in the Amazon forest is useless without the forest itself. Its quality is very acidic, and the region is prone to constant floods. At this time more than 160,000 square kilometers have been deforested for the same purpose, but this land is abandoned and in the process of becoming a desert.[lxxv]

Popular Mechanics reported that China’s central province of Hubei experienced its worst drought in half a century in the spring of 2000. Reservoirs and water tables reached record lows at a time when 3 million people already had insufficient supplies. Meanwhile the eight sandstorms of the year scoured north China and turned skies gray as far away as Beijing. The magazine also reported that after one of the coldest winters on record, near-record losses of ozone have been reported above the Arctic.[lxxvi]

Climate Change in America

In June 2000 a four-year study by hundreds of scientists and a dozen government agencies called “Climate Change in America” was released. The report’s weather forecast for the 21st Century could be summed up in one word: hot! The report stated that by the late 21st century average U.S. temperatures will have risen 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit or 3-6 degrees Celsius, which is more than the projected global increase. This rise is very likely to be associated with more extreme precipitation and faster evaporation of water, leading to greater frequency of very wet or very dry conditions.

The report predicted that alpine meadows would disappear, along with many coastal wetlands and barrier islands. Cities will be hotter and more humid, and many U.S. cities will go winterless. Ski runs will be scarcer, the demand for air-conditioners will increase, and scientists will probably have to combat a resurgence of insect-borne diseases such as malaria. Among other findings:

• Entire ecosystems may shift northward as temperatures increase.

• The alpine meadows of the Rocky Mountains most likely will disappear.

• Forests in the southeast may break into a mosaic of forests, savannahs and grasslands, and sugar maples could disappear from northeastern forests.

• Ocean levels will rise, causing wetlands, marshes and barrier islands to disappear or – when the geography allows – be forced inland.

• The Great Lakes are predicted to decline because of increased evaporation.

• Some coastal cities, faced with higher sea levels and more frequent storm surges, may have to redesign and adapt water, sewer and transportation systems.

• The document acknowledges “a complex mix of positive and negative impacts” if, as most climate scientists predict, pollution in the atmosphere raises temperatures worldwide by an average of 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years. Some of the positive results predicted were that trees will grow faster, and the amount of timber in America’s forests – especially hardwoods – will increase steadily through the century. Farmers will be able to grow more crops, although both in agriculture and forestry there could be increased possibilities of pests and fire.[lxxvii]

The Shrinking Polar Ice Cap

Another report in U.S. News & World Report in February, 2000, told of the shrinking polar ice cap in Antarctica. Palmer Station is located on Anvers Island, 120 miles outside the Antarctic Circle. Since the 1960’s the Anvers Island glacial mantle has pulled its skirts in about 30 feet annually. It appears to scientists that this may be the most warmed-up place on the planet. Although computerized climate models used to forecast global warming reveal no reason for this place to be warming faster than the rest of the planet, since the mid-1940’s the average temperature on the Antarctic Peninsula has increased up to 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit. And in the early winter (June in the Southern Hemisphere), it is up a startling 7-9 degrees. Here the rate of warming is ten times the global average.

The changes aren’t subtle. One hundred miles to the east, on the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the immense and supposedly permanent Larsen Ice Shelf began to disintegrate in 1995. Nearly 1000 miles of shelf have collapsed just in the past two years, with thousands of square miles more appearing ready to go. Wildlife shifts are unmistakable. Around Palmer and elsewhere on the Western side of the Peninsula, there is not only less ice but a new set of residents. Southern elephant seals, whose males are massive sluglike beasts that can reach 8,800 pounds, usually raise their young farther north in the more temperate climes like the Falkland Islands. But one day last summer, 254 Elephant Seals, including many pups, were seen on just two islands near Palmer, with uncounted others presumably living up and down the coast.

Fur seals were not reported in Antarctica before mid-century, but five years ago a research vessel counted 2000 of them on just one island farther south. Similarly, gentoo and pinstrap penguins, which are common to South America and have been virtually absent around Palmer, are establishing new colonies on the peninsula. And while nobody expects forests to appear on these icy plains, low grass, tiny shrubs and mosses are thickening rapidly in many areas of the peninsula. The population of Adelie penguins, which have trouble adapting to climate change, is only half what it was 25 years ago. It is down by 10% in the last two years.

Physicist Dan Lubin of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, notes that climate change does not appear or disappear quickly. The atmosphere’s carbon dioxide and other solar-energy-trapping gases won’t return to preindustrial levels for 200 years or more, even if humans could somehow stop their emissions right now.[lxxviii]

Red Cross Analysis

Natural disasters seem to be on the increase. Yet the Red Cross reported in June, 2000 that infectious diseases are claiming far more lives than natural disasters. The death toll from infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is 160 times greater than the number of people killed in 1999’s massive earthquakes in Turkey, cyclones in India, and floods in Venezuela. An estimated 150 million people have died from those three diseases alone since 1945, compared with 23 million in wars during the same period. Last year 13 million people died from such diseases, which the Red Cross said could have been prevented by spending as little as $5 per person in health care.

This is causing the Red Cross to re-evaluate its disaster relief programs. “Everywhere we do disaster relief, we found the disaster was built on the shaky bedrock of poor public health,” said Peter Walker, head of disaster policy. “While we will still respond to disasters, we’ve got to reinvigorate the second string in our bow – long term assistance.”[lxxix]

Skepticism

Yet global warming has its skeptics. Philip Stott of the University of London notes that

“Global warming is part of a misguided agenda that seeks stability when change is the norm on this ever-restless Earth. In essence, the construct of global warming has little to do with the reality of climate change. Rather, it is about the utopian desire for unobtainable stability that has suddenly afflicted humankind at the end of the millennium. The idea of global warming is potentially dangerous precisely because it gives the false impression that we might be able to halt climate change by fiddling with just one or two of the millions of factors involved. It is a serious lie. Even if we achieved all the cuts in emissions proposed, the effect would be a temperature change of probably less than just 0.07 degrees Celsius, and because of the millions of other factors, it might not happen anyway.”[lxxx]

Implications of Environmental Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

Our earth is experiencing limits in terms of what our environment will allow. Developed countries live lifestyles that are orgies of waste, with 98% of materials used in U.S. manufacturing not going into the end product. Earth’s temperature is rising, and a recent study shows that temperatures in parts of the Antarctic are up a startling 4-9 degrees. A study by hundreds of scientists projects that U.S. temperatures will rise 3-6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Ocean levels will rise, entire ecosystems may shift northward, forests will disappear and certain birds and mammals will become extinct. Christian ministries need to encourage their constituencies to do everything they can to take care of their environment and then be ready to minister to those who might suffer as a result of these changes.

Economic Changes

The acute observer in 1900 could never have forecast or even imagined the amazing transformation in the world economy over the course of the twentieth century. For hundreds of years the economies of countries were dependent upon agriculture. When industrialization came in, agriculture’s share was reduced. But in the past twenty-five years our world is being transformed into service or knowledge-based societies, and industry’s economic output has begun to decline.

The American Century

The 20th Century has been called the American Century. The extraordinary rise in the size of the U.S. economy and its equally striking fall mirrors the rise of the U.S. in political influence, and its subsequent decline. In 1914 the U.S. accounted for roughly 34% of the industrial world’s output; by 1955 this had risen to 58%; by 1990 it had fallen back to 33%.[lxxxi]

In the mid-nineties it was thought that the U.S. economy had reached its zenith and that because of the huge national debt, increasing bankruptcies, sizeable trade imbalances and annual budget deficits there might soon be an unprecedented collapse.[lxxxii] All this at the same time that Japan and China and the “tigers” of East Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea) as well as Australia and New Zealand and some of the “new tigers” (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar) were achieving tremendous growth.[lxxxiii]

“Asian Contagion”

Yet in July, 1997, beginning with the collapse of the Thai economy, the entire Asia-Pacific region experienced an enormous “correction.” Terry J. van der Werff of the Washington CEO, called it “Asian Contagion.” Political and financial leaders around the world sprang into action. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) led the charge, and within weeks put together a $43 billion aid package for Indonesia and shortly thereafter a $57 billion package for South Korea. Currency values in relation to the dollar dropped dramatically: 40% for the Malaysian ringgit, Korean won, and Filipino peso; 50% for the Thai baht; and a whopping 75% for the Indonesian ruppiah. Their stock market indices fell even more, effectively giving up the gains of the last decade.

What happened to the Asian miracle? According to van der Werff,

“The emerging Asian nations grew 7-12% annually over the past two decades and now generate a quarter of the world’s output. It was, indeed, a miracle. It lifted millions from poverty, established new industries and infrastructure, created large and growing middle classes in countries that had never known them, and fostered peaceful relations between nations. The miracle is not over. After one or two years of modest growth, the Asian economies will roar again – older, wiser, but tigers all the same. Asian contagion is not a crippling heart attack, but rather a hiccup caused by eating too fast.”[lxxxiv]

Remarkable Prosperity

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy proceeded to skyrocket toward the longest “bull-run” ever (107 months) on its stock market. From March, 1991 to January 2000, the DOW Jones Industrial Average increased 269%, and the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) increased by 33%. See figure 15.[lxxxv]

Deficits disappeared and with inflation remaining low, a “dream surplus” of $1.9 trillion was the 10-year forecast in January, 2000.[lxxxvi] This brought unprecedented new wealth to ten of millions of Americans. This “wealth effect” has sparked a move by thousands of Americans to have multiple homes in several locations around the country – supposedly to try out new identities and “to find out who you are.”[lxxxvii] Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan remarked,

“There can be little argument that the American economy as it stands at the beginning of a new century has never exhibited so remarkable prosperity for at least the majority of its citizens.”[lxxxviii]

Yet Americans and the rest of the world must beware that there are danger signs that the current economic ride will not last indefinitely. The U.S. stock market has proven to be more volatile than ever in the year 2000. The prudent investor will avoid high-risk stocks and borrowing and leveraging to the extreme. They would do well to seek ways to invest in spreading the Word for His Kingdom’s sake.

European Economy

As the European Economic Union organized to kick off the use of the “Euro,” it came in “not with a bang but a whimper.” Introduced at a rate of $1.17 USD, it steadily dropped to $.90 before staging a modest recovery. But as economic writer, Paul Krugman says,

“The truth is that the weakness of the Euro is not a sign of economic malaise. European economies are actually doing somewhat better than most outsiders, myself included, expected. Europe’s three fundamental problems are jobs, jobs, jobs. But in the last couple of years quite a lot of job creation has in fact taken place. The weakness of the Euro, then, is not a verdict on the European economy. It’s just one of those things that markets do now and then; and it, too, shall pass.”[lxxxix]

Indeed, many analysts are beginning to see signs of a new economy taking root in Europe. The driving forces are what got America moving in the 1980’s and early 1990’s: privatization, deregulation, and an unprecedented wave of corporate restructuring based on the need to be competitive globally. As a result, many analysts believe that Europe’s growth potential has grown from 2% a few years ago to 3% today, a level that would cause a steady decline in Europe’s 10% unemployment rate.

Thomas Mayer, an economist at Goldman Sachs & Co. in Frankfurt, estimated that Europe’s knowledge-based economy was at least two-thirds that of the United States. “There is evidence that the new economy is here, that it is a significant size, and that it is growing perhaps at a faster rate than that of the United States,” he said. “There is a chance, an opportunity, to transform the European economy in these two years into a machine that is able to achieve substantial growth over a sustained period.”[xc]

Asian Recovery Very Real

By the beginning of the new century, it was obvious that the Asian economic recovery was very real. The big winners were Singapore and Hong Kong, which benefited from their sound financial institutions and open economies. Japan, Thailand and the Philippines recovered much slower due to slow reforms and big fiscal burdens. Big question-marks hung over Indonesia and India because of political factors. South Korea reforms were just getting underway. Dr. William Overholt, Executive Director of Nomura International (Hong Kong) stated,

“But the reforms are real. China is laying off 40 million workers. Thailand will have six good banks instead of 15 lazy banks. South Korea will have real banks instead of ATMs. Corporate Korea and corporate Japan will have different industrial landscapes. Globalization and transparency are progressing. But the current U.S. growth is not sustainable. It can slow down. This can happen pretty soon. So there is a need for Asian countries to get their houses in order quickly.”[xci]

In Japan the economic news remains grim. Its economy shrank 5.5% in the last three months of 1999, making it two consecutive quarters of negative growth – the technical definition of a recession. This news all but scotched hopes that a broad-based recovery had taken hold as a result of a series of economic stimulus packages that have pumped more than a trillion dollars into the economy. Even with high tech heavy-hitters like Sony and Softbank leading the way, the nation’s bloated, debt-ridden old economy has pushed it into a recession that makes Japan at odds with the world, economically speaking.[xcii]

India and China exemplify the extremes in Asian economies. Though they are the world’s two most populous countries, and China may soon join India as a member of the World Trade Organization, their similarities end there. India is a far better place in which to buy stocks, and it has been for years. Since 1995 the Bombay stock market has outperformed China’s Shenzhen market. India has learned to live with the instability of a parliamentary democracy. Governments come and go, but the country’s good companies provide shareholder value as they have for decades. In addition, companies in the computer field keep popping up as India embraces the Internet revolution. The ABN-AMRO’s Asian strategist, Christopher Wood said in January, 2000,

“Six months ago, most American investors were still not even prepared to look at India seriously. That is no longer the case. After two highly successful listings of Indian software companies on the Nasdaq, the likelihood of more can only increase the growing interest in the Indian story. India offers the best growth prospects in Asia, along with Taiwan and South Korea.”

In China the economy is slowing because of lower export growth and a looming banking crisis. Also, few private companies are available to investors in stocks. Instead, listed Chinese companies have tended to be state-owned, badly-managed, and thin on disclosure and shareholder rights. Internet companies in China are generally weak in content. Total government debt in China in 1999 stood at 20% of the GDP. Its banks need to be overhauled, and the government’s need to bail out its insolvent state banks could lead to a financing crisis that could bring up to a 20% devaluation of the Yuan by 2001.[xciii]

Economic Growth in India

Indians have become one of the most successful immigrant groups ever to come to the United States. Fleeing rampant corruption, state-controlled economies, and meager employment opportunities, most Indian migrants bring a good education, a command of English, and an ambitious work ethic to an economic system open to anyone from anywhere. Indians now have one of the highest per capita incomes of any immigrant group in the U.S. Of the 722,000 Indians who had migrated to the U.S. by the turn of the century, only 6% live below the poverty line and only 1% use the government’s welfare system.

With warp speed they are climbing onto the top rungs of just about every industry in the U.S. Indians are managing Fortune 500 companies, including United Airlines and U.S. Airways. Wall Street, the media and Silicon Valley are all awash with sub continental surnames. Meanwhile the born-in-America second generation is making waves in publishing and the arts and getting invited to the Oscars in Hollywood. Yet to be determined is whether these successful Indian-Americans can be greatly instrumental in kick-starting opportunities back in their homeland and thus become one of India’s greatest future assets.[xciv]

On the other hand, many youth in India are becoming ambitious, technologically competent, and confident. They are already having an enormous impact on the economy, on companies hoping to sell them products, on the media and on the culture. They are the products of the last ten years of economic liberalization in India and differ from their more conservative and insular parents in that they proudly mix Indian values with Western packaging. They enjoy wearing saris and still admire Mahatma Gandhi. But they also like wearing blue jeans, drinking fizzy sodas and watching MTV.

Some 40% of India’s current one billion population is under the age of 25. Already the teenagers in this group wield $2.8 billion worth of discretionary income. By 2015, 55% of Indians will be under 20 – and wield proportionately higher spending power. As this group, with its more materialist, more globally informed opinions, comes into its own, sociologists predict India will increasingly abandon the austere ways and restricted markets that have kept it in economic backwater. These youth will demand a more cosmopolitan society that is a full-fledged member of the global economy[xcv].

Multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Cadbury, Liberty Shoes, Titan (watches), and Mahindra & Mahindra (cars) are using famous actors, sports figures, and catchy slogans to woo India’s youth. Mahindra recently launched car-buying via the Internet – targeting young drivers for the $10,500 vehicle, buying slick advertising spots on video music channels. “We want to grab the funky market,” says Anand Mahindra, managing directing of Indian auto-maker, Mahindra & Mahindra. Kids persuade their parents what car to buy. They determine style and fashion today.”

Thanks to cable television and the Internet, these savvy young Indians have no qualms about consumerism. “Every company is planning its future growth looking at the youth market, says Ajit Balakrishnan, founder of India’s top-ranked Internet portal, . Liberty Shoes. Ltd., makes 50,000 pairs of shoes per day, mostly for the youth market, and has ten brands with twenty different styles each. They go head to head with Nike and Reebok, but sell for far less. Its line of sporty sandals and beach shoes, called Gliders, is targeted at teens and sells six million pairs annually.

Companies are also working hard to win the hearts of young potential employees. To recruit the best talent, they are offering stock options, flexible working hours, foreign assignments, and even education packages to overseas universities – along with perks such as housing and auto loans. Observes Deepak Jolly, vice-president of Pepsi India: “Young management graduates of 22 say, ‘How fast can we rise?’ They are very demanding.”[xcvi]

Jobs for U.S. Teenagers

Meanwhile, in the U.S. businesses are struggling to fill summer jobs. Teenagers are desperately wanted but are hard to find. With the U.S. unemployment rate near a record low, teens and others have their pick of seasonal work. And jobs such as mowing lawns, flipping burgers, working in camps or busing tables just don’t attract young people anymore. Teens either don’t need the cash badly enough to work for low pay or they are drawn instead to computer jobs that make them $25 to $30 an hour. Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois, which employs 6000 seasonal workers, flew in 450 youths from Russia, Poland and elsewhere in Europe to ensure adequate summer staffing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 120,000 U.S. teens from age 16 to 19 held computer-related jobs last year – up from 58,000 in 1996 and 4,000 a decade ago.

David Mericle, 16, bought a book five years ago and taught himself how to create Web sites. Eventually he founded his own Internet consulting firm. The Madison, Wisconsin teenager now has business partners in Europe, Asia and South America, and a long list of clients. This summer he expects to earn between $5000 and $10,000 or more on Web design work. “I like Internet work, David said, “because it allows me to be creative, set my own schedule and choose what projects I want to take on. And, of course, I am paid very well, especially for a student.”[xcvii]

Africa Excluded from Abundance

Figure 16 compares the population growth with the GDP growth in fifty-year intervals over the last 300 years.[xcviii] Figure 17 shows the GDP for the top fifty nations ranked in order.[xcix] Note that there are only three African countries (South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria) on this list. Africa’s future looks to be the bleakest in the world. Because of wars, ethnic conflicts, famines, political instability, and HIV and other diseases, Africa is the only region on the whole planet that has been entirely excluded from abundance.[c] Yet, in many parts of Africa, the Spirit of God is on the move, and Christians are experiencing great revival.

Rating the World’s Economic Growth

The two most striking characteristics of 20th Century economic growth are its staggering size and acceleration when compared with developments in previous centuries, and its uneven distribution among different countries and regions of the world. Using conventional GDP estimates, the total amount of goods and services produced in the 20th Century is estimated to have exceeded the cumulative total output over the preceding recorded human history. Over that century the world GDP at constant prices increased about 19-fold.[ci] Figure 18 shows that the richest quarter of the world population has seen its per capita GDP increase close to six-fold over the century, per capita income for the poorest quarter of the world’s population has increased less than threefold.[cii] The levels of real GDP per person toward the end of the century in many poor countries were still well below those already attained by the leading countries in 1900.

The level of real GDP per person of $500 in Africa in 1900 was about one-ninth of that of the leading country in 1900. In 2000, however, the African level was only about one-twentieth of the leading country. The gap between the rich and the poor, measured in these terms, has widened enormously. Figure 19 (previous page) shows the changes in select nations’ relative income positions from 1900 to 2000. The most notable move in the entire matrix was China, which moved from the lowest quartile in 1900 on this chart to straddling the border between the

two high income quartiles in 2000 – increasing its per capita income by ten times over that 100 year period.[ciii]

Another way to measure the economic well-being of a country is to use the Human Development Index, which has been developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It is constructed as an aggregate index of three components: education, income (GDP), and life expectancy at birth. It is scaled to lie within a 0 to 1 interval. The focus of the HDI is on an escape from poverty, which is defined as an HDI below 0.5. Figure 20 gives regional HDI averages from 1870 through 1995. You can see that Australia and New Zealand have been consistently high for the entire 125 years – never being below the poverty level. Today the only regions still below the poverty level are South Asia and Africa.

In 1870, the highest life-expectancy was 49.3 years, but today the large majority of countries have surpassed that level due to advances in medical science and public health measures. Thus, clearly, any index of living standards that gives a substantial weight to life expectancy will make present day developing countries look much better, relative to either past or present high-income countries, than do comparisons based solely on real GDP per person. Nevertheless, poverty still exists on a massive scale because income distribution within countries is very uneven, and because rapid population growth has been increasingly concentrated in the poorer countries.[civ]

[pic]

Implications of Economic Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. The U.S. economy is looking better than it ever has. Yet there are danger signs that the current economic ride will not last indefinitely. The U.S. stock market has proven to be more volatile than ever in 2000. The European economy is generally doing well, but is lethargic and certainly not robust. More jobs are needed than anything else. But with the uncertainties that the future poses, Christian ministries in the developing world must work toward financial independence in case a major collapse occurs in the West – and as a result the West is unable to subsidize ministries elsewhere.

2. China has set itself on becoming the world’s largest economy. She is gaining “favored nation” trade status from the U.S. this year, and is growing in worldwide influence and political clout. India and other Asian nations are also doing well financially. There are probably 100 million Christians in China, 40 million in India and millions more in the rest of Asia. These are enough to support thriving ministries there, and to reach out to other nations as well. The church around the world should put the highest priority, energy and resources into establishing a solid ministry in these countries that will become self-funded.

3. There is no question that the economies of the world have made solid progress during the 20th Century. But the gap between the haves and the have-nots has increased considerably. Yet because of the media, the have-nots are more aware than ever of what they have not. Indeed one of the great challenges of both governments and the church is to raise the productive capacity and incomes of the fifth of the world population who remain in the grip of absolute poverty. Many of the governments in these poor countries are corrupt, and the political leaders are self-seeking. Thus, it continues to behoove the church of Jesus Christ to exercise its dual role of social responsibility and world evangelization. As young people and adults alike are helped from their poverty, they will be much more ready to listen to the proclamation of the Gospel.

Religious/Theological Changes

When Jesus issued the Great Commission to take the Gospel into all the world, the disciples likely did not envision a world of 6+ billion people. It took Christianity 14 centuries to spread to the point that one person in a hundred was a Bible-believing Christian. By 1980 the Christian faith had reached 6%, and today the number of Bible-believing Christians stands at 11.2%. See the complete chart of the growth of Christianity in figure 21.[cv]

Christianity is simply the world’s fastest growing religion – with evangelicals expanding at over three times the rate of population growth. Actual numbers for all religions are given in figure 22.[cvi] See figure 23 for the religious adherents as a percentage of world population in 2000.[cvii]

Global Christian growth has slowed in recent years due to running out of people to convert within the already reached people groups. So more effort needs to be made to reach into some of the 2000 unreached people groups, especially the 185 peoples yet untargeted by any church or mission organization. There are more than 5 million Christian congregations and hundreds of mission organizations, so this should be relatively easy to do. In his paper for the October, 1999 Kyoto, Japan international conference, “The Role of Western Missions in the 21st Century, Ralph Winter wrote:

“The long standing and indeed illustrious campaign to take Western Christianity to the world’s minority groups is slowing down because fewer and fewer such groups remain untouched. One of the miracles of the 20th century – which forever changes the focus of missions for the 21st – is the fact that Western missions have been so successful in transforming dark mission fields into bright mission-sending forces...the fact is, we are running out of ‘traditional mission fields.’ There aren’t many left.”[cviii]

The AD2000 & Beyond Movement

In 1989, the AD2000 and Beyond movement gained attention at the Lausanne II Manila Manifesto. It has gained tremendous momentum with its watchword: “A Church for Every People and the Gospel for Every Person.” The expected result is the establishment of a mission-minded church planting movement within every unreached and unevangelized people and city by the end of AD 2000, so that all peoples may have the opportunity to experience the love, truth and saving power of Jesus Christ in fellowship with other believers. “The Gospel for every person” was intended to mean, not the presentation to every person in the world, but rather that every person on earth will have access to the good news of Jesus Christ. This goal has encouraged progress in many ways.

The global broadcast of Billy Graham’s 1996 World Television Special on April 14 exposed more people to the Gospel than in all of his combined audiences in 45 years of ministry. Never before in history have so many people heard the Gospel message in a single day!

Progress Toward 100% Access

By the end of the year 2000, eight out of every ten people will have access to the entire Bible in their own language. Nine out of ten will have access to a New Testament. Today, the acceleration is so remarkable, in that more than eighteen different language portions per year are being translated, compared to just over three per year in 1900. At its triennial conference in June, 1999, Wycliffe/SIL approved a resolution that by the year 2025 a Bible translation project will be in progress for every people group that needs it.

Dramatic efforts have taken place over the decade of the 90’s to systematically distribute Christian literature to every home through AD2000 God’s Word and Literature Network. Audio communication has also been an effective way of communicating the Gospel, especially among the rising number of illiterate people. This includes radio and recorded Gospel messages, as well as other media that do not require reading skills for the hearer.

In less than ten years the number of languages in which evangelistic broadcasting is done has increased from 170 to 249. On January 7, 2000 Ron Cline, chairman of the World by 2000 coalition of radio networks, reported that only seven of the more than 300 languages originally targeted as needing Gospel broadcasting are still lacking one. He expects that the final languages will be done by the end of the year 2000. By that time Gospel radio broadcasts are expected to cover 99% of the world’s population.

The AD2000 Audio Communications Network, involving more than 20 agencies, seeks through its Target 4000 plan to recruit at least 70 recording teams to finish the cassette recording work that began in 1940. By the end of the year 2000, audio Gospel recordings will be available to 96% of the world’s population.

One of the most effective means of presenting the Gospel in visual and audio form has been the Jesus Film. As of January 1, 2000, over 3.3 billion people in 217 countries of the world have reportedly seen the film, with 108 million known decisions for Christ. With 445 churches and mission agencies involved, a new translation is being completed every ten days. According to Paul Eshleman, Jesus Film Project Director, the Jesus Film will be available in languages known by 99 percent of the world’s population by the end of the year 2000.

The Gospel for every person is no longer a case of one means or another, but one means and others. By the end of the year 2000, more than 95% of the world’s population will have access, not only to some portion of Scripture in their own language, but also to Christian radio broadcasts...and audio recordings...and the Jesus Film!

This is not to say that all have heard or had access to the Gospel. There is still a long way to go. The goal for the Jesus Film, for instance, is not availability or access to the film for the maximum number of different people groups, but sheer numbers of film viewers. According to David Barrett and Patrick Johnstone, the total, estimated population of those who have not heard the Gospel is about 1.2 to 1.4 billion. This means that 4.6 to 4.8 billion, or 77-80% of the world, will have heard the Gospel by the end of the year 2000.[cix]

One of the most dramatic improvements in world evangelization, as measured by David Barrett and the Global Evangelization Movement team, is the reduction in the unevangelized as a percentage of world population by about half over the past 100 years – from 50.2% to 25.7%.[cx]

Johnstone gives perspective on this concept, acknowledging:

“There is a gray area because there is “no magical moment” when we can statistically say that a person moves from being unevangelized to evangelized! That gray area could be extended to a much higher percentage if we defined the amount of exposure more narrowly! Please do not take these figures as anything more than “order of magnitude.” David and I worked on these because we wanted to prove years ago that you cannot say that all the world’s population is unreached if not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life! I think the point is now generally accepted that many are exposed – and thus accountable to God for hearing but not necessarily converted.”[cxi]

A “church for every people” vision statement became a procedural goal of establishing a church planting movement among every people by the year 2000. The aim was that there would be, at minimum, a church of at least 100 people in a reproducing fellowship, or fellowships, for every ethno-linguistic people by the end of the year 2000. As David Barrett has pointed out, the ratio of Christians has not changed over the past 100 years, and is about one-third of the population of the world. However, as Patrick Johnstone points out, while the Roman Catholics are growing more slowly than the world population, evangelicals are growing at over three times the population growth rate. The number of evangelicals doubled over the last ten years, growing to 400 million in the year 2000. The annual conversion growth in the largest of the world religions is given in figure 24.[cxii]

Joshua Project 2000

In 1995, Joshua Project 2000 became a part of the AD2000 Movement. Joshua Project 2000 is a global cooperative strategy, focused on the least evangelized peoples of the world, that seeks to engage every church agency, denomination and Christian worldwide in an effort to establish a pioneer church planting movement within every ethno-linguistic people of over 10,000 individuals by December 31, 2000. The Joshua Project is the largest strategic mobilization of Christians in history to disciple the peoples of the world.

The original list of 1739 Joshua Project 2000 people groups represented 2.2 billion people in 1995. A monthly progress report was published and as new information came in from over 100 countries, the list decreased to 1594. Three milestones are tracked for each people group on this list:[cxiii]

1. Targeting. Is there a specific commitment to begin church planting among this group by December 31, 2000? There are still 265 untargeted peoples totaling 45 million people.

2. Church Planting Team. Is there an on-site church planting team among this people? There are 539 peoples without a church planting team, totaling 81 million people.

3. Fellowship of 100 believers. Is there a fellowship of at least 100 indigenous believers among this people? There are still 1,117 peoples without a fellowship of 100.

One of the most significant advancements in the Joshua Project 2000 list can be seen when comparing percentages for these three milestones from 1997 with 2000. See figure 25.[cxiv]

Harvest Information System Services

There is another goal being pursued by the new Harvest Information System Services (HIS): to have a list of all people groups, of all sizes, including those under 10,000, and of all states of reachedness. The HIS Peoples listing now represents an integration of at least five major sets of people group information. The plan is to have this information ready for distribution on CD to the interested global community of Great Commission leaders by the end of the year 2000.

There is not enough information to assess exact numbers for people groups under 10,000. However, the picture can be estimated by population, supposing that none of the approximately 7,400 peoples under 10,000 in population had a fellowship of 100 believers. The total population represented in this worst case scenario would be 30 million people, or 0.5% of the total global population. Of the remaining population, 2.28 billion, or 38% would be represented by the Joshua Project 2000 peoples, and 61.5 percent of the global population would represent the peoples over 10,000 with a fellowship of over 100 believers. Of the 6 billion people in the world, those ethno-linguistic people with no churches of 100 believers or more would total an estimated 380 million, or 6.3% of the population.

Luis Bush, International Director of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement, stated in an article entitled “Where Are We Now?”:

“Almost 99% of the world lives among ethno-linguistic peoples which have already been targeted for a church planting ministry. The studies reflected by Patrick Johnstone reflect a dramatic change during the 20th century. Of the 13,000 people groups, the number of reached groups has increased from 4,000 at the beginning of the century, to nearly 12,000 at the end. This is quite remarkable.”[cxv]

Islam

Islam is the second largest religion in the world, with more than 1 billion adherents. Some say it is growing faster than Christianity, and in some parts of the world it is. Mosques are springing up all over the world. Islam is almost the sole religion of all Arab countries, and it has major communities in Africa and Asia as well. There are now more than 6 million Muslims in the United States from dozens of different countries. Of these, 2.6 million are black. Anglo women also have a surprisingly high Muslim conversion rate in the U.S. Muslims now outnumber Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Mormons in the U.S., and they will outnumber Jews (one-third of which live in the U.S.) by 2005. Thirty percent of all international students in the U.S. are Muslims, many from countries violently opposed to Christianity.

Evangelicals need to take time to understand Islam and not go along with stereotypes. Samuel Naaman, director of the South Asian Friendship Center in Chicago, states:

“In their minds and hearts Muslims believe firmly that Christianity has failed on the racial, social and religious perspectives. Look at society and the people who claim to be Christians. What is the difference between them? Muslims believe they have a mandate from God that the whole world has to come under the banner of Islam.”

The Mecca-based Muslim World League spearheads a “massive Islamic missionary effort,” notes Mission Frontiers (October, 1999). “Vast sums of oil money are used to propagate Islam around the world: aid to countries considered sympathetic, building mosques, sending missionaries, literature, radio, etc. The world’s largest printing presses are located here, and they churn out 28 million copies of the Koran every year for worldwide distribution.”

The sense of religious duty and measurable human effort as found in the five pillars of Islam, is, surprisingly, what attracts many Western converts to Islam. “I wanted a discipline to pattern my life by,” writes one young woman, formerly a Christian, on a Web site that posts testimonies about conversions to Islam. “I did not just want to believe someone was my savior and through this I held the ticket to Heaven. I wanted to know how to act to receive the approval of God.”

But on the other hand, this works-oriented theology can cut the other way. Roy Oksnevad, director of the Institute of Muslim Studies at Wheaton College says, “One former Muslim has said Islam had the rules and discipline she wanted in her life, but lacked the power to live the life the rules stipulated. “As a system of personal discipline, Islam has few equals. As a means of earning God’s favor, it’s a spiritual treadmill.’”

The South Asian Friendship Center offers key principles that apply to any Christian attempting to befriend Muslims: (1) Take the initiative. We won’t face Islam in our churches, so we should go to the street; (2) Be bold, yet loving, about our faith in Jesus. Islam is a religion of power. You have to become strong – confront them in love – but be very strict that this is our faith and that Jesus is the only way; (3) Encourage Christian women to get involved. Women can enter the inner section of a Muslim house and have a cup of tea or cook with Islamic women. Once the husband knows that a Christian woman really cares for his wife, and that, as a Christian she doesn’t like the sin in Western society, then – boom – the bond is there.[cxvi]

Hinduism

With nearly 800 million followers, Hinduism is the majority religion of three nations and a significant minority in eleven other lands. It is the common religion of India and Nepal. There is a strong syncretism within Hinduism. They claim the universality of all religions, and have great doctrinal tolerance. The concept of “sin” is relative, and there is wide freedom of choice. Hindus can believe in almost anything, including Christianity, as long as they don’t “convert” and drop the Hindu name. This flexibility is partly due to the fact that popular Hinduism has no scriptures.[cxvii]

One of the challenges to the Christian is the militancy of Hinduism. This was especially on the increase in the last three years of the 20th Century. Many Hindu leaders feel that the minorities (non-Hindus) are against the majorities (Hindus). These minorities are “traitors” or “anti-socials.” They are stumbling blocks for Hindu nationalism. Much violence in India is intentional, and it has been spurred on by the first Hindu ever being elected as Prime Minister there. Among many recent incidents is the much-publicized murder of Australian missionary, Graham Staines and his two sons by a militant Hindu mob in the state of Orissa in January, 1999.

If the Christian world is serious about reaching the Hindu colossus, we must mobilize and equip Indian leaders and members of the church, university and seminary students, Christian workers and missionaries in India, and overseas Indian Christian workers. We must equip and mobilize Westerners who want to be involved as short term missionaries, non-resident missionaries, and partners with the national workers in reaching the Hindus.[cxviii]

Buddhism

With more than 600 million adherents, Buddhism is the state religion of five nations of Asia, the majority in a further four countries, and a significant minority in another eleven. Over half of this total are followers of the mixture of Chinese religions Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. These various religious systems are so intermingled that clear distinctions are difficult to make.[cxix]

Buddhism articulates a view of life without reference to the reality of God. A Buddhist scholar who had devoted years of study to Christian theology was asked, “What have you found that most clearly distinguishes Buddhist and Christian approaches to the truth?” He replied, “In Buddhism everything depends upon myself or us, while in Christianity everything depends upon God or upon grace.” The Buddha is reported to have said, “One is one’s own refuge; who else could be the refuge?” Thus, God is either nonexistent or irrelevant in salvation.

The Buddhist world has long proved a tough challenge with few major breakthroughs, but the rising tide of interest and concern for the Buddhist heartlands of Tibet and Mongolia is bearing fruit. Mongolia has opened, and Tibet is increasingly surrounded on all sides by an active Christian witness. Communism has been a means for preparing many Asian Buddhist cultures for the coming of the Gospel.[cxx]

On the other hand, as China prospers, its “old-time religions” are making a comeback. In April, 2000 the Herald Tribune reported that all over China there has been a renaissance of home-grown religions. It started in the 1980’s, but quickened in the last five years, fueled by increasing prosperity and relaxed government control. Although China’s leaders have spent much of the past year denouncing cults and superstition, in part to justify their ban on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, they have mostly turned a blind eye toward the abundance of folk religions that have re-emerged in rural life.

The International Herald Tribune reports that today nearly every village on the southern coast has at least one temple or shrine, and most are devoted to ancestors or local deities. “Oh no, this is not Taoism or Buddhism,” said Zeng Qingle, 66, his gold teeth gleaming under the huge brim of his hat. This is our own religion and local tradition.” The revival is occurring all over China, but is most prominent in the southern coastal regions, where the economy has grown quickly and clan ties have remained powerful. What the article didn’t point out is that this interest in spiritual things is enabling unprecedented growth in Christianity in China, which now has more than 100 million Christians.[cxxi]

The New Age Philosophy

Horoscopes, crystals, the Human Potential Movement, meditation, channeling and homeopathic medicine are terms often heard in the media. Millions of people in the West naively accept these practices as harmless advances in a society entering a new century. Few Westerners would be caught bowing to icons of dead gods on a shelf or in a temple. But the New Age Movement has dressed up the religions of the East, especially Hinduism, to make them acceptable to sophisticated and intelligent people.

The New Age is difficult to define because there are so many facets to it. It is a pantheistic religion because it believes that everything is god. It is also polytheistic because it believes in many gods. But it is now being repackaged and called the New Spirituality to present a more attractive product.

The roots of this Eastern ideology began when Hindu Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi appeared in the 1960’s and 70’s to bring a message of utopia to America. It was called Transcendental Meditation, or TM, which started a movement that swept the United States. Offshoot organizations sprang up with major corporations such as AT&T espousing its benefits. Many other modern philosophies are based on Hindu beliefs, including A Course in Miracles, esp and the Forum seminars, Theosophy, Science of Mind, Divine Science, Unity School of Christianity, Eckankar, and Scientology.

Reincarnation has been an attractive concept to many Westerners. First, it is an escape from death. Second, it provides an excuse for sin. Third, it supposedly has a great explanation for evil. Everyone is suffering what he or she deserves from a past life. But obviously, reincarnation has no answer to suffering, evil or life after death.

Today there is a magazine called New Age and another called Self-Healing. Channeling is a sophisticated name for spirit possession, and it occurs when humans willingly give their minds and bodies to spirit beings that enter and control them. Some “channelers” are atheists to begin with, but most seem to come from disillusioned Christian backgrounds.

Many public schools in America are using New Age techniques disguised with such terms as “centering,” “calm-down time,” and “focusing.” Elsewhere in public schools such activities as hypnosis, spirit-contact and the “psychology of becoming” are used to try to help students think better, cope with stress, or relax for greater learning.

Other aspects of the New Spirituality are crystal power and holistic health. Legitimate and proven health practices are fine, but many people are undergoing treatment from holistic health proponents without questioning the spiritual aspects of their practices. Acupuncture and acupressure are based on the occultic religion of Taoism and carry much metaphysical baggage.[cxxii]

The New Spirituality has crept into the environmental movement, which has become a secular substitute for many who have rejected a personal God. Gaia was the earth goddess of ancient Greek and Roman mythology – the earth mother. The term as it is used by enviro-worshippers today refers to an Eastern, pantheistic idea that the earth is the goddess. Paganism is also a growing religion in the United States. At least 400,000 Americans call themselves pagans. Paganism reveres the divine in nature and draws on ancient myths and symbols. Its emphasis on nature attracts the ecologically minded, and its matriarchal focus appeals to women.[cxxiii]

One example of a “New Age Church” is the First Electronic Church of America (FECHA). On their web-site they summarize all the world’s religions, opening with this introduction:

“Sign in, and you’re part of our congregation – we prefer to use the word “community” – linked by the technology of electro-space. You belong to it simply by logging on, and, if you like what you see, by signing our “guest book,” and coming back from time to time, to marvel with us at the miracle and mystery of the electron. Does FECHA want converts? Hardly. We don’t want to take you away from the churches of your fathers. We see all religions as part of human history, all churches as extensions in time of their founders, holy men and women, who had their own unique and particular visions of God and the universe. In fact, by being a member of FECHA, we hope you will see how all of us are linked together, no matter what religion we have always belonged to. And, when it comes to religion, linkage is everything, for the very word ‘religion’ means a tying together.”[cxxiv]

Power is much of what New Age ideology is all about; power to transcend time and space; power to defy presumed moral laws and known physical laws; power to do anything with one’s mind; in short, power to become a god. It is no surprise that the “quick-fix” American mentality finds appeal in New Age “explanations,” which offer immediate resolutions and seemingly practical conclusions. But it’s all part of Satan’s lie.[cxxv]

Post-Modernism

We are living through a radical change in the way Western people view the world – the way they understand reality and truth. Generation X’ers or Baby Busters (those born between 1966 and 1983) and even most people under 40 see the world through a new set of glasses. A quote from Peter Corney describes the “old” modern world:

“There seemed to be no need for the transcendent in this modern world of continuing progress where all the problems could be solved. Scientific knowledge was about facts – and facts are objective, value-free and open to public discourse. But values and religious beliefs are subjective – personal and private opinions. So God was relegated to the private world – pushed aside. As the steeple became dwarfed by the smoke stacks and skyscrapers, so God became unnecessary and irrelevant to the modern world. Most Christians kept on believing in God, but many no longer lived as though He had any real power over them or the world. Christianity was no longer central to their lives. They too lived like ‘modern’ people.”[cxxvi]

But then gradually things started to come unglued. John Carroll, in his book Humanism: the Wreck of Western Culture, concludes that “Our culture is wrecked. It is dead….It is time for a new beginning.” Thus, the death throes of the modern world ushered in the post-modern era.

To the post-modern mind, the ordered and explainable world of the enlightenment no longer seems so coherent. It may even be chaotic, random, anarchic. It certainly does not seem to make as much sense as it once did. Even though God was explained away in the modern world, it was felt that humanity had the answers. But the post-modern person is not so sure now. For the most part optimism is gone, although there is a resurgence of it among the Mosaic or Third Millennium Generation (those born after 1983). Wars, famines, earthquakes, racial hatred, tribal feuds, rising third world debt, political coups, the environmental crisis, economic uncertainty, rapid change, high unemployment, AIDS, uncontrolled growth, and degradation of the world’s mega-cities, all create a sense of failure and hopelessness. Humanism, rationalism, and the industrial revolution have brought us as many nightmares as bright visions.

Post-modernists are deconstructionists. They need to tear down what the modernist has built up. But this approach to life can never build a culture. Post-modernism will eventually become exhausted, and will never establish a new culture. Post-modernism expert Mike Metzger believes that three-fourths of Western culture is currently locked into this ideology. In today’s post-modern worship service, they have dispensed with technology. Post-moderns want to keep it simple. They want a discipline of silence. While Modernism is a life without rear-view mirrors, Post-modernism is a life with rear-view mirrors. The latter say that if they find out that what they believe is wrong, they will change their beliefs. The Post-modernist is “numb,” believing people are no longer responsible for what they know.

According to James Cameron, the two most important films of the 20th century influencing Post-modernism were 2001: A Space Odyssey and Titanic. Regarding the latter, the Modernist said, “Even God can’t sink this ship.” But the skepticism of the Post-modernist proved to be true. Yet the heroes in the movie are the adulterers. They are the new superman and superwoman.[cxxvii]

It is too soon to tell whether the shift in attitudes among the Third Millennium teens is temporary or permanent. Barna reports that four out of five teens in America are optimistic about the future. A smaller proportion, but a majority nevertheless, says they have high hopes for the future. Some of this optimism may be attributed to the positive view that teens have of themselves. Three out of four consider themselves to be physically attractive. Almost as many believe that other people see them as a leader. A majority claim to be very popular. More than nine out of ten teenagers describe themselves as “happy.” Four out of five say they are trusting of other people. Only one-third describe themselves as “stressed out.” Four out of five claim to be “very intelligent.”[cxxviii]

Busters tend to see themselves as the victims of a society that does not understand them and that largely ignored them until their technology skills became marketable. Mosaics have a stronger level of self-belief, significantly based upon the generational perspective that life will be very good for them, and that society does care about who they are and how they mature.

Whether optimistic or skeptical, Helmut Thielicke’s advice is excellent: “The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing place of residence.” As we seek to find ways to re-address the Gospel in our day, we must remember I Cor. 1:18-31 and 2:1-5, as both an encouragement and a warning. The warning is not to try to reduce the Gospel to fit what people might find easy to believe. The encouragement is that the Gospel can be effective in any culture – especially one like ours. The human longing for the transcendent and the need for hope and moral imperatives will, in the end, overpower nihilism. Furthermore, the chaos and absurdity of the world as presented by the media leads to a longing for good news – and we’ve got good news![cxxix]

Ministry to Post-modern Youth

David Coleman, Regional Director for Youth For Christ/USA, wrote a paper on how we should respond in ministry to post-modern youth. He suggests that we make a shift from “decisional evangelism” to “ Discipling evangelism.” Coleman writes,[cxxx]

“Decisional evangelism is thought of in terms of pre-evangelism, evangelism, follow-up, and discipleship. At the center is the big decision to ‘accept Christ as Savior.’ This rational decision model has been the hallmark of revivalism and evangelicalism under the influence of modernity. Discipling evangelism recognizes young peoples’ pragmatic post-modern view of the truth, their uneasiness with any religion that claims superiority or exclusivity (as does biblical Christianity), and their openness to create their own eclectic spirituality. This is the reason a young person could claim to have trusted Christ as their Savior, but believe that Christianity is not the only way to God, and believe in reincarnation. While it is imperative that we see a young person make an informed decision for Christ, ‘informed’ becomes a larger word than ‘decision.’ Informed takes on the connotation that there will be many biblical truths about oneself and God to decide upon both before and after coming to faith in Christ. This approach is vital to building a church of young people who really do have a biblical faith that will carry them through the realities of life. This approach ultimately counters the post-modern view of truth, and firmly plants disciples in the church under the guiding metanarrative of the biblical story.”

Nationals from several different countries who have examined YFC/USA’s new evangelism training methodology for young people, say that this approach is on the “cutting edge” in terms of the training of Post-modern youth to share the Gospel. Instead of a linear step by step “plan of salvation,” Youth For Christ encourages the student to share their “rescue story,” then listen to their friend’s story, and finally share God’s story from His Word. This is often a process that takes place over a period of time as relationships are built.

Implications of Religious/Theological Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. Christianity is the world’s fastest growing religion. But global Christian growth has slowed in recent years due to running out of people to convert within the already-reached people groups. We are running out of traditional mission fields. There are only 265 people groups yet untargeted by any church or mission organization. We are nearing the goal of the AD2000 & Beyond Movement that every person on earth will have access to the good news of Jesus Christ. By the end of the year 2000 more than 95% of the world’s population will have access to the Gospel in any of four different ways. Yet there are still 1.2 to 1.4 billion people in the world who have not heard the Gospel. Christian missions and churches must focus personnel, energy and resources on these unevangelized areas of the world.

2. The main enemies of Christianity are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the New Age movement, and Post-Modernism. Most of these are growing rapidly and are especially taking the developed world by storm. Leaders of Christian ministries must develop a comprehensive understanding of the major theological forces at work in our world today, and must be prepared to warn young people especially of the dangers of these ideologies and steer them toward biblical Christianity. We must train our youth how to share the Gospel with those steeped in Eastern traditions or in Western Post-modernism.

3. As pointed out in the introduction, Christian churches and organizations can no longer operate in a vacuum. Partnerships and strategic alliances are an absolute must today as we seek to plow the hard ground that yet remains. The Christian world must show the interdependence that Christ taught and not try to set up thousands of independent “mini-kingdoms” in our effort to take the Gospel to the yet unreached. The evangelical Christian Church has much more in common than it has differences, and our common goals and objectives of winning the world for Christ must be majored upon.

Political Changes

The political world at the beginning of the 21st century is an enigma. The fall of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1989-90 caused a dramatic end to the decades-long cold war. The whole world breathed a sigh of relief, and visions of an unprecedented global peace were forecast. But in a matter of months the quick and decisive Gulf War sprang up. Since then there have been no serious conflicts with worldwide implications, but there has been no peace. In fact, the removal of the blanket of Soviet power which dampened tribal, religious and racial antagonisms, has caused mini-wars to erupt in the ex-Soviet republics. This conflict is still going strong between Russia and Chechnya, and has prompted the flight of more than 250,000 people into neighboring republics.

For the majority of the world’s population 1999 brought repression, poverty or war. In country after country, imprisonment, torture and political killings were used by governments to silence opposition and maintain their hold on power. In some countries, the widening gap between rich and poor fueled protests by the desperate and dispossessed, which were met with brutality and violence. In other countries, political instability degenerated into open armed conflict in which countless men, women and children were maimed or slaughtered. The millions of people fleeing in search of safety bore witness to the extent of persecution and violence around the world.[cxxxi]

Child Soldiers

Over 300,000 child soldiers – boys and girls – under the age of 18 are actively fighting in wars decided by adults all over the world. A total of 120,000 of the child soldiers are currently serving in Africa, violating fundamental human rights and humanitarian laws, according to a report by UNESCO in February, 2000. Human Rights Watch estimates that up to 30% of some guerilla units in Columbia are made up of children. According to UNICEF and Save the Children, nearly half a million children died during fighting in the past 20 years in Afghanistan. Children are forcibly or voluntarily recruited even as early as seven years of age by armies and rebel forces. They start as porters, messengers or spies and very often end up on the front line. In the latest count, over 30 countries are using child soldiers in civil conflict.

Child soldiers are both victims and perpetrators. They were found sometimes carrying out some of the most barbaric acts of violence. Lives of child recruits are very harsh. Very often they are victims of brutal treatment, violence, torture, enslavement, abduction, rape and sexual abuse. One of the major problems is that children who have been abducted and used as soldiers are simply not accepted back into their communities once the hostilities are over. When the children come out of the bush, they are often found to have frequent psycho-physical problems, including various types of trauma. Many of them feel guilty for what they were forced to do. Certainly these children need the love of Jesus Christ ministered to them.[cxxxii]

Piracy on the High Seas

Piracy attacks worldwide increased by 40% in 1999, especially in Southeast Asia. A total of 285 incidents were reported to the International Maritime Bureau. Strife-torn Indonesia topped the list with 113 incidents, more than one-third of the global total. “We believe it was due to the economic recession in Indonesia and political instability,” said Noel Choong, regional manager of the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur. Even the busy Singapore Straits saw 13 incidents in 1999 compared to just one in 1998. Other hot spots were Bangladesh with 23 incidents, Malaysia with 18, India with 14, Somalia with 11, and Nigeria with 11 recorded incidents.[cxxxiii]

Political Conflicts Around the World

There are currently conflicts or wars in at least 38 countries. Amnesty International reported in June, 2000 that there are five global trouble spots that “could soon erupt into full-scale catastrophes,” and it called on world leaders to help prevent the violence from escalating. William Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, expressed concern about rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Peru, the Indonesian province of Aceh, China’s Xinjiang province and the Russian Caucasus. AI’s annual survey of 147 countries found that the number of countries (37) where people are subject to mysterious disappearances has increased by 58% over the last decade. Torture occurs in 23% more countries (132) than it did a decade ago.

In Zimbabwe, politically motivated violence has claimed at least 30 lives. In Peru, human rights watchers increasingly question the legitimacy of President Alberto Fujimori, who won re-election on May 28, 2000 in a contest boycotted by the opposition candidate. In Indonesia, members of the rebel Free Aceh Movement, which recently signed a peace agreement with the government, have been subject to detention and extra judicial execution for years.

China, in 1999, saw the most serious and wide-ranging crackdown on peaceful dissent in a decade. Thousands of people were arbitrarily detained, and thousands were sentenced to death. Xinjiang in western China is home to the nation’s sizable minority Muslim Uighur community. Cases of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners in Xinjiang and Tibet were widespread.[cxxxiv] But China’s political and economic importance ensured that it once again escaped criticism. In fact, it looks as if the United States will soon vote to give China Most Favored Nation status for the first time ever.

In March, 2000, the deteriorating human rights situation in Kosovo erupted into a full-scale international crisis. NATO launched air strikes against Serbian targets in Yugoslavia after political efforts failed to end the armed conflict between Yugoslav government forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army. The bombing triggered an escalation of gross human rights violations as Serbian police and paramilitary units and the Yugoslav Army drove around 850,000 ethnic Albanians from their homes, creating a regional refugee crisis.

Since 1975, when Indonesia invaded and illegally annexed East Timor, its people have faced brutal repression; at least one third of the population has been wiped out. In August, 1999, an extraordinary 98% of East Timor’s voters turned out for a UN-organized ballot over the territory’s future. Despite sustained intimidation by pro-Indonesian forces, the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence. Their brave stand was met with a systematic wave of violence, with hundreds of thousands of people being forced to flee their homes. Unlawful killings, rape and torture were committed by pro-Indonesian militias acting with the direct and indirect support of the Indonesian military and police.

AI protested and asked many influential governments to impose arms embargoes and to suspend military training. In September, 1999, the UN deployed an Australian-led multi-national force. By the time the troops arrived, the vast majority of the population had fled or had been forcibly expelled. Returning refugees were faced with the destruction of whole communities and the basic infrastructure. One spokesperson for the UN summed up the crisis this way: “Rarely has a short crisis resulted in such extensive damage to such a large percentage of the total population. Virtually every family in East Timor has been affected; 75% of all East Timorese were displaced and 70% of private residences, public buildings and essential utilities were destroyed.”[cxxxv]

During 1999, widespread and serious human rights violations – including large-scale executions, routine use of torture and unfair trials, often before special courts, took place throughout much of the Middle East and North Africa. A new report by Open Doors, an organization that ministers to the persecuted church, said Saudi Arabia is the world’s most repressive country for Christians.[cxxxvi]

In 1999, Amnesty International recorded at least 103 executions in Saudi Arabia, 165 in Iran, hundreds in Iraq, 100+ in Egypt, and 12 in Jordan. Killings in Algeria were lower than in previous years, but remained high nonetheless. Although “disappearances” and torture also diminished significantly, cases continued to be reported, and no concrete measures were taken by the authorities to clarify the cases of some 4,000 people who “disappeared” in previous years. Hundreds of political prisoners remained in detention in Israel, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and Bahrain – with smaller numbers detained in several other countries.[cxxxvii]

Rampant Persecution of Christians

Wars and political conflicts often involve people of one ethnic group or religion fighting another. But there is no question that Christians around the world are among the most persecuted. In Indonesia, well over 500 church buildings have been burned over the past decade. There has been much persecution of Christians in this Muslim nation. Radical Muslim leaders calling for jihad, or holy war, have attacked Christians in the Maluku Islands where more than 2500 people were killed in the 18 months between January, 1999 and June, 2000. Indonesian soldiers have often sided with Muslim mobs. In January, 1999, 200 people died while two schools and thirteen churches were burned. In Yabok Protestant Church on August 11, 1999, Indonesian soldiers killed 30 Christians. Thugs killed at least 150 and injured 300 in summer clashes. On June 12, 2000 at least 116 died (108 Christians and 8 Muslims) in the Christian village of Duma, Indonesia. 292 homes and a church were burned.[cxxxviii]

The Grozny Baptist Church in Chechnya had the only male leader kidnapped from its midst in August, 1999. Thugs beheaded two pastors earlier in 1999, and they killed two elderly women in the church. The Chinese government regularly harasses churches that will not register with and submit to official religious agencies. Chinese officials have shown no particular concern about the U.S. campaign for the persecuted. They recently shut down a house church in Guangzhou, arresting the pastor and his wife along with three others. They dispersed a church meeting of well-known Pastor Samual Lamb in Guangzhou. Rev. Lamb has spent 21 years in prison and labor camps and is now 86. He has no plans to register his church.[cxxxix]

In Colombia, over 25 evangelical pastors have been killed and close to 300 churches closed in the past six months. The increasing violence is a result of Colombia’s 40-year-old civil war between leftist guerrilla groups and the government that has left 35,000 people dead in the last decade alone. Over 1350 kidnappings have been reported so far this year in Colombia. But the church continues to grow rapidly in Colombia in the midst of this chaos. One of the largest prayer meetings known takes place in Cali four times a year in the soccer stadium that holds about 65,000 people. Persecuted Christians all over the world are maintaining strong prayer vigils and great faith.[cxl] Thugs the world over, unwitting partners to the hand of God, keep the testimonies of the saints fresh every year.

Help from Voice of the Martyrs

The Voice of the Martyrs has documented thousands of specific cases of mayhem perpetrated upon Christians in nations like Egypt, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bhutan, Cuba, Cypress, Kuwait, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Sri Lanka, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. Sudan has been a particular target of the Islamic government soldiers. The Voice of the Martyrs underwrites the cost of a 100-bed hospital just to treat Christians who are persecuted. They have established a therapeutic feeding program for malnourished mothers and children. They partner with other Christian groups to provide thousands of “Sudan Life Packs” (pots, pans, mosquito net, soap, buckets, hoes, Bibles, and other items).[cxli]

Yet the Sudanese problem won’t go away. In June, 2000, World Magazine reported that more than 60,000 Sudanese people are newly homeless, many of them starving children. For several months government forces have been clearing their own citizens from the Blue Nile Area in southeast Sudan to make way for paying customers: overseas oil companies. Oil consortiums from Canada, China, Europe and Malaysia are investing heavily in the nearby Adar oil fields, as well as the larger oil fields near the Nuba mountains. They are convinced that Sudan has oil reserves roughly equal to those already found in the North Sea. Government forces are attacking relief work directly.

Since March, 2000 a hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse has been bombed more than a dozen times. Government forces also bombed a school compound on March 14. Relief groups have been unable to get food to these starving Sudanese because of government intervention. The United Nations continues to allow Khartoum to dictate how international aid is supplied to the country. Since 1998, 100,000 people have reportedly died of government-induced famine in those regions.[cxlii]

Christians in Laos are continually under fire. The government is planning to wipe out Christianity from all the villages of the Luang Prabang province. Church buildings have been closed for decades. People now are not allowed to worship in their homes. Some worship in the jungle. Fully armed police move from village to village, forcing people to sign a document of resignation from Christianity. Those who refuse to sign are threatened, chased from their land or separated from their families. Since the orders were given in June, 1998, troops and police encircle the villages until Christians sign the documents.[cxliii]

But we can be very grateful that there are many Christians worldwide who would never think of renouncing their faith in Christ. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and they are not ashamed of their witness for Christ – regardless of how much they are slandered and persecuted. According to Tom White, The Voice of the Martyrs’ USA director, “The reason these saints look increasingly radical to us is that we are growing more institutional and non-evangelical, even as hostile anti-Christian forces are multiplying in our nation today. Our leader, Jesus Christ, did not offer His followers a life of fame and ease for investing in the Kingdom. He prophesied that they would drink from the “same cup.” He was spat upon and murdered. They drank from the same cup and were also murdered in India, Ethiopia and other areas.”[cxliv]

“They looked to Him and were radiant; and their faces shall never be ashamed.” (Ps. 34:5, NASB)

Implications of Political Changes for Ministry in the 21st Century

1. The political world at the beginning of the 21st century is an enigma. Communism has fallen and various forms of market capitalism are prevailing in most countries of the world. Yet for much of the world, 1999 brought repression, poverty, war and many natural disasters. Child soldiers as young as seven are being brutally treated. In country after country people protesting against their government are subjected to kidnapping, imprisonment, torture and even death as that government attempts to hold onto its political power. Regional conflicts (wars), political persecution, and government corruption result in huge populations of refugees and help fuel the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Since the Gospel values all people, Christian ministries must remember to focus physical, emotional and spiritual help on these devastated and impoverished people who are more than open to the Gospel.

2. The world is full of persecuted Christians, and the problem is getting worse. The Christian Church must join with human rights groups in boldly protesting official government persecution of Christians, and in encouraging governments to stop (not sanction) private radical groups who attack and burn Christian churches and villages. Furthermore, churches and Christian organizations must never shy away from such persecution themselves, but must pray more for those under persecution and find positive and even radical ways to treat, help, serve and minister to fellow saints in distress. After all, it is their witness that produces the most results in terms of advancing the Kingdom of God.

3. Many countries are closed or severely restricted to foreign missionaries. Creative alternative methods such as development work, language instruction, media, business trade, tent-making, and short term missions will need to be used by Christian ministries to overcome such barriers. New paradigms will create an environment where innovative ministries can spring from an entrepreneurial-like spirit.

Conclusion

Today our world is filled with a mixture of events that would feed a pessimist’s worldview. China and Taiwan continue to make threats in the battle to unite them under one flag. India and Pakistan are now both nuclear powers and have threatened to “nuke” each other in their weaker moments. The United States, the only present-day superpower, has refused to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty signed by dozens of other countries. Terrorism is growing in intensity, scale and threat. The Middle East peace talks have stalled once again.

Respect for political leadership in the United States is at an all-time low since President Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed from office. “Slick Willie” is seen as having more than “nine lives” as he has managed to avoid the consequences of various acts of immoral and improper conduct. The Supreme Court of the United States in June, 2000, struck down a Texas school board’s policy of allowing students to decide, by majority vote, whether to have a student-led “invocation” at football games, graduations and other school gatherings. The decision halts a movement by Christian legal activists to convert the school prayer issue into one of free speech for students. “School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible,” the court ruled. “Moreover, schools have no business holding elections on matters of religion.”[cxlv]

Yet there are hopeful signs as well. In mid-2000, North and South Korea have made giant strides toward cooperating together peacefully. The spectacular population growth is slowing down. Food production has more than kept up with population growth. During the last half of the 20th century, global economic output has risen by 3% annually, and a bit higher during the 90’s. Advances in health care and longevity are creating healthier and longer lives for the world’s people in general. By 2010, biomonitoring devices that resemble wristwatches will provide wearers with up-to-the-minute data about their health status. But the threat of new, reemerging and immune microorganisms is growing.[cxlvi]

Although democracy and market capitalism now dominate the world’s political systems, there is still much diversity and variation within their structures and ideologies. Some countries are ruled strictly by dictators or beneficent monarchs. Others are ruled by bigoted and intolerant religious zealots. Still others are governed through cooperation between executive, legislative and judicial branches. Some are backward; some are progressive. Some are rich; and some are extremely poor. Some tolerate religious diversity; others persecute, torture, imprison, and even execute those not to their liking.

But in spite of this, the evangelical Christian faith is slowly but steadily marching across the world as a growing minority, as God’s people become burdened to fit into His work rather than try to get Him to fit into their work. We can rejoice that massive progress toward the last people group to be reached has been made in the last 20 years.

Virtually unknown 50 years ago, youth ministry has come into its own, and thousands of people spend their whole lives ministering to youth. Growing up in this fast-changing, problem-strewn world is not easy for any of today’s youth, but we need to redistribute some of today’s youth ministers around the world.

When I look at the conglomeration of positives and negatives in this report, I feel exactly like Dr. Ralph Winter, editor of Mission Frontiers magazine, when he said in the June, 2000 issue,

“At my age I now know more about more things in some depth than I have ever known before, yet I am dumbfounded at world problems for which I don’t see any answers. I have degrees in science and engineering, education, anthropology, and theology. On top of that I have taught macrohistory covering 2000 BC to 2000 AD. But as the diameter of our knowledge increases, the circumference of our ignorance increases far faster. Modern science looking into telescopes or microscopes is constantly reporting the ‘unfathomable.’”[cxlvii]

So what shall we do? We can “bury our head in the sand” and just keep going the way we are, or we can strive to be like the men of Issachar who understood the times and knew what they should do. Our ministries must change as the times change – or they are doomed. But when all is said and done, more knowledge and awareness of the global forces described here, or even an all-encompassing global strategy, will not suffice for our success.

Our only hope is Jesus Christ. We must pray as never before for this troubled world. And we must continue to work for the advancement of His Kingdom. All the while, we must remember the ultimate goal, the end result, and never be discouraged. Our sovereign Lord, our King of Kings, will win out in the end. Satan is here only for a season. Then he will be thrown into the bottomless pit forever and ever. As for those of us who truly know Him, we must never forget this heavenly scene that we will eventually be a part of:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” Rev. 7:9

End Notes

-----------------------

[i] Mike King, Millennial Leap (Shawnee Mission, Kansas: YouthFront Publications, 2000), pp. 2-3.

[ii] Ibid., pp. 9, 12, 15-22.

[iii] Mark Senter, The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1992), p. 156.

[iv] Mike King, Millennial Leap (Shawnee Mission, Kansas: YouthFront Publications, 2000), p. 41.

[v] Ibid., p. 39.

[vi] Ibid., p. 66.

[vii] Global Context for Action, World Vision International Context Paper, April, 1995, pp. 1-3.

[viii] U.S. Census Bureau, the Official Statistics, February 2, 1999, p. 9.

[ix] Ibid., p. 10.

[x] Ibid., p. 11.

[xi] Ibid., p. 9.

[xii] U.S. Census Bureau, the Official Statistics, December 2, 1998, p. 1.

[xiii] Ibid., p. 2.

[xiv] “Population Explosion Continues,” The Denver Post, June 8, 2000.

[xv] U.S. Census Bureau, the Official Statistics, February 2, 1999, pp. 2, 21.

[xvi] Ibid., p. 3.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Demographic Yearbook, (New York: The United Nations, 1995).

[xix] “AIDS Taking Horrific Toll in Africa,” The Denver Post, June 28, 2000, pp. 1A, 14A.

[xx] U.S Census Bureau, the Official Statistics, December 22, 1998, p. 4.

[xxi] “HIV Resurgence in S.F. ‘A Wake-up Call,’” The Denver Post, July 1, 2000, pp. 1A, 14A.

[xxii] Mike King, Millennial Leap (Shawnee Mission, Kansas: YouthFront Publications, 2000), p. 125.

[xxiii] John L. Petersen, The Road to 2015, (Corte Madera, California: Waite Group Press, 1994), pp. 28-32.

[xxiv] “Leaving Moore’s Law in the Dust,” U.S. News & World Report, July 10, 2000, pp. 37-38.

[xxv] “Latest Supercomputer a Cyber Breakthrough,” The Denver Post, June 29, 2000, p. 14A.

[xxvi] Petersen, The Road to 2015, pp. 33-36.

[xxvii] “Quick Facts: Computer and Internet Usage,” Web-site: media-awareness.ca/eng/issues/stats/isenet.htm, May 22, 2000, pp. 3-41.

[xxviii] Ibid., p. 9.

[xxix] Ibid., pp. 10-41.

[xxx] Singapore Youth For Christ, Reach Newsletter, April, May, 2000, pp. 1-2.

[xxxi] Petersen, The Road to 2015, pp. 68-69.

[xxxii] “From the Global Village to the Global Mind,” UNESCO Courier, February, 1995, pp. 20-22.

[xxxiii] “Virtual Campus Is a Mistake,” International Herald Tribune, March 23, 2000, p. 9.

[xxxiv] “Technology Helps put India to Work from Afar,” International Herald Tribune, April 8-9, 2000, pp. 1, 5.

[xxxv] “Gates Touts Digital World in 5 Years,” The Denver Post, June 28, 2000, pp. 1C, 10C.

36 “France Rated No. 1 in Health Care,” , June 20, 2000, pp. 1-3

[xxxvi] “Today’s Trends,” Web-Site: trends.htm, June 14, 2000, pp. 2-3.

[xxxvii] “Beware the Digital Divide,” The Straits Times, January 26, 2000, p. 38.

[xxxviii] “’Net Guru Sees Threat to Humanity, The Denver Post, June, 2000, pp. 2A, 4A.

[xxxix] Arthur W. Deyo, Establishing a Youth For Christ Ministry in a Major Metropolitan Area, Doctoral Thesis, 1985, pp. 111-120.

[xl] “We Are Family,” World, May 20, 2000, p. 7.

[xli] “Doing Without Marriage,” World,” April 29, 2000, p. 25.

[xlii] “Sanctioning Cruelty or Saving Children?” World, June 24, 2000, 18-21.

[xliii] “We Are Family,” World, May 20, 2000, 7-8.

[xliv] “Our Genes Almost an Open Book,” The Denver Post, June 27, 2000, pp. 1A, 8A.

[xlv] “We Are Family,” World, May 20, 2000, p. 8.

[xlvi] “Fatherhood Canceled in Primetime TV,” World, May 20, 2000, pp. 34-36.

[xlvii] “Breaking the Language Barrier,” World, June 24, 2000, p. 15.

[xlviii] “Worldwide Status of Women,” Web-site: stats.htm, pp. 1-2.

[xlix] “Activists: Outlaw Genital Mutilation,” The Denver Post, July 2, 2000, p. 4.

[l] “No Sale.” World, March 25, 2000, pp. 18-22.

[li] "Media Tied to Violence Among Kids," The Denver Post, July 26, 2000, p. 4A.

[lii] Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler, Right From Wrong, (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994), p. 5.

[liii] “Youth Stats Tour,” Youthworker, January/February, 2000, from p. 2 at Web-site: ys/free/stats/jf00.html.

[liv] “Murder in the 1st,” World, March 11, 2000, pp. 6-7.

[lv] “A Lust for Profits,” U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 2000, pp. 36-44.

[lvi] “Cities See Light after Years of Blight,” The Denver Post, May 22, 2000, pp. 1A, 17A.

[lvii] “The Global Crime Wave,” The Futurist, July-August, 1994, pp. 22-28.

[lviii] “Crime Rate, The Illustrated Book of World Rankings, pp. 315-316.

[lix] “Teen Problems: A Result of the Money Chase,” The Business Week, January 21, 2000, p. 47.

[lx] “Teens Get Real,” U.S. News & World Report, April 17, 2000, pp. 46-55.

[lxi] “Fewer Teens Indulging in Risky Behavior,” The Denver Post, June 7, 2000, p. 6A.

[lxii] George Barna, Third Millennium Teens, pp. 61-64.

[lxiii] Ibid., p. 66.

[lxiv] Ibid., pp. 65-69.

[lxv] Jane M. Healy, Failure to Connect (New York: Touchstone, 1998), pp. 279-280.

[lxvi] “The Gains and Losses of Time,” Arts Education Policy Review, September, 1994, pp. 27-31.

[lxvii] Healy, Failure to Connect, p. 166.

[lxviii] Ibid., p. 228.

[lxix] “Youths Need More Gym, Less TV, Researchers Say,” The Denver Post, June 7, 2000, p. 6.

[lxx] “Living in the Global Village,” Electronic Learnings, May, 1994, pp. 28-29.

[lxxi] “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” Christianity Today, May 22, 2000, pp. 42-51.

[lxxii] Petersen, The Road to 2015, p. 75.

[lxxiii] “Report: Earth’s in Bad Shape,” The Denver Post, January 16, 2000, p. 16A.

[lxxiv] “Save the Amazon Rain Forest,” E-mail address: fsaviolo@.br, from Kamahl Russell, YFC Australia, June 20, 2000.

[lxxv] “Planet Watch,” Popular Mechanics, June, 2000, p. 26.

[lxxvi] “Century’s Forecast: Hot,” The Denver Post, June 9, 2000, pp. 1A, 16A.

[lxxvii] “Polar Meltdown,” U.S. News & World Report, February 28, 2000, pp. 64-74.

[lxxviii] “Diseases’ Death Toll Exceeds Disasters’,” The Denver Post, June 29, 2000.

[lxxix] “Cool Down the World Economy,” The Denver Post, January, 2000.

[lxxx] Hamish McRae, The World in 2020, (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994), pp. 127-132.

[lxxxi] Peterson, The Road to 2015, pp. 251-258.

[lxxxii] McRae, The World in 2020, pp. 253-261.

[lxxxiii] “Asian Contagion – Heart Attack or Hiccup?” Web-site: 9804.htm, pp. 1-2.

[lxxxiv] “State Helps Fuel Record Economic Boom,” The Denver Post, February 1, 2000, pp. 1A, 6A.

[lxxxv] “Dream Surplus for U.S.,” International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2000, pp. 1, 3.

[lxxxvi] “The Wealth Effect: Multiple Homes,” The Denver Post, May, 2000.

[lxxxvii] “Quotes of Note,” The Denver Post, January 18, 2000, p. 2A.

[lxxxviii] “Blessed are the Weak…Even the Euro,” The Denver Post, May, 2000, editorial page.

[lxxxix] “’New Economy’ Makes Inroads in Europe,” International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2000, p. 18.

[xc] “Asian Economic Recovery in Real,” The Straits Times, January 26, 2000, p. 39.

[xci] “Still the Sick Man of Asia,” U.S. News & World Report, March 27, 2000, p. 46.

[xcii] “India and China Exemplify the Extremes in Asia Economies,” International Herald Tribune, January 27, 2000, p. 15.

[xciii] “Coming to Amrika,” Time Asia, March 27, 2000, pp. 22-26.

[xciv] “Capitalist Generation,” Business Week, October 11, 1999, pp. E4-E8.

[xcv] “’We Want to Grab the Funky Market’,” Ibid., pp. E10-E12.

[xcvi] “Employers See Teenage Wasteland,” The Denver Post, May 30, 2000, pp. 1C, 2C.

[xcvii] The World Economy in the Twentieth Century, June, 2000, p. 150.

[xcviii] “Charts: Highest GDP,” Global Statistics, Web-site: charts/gdpl.htm, June 14, 2000, p. 1-2.

[xcix] “Africa Trailing in Quality of Life,” The Denver Post, June 30, 2000, p. 17A.

[c] The World Economy in the Twentieth Century, June, 2000, pp. 150-151.

[ci] Ibid., p. 154.

[cii] Ibid., pp. 156-157.

[ciii] Ibid., pp. 161-163.

[civ] “Finishing the Task: The Unreached Peoples Challenge,” Mission Frontiers, June, 2000, p. 22.

[cv] “An Overview of the World by Religious Adherents,” Mission Frontiers, June, 2000, p. 21.

[cvi] Ibid.

[cvii] “Where Are We Now,” Mission Frontiers, June, 2000, p. 13.

[cviii] Ibid., pp. 14-16.

[cix] David B. Barrett & Todd M. Johnson, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January, 1999.

[cx] “Where Are We Now,” Frontier Missions, June, 2000, p. 16.

[cxi] “An Overview of the World by Religious Adherents,” Frontier Missions, June, 2000, p. 21.

[cxii] “Where Are We Now?” Ibid., pp. 17-18.

[cxiii] Ibid.

[cxiv] Ibid., p. 19.

[cxv] “Islam, U.S.A.,” Christianity Today, April 3, 2000, pp. 40-50.

[cxvi] Prabha George, “Hinduism,” paper presented at 1993 YFCI Convocation in Chicago, pp. 1-3.

[cxvii] Premkumar Dharmaraj, “Break the Christian Cocoon: Let Hindus See Jesus,” Mission Frontiers, Nov.-Dec., 1994, pp. 25-26.

[cxviii] Patrick Johnstone, Operation World, (Ft. Washington, PA: WEC International, 1993). P. 23.

[cxix] Ibid., p. 26.

[cxx] “As China Prospers, Its Old-Time Religions are Making a Comeback,” International Herald Tribune, April 8-9, 2000, pp. 1, 5.

[cxxi] David Jeremiah, Invasion of Other Gods,” (London: Word Publishing, 1995), pp. 18-160.

[cxxii] Tom McNichol, “Pagans Rising,” USA Weekend, Oct. 27-29, 1995, p. 12.

[cxxiii] “Summaries of World Religions,” The First Electronic Church of America, Web-site: fecha/religion.htm, June 21, 2000, pp. 1-7.

[cxxiv] Bob Larson, Straight Answers on the New Age, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989) pp. 41, 99.

[cxxv] Peter Corney, “Have You Got the Right Address? Post-Modernism and the Gospel,” Grid, January, 1995, pp. 1-2.

[cxxvi] Mike Metzger, Lecture on “Post-modern Teenagers,” given at YFC/USA Summer Institute, June, 1999.

[cxxvii] Barna, Third Millennium Teens, pp. 5-6.

[cxxviii] Corney, Grid, pp. 3-4.

[cxxix] David Coleman, “Discipling Evangelism of Post-modern Youth,” A Term Paper written for a course requirement at Regent College, June, 1998, pp. 6-8.

[cxxx] Amnesty International, “Introduction,” Annual Report 2000, June 21, 2000, p. 1.

[cxxxi] “3 Lakh Children Fighting in Frontlines,” The Dhaka Star, April, 2000.

[cxxxii] “Piracy Attacks Worldwide Soared 40% Last Year,” The Business Times, January 25, 2000, p. 1.

[cxxxiii] “Rights Report: Abuses Bode Ill,” The Denver Post, June 15, 2000, p. 4.

[cxxxiv] Amnesty International, “Introduction,” Annual Report 2000, June 21, 2000, pp. 2-3.

[cxxxv] “Worldwide Missions News and Notes,” Calvary Contender, September 15, 1999, p. 2.

[cxxxvi] Amnesty International, “Middle East and North Africa,” Annual Report 2000, pp. 1-7.

[cxxxvii] “Clashes in Indonesia Kill 116,” The Denver Post, June 13, 2000, p. 7A.

[cxxxviii] “Taking on the Thugs,” World, November 6, 1999, pp. 16-18.

[cxxxix] “The Persecuted Church,” Prayer Track News of Global Harvest Ministries, Oct.-Dec., 1999, p. 6.

[cxl] “Not Ashamed…in Sudan,” The Voice of the Martyrs, 1999 Special Issue, p. 7.

[cxli] “Blue Nile Blackout,” World, June 10, 2000, pp. 20-24.

[cxlii] “Not Ashamed…in Vietnam-Laos,” The Voice of the Martyrs, 1999 Special Issue, p. 4.

[cxliii] “Never Ashamed,” The Voice of the Martyrs, 1999, pp. 2-3.

[cxliv] “Court Rejects Student-Led Prayers,” The Denver Post, June 20, 2000, pp. 1A, 10A.

[cxlv] “Top 10 Forecasts,” Outlook 2000, from recent issues of The Futurist, p. 1.

[cxlvi] “Editorial Comment,” Mission Frontiers, June, 2000, p. 2.

Acknowledgements

In 1995 I was asked by Youth For Christ International to write a “context paper” for the organization’s International Convocation to be held in Taiwan in August, 1996. That paper, entitled “The Global Context for the Future of YFCI,” utilized many and varied sources, including a worldwide organizational survey, dozens of books, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and a score of interviews with key youth leaders both inside and outside of YFC.

When I was asked to lead two workshops on the same topic at Amsterdam 2000 in August, 2000, I decided to update the paper and expand it for the worldwide evangelical community. It could then also be utilized at the Youth For Christ International Convention held in Denver, Colorado in August/September, 2000.

I want to thank my very capable assistant, Rebecca Sawan, for helping me with research for this project. Her many, many hours of searching, reading, typing, proofreading, and creating figures went beyond the call of duty. I am also greatly indebted to Mac Kornelsen, who spent many hours designing figures and helping with layout, proofreading, editing and computer formatting.

YFC Staff, Mindy Rogers, Emily Krach and Tami Martin were very helpful with research as well.

Thanks to Larry Russell and all the World Outreach Staff for “indulging” me in this project. Their willingness to let me spend so many hours on this project during one of the busiest summers ever, was greatly appreciated.

I want to thank my dear life partner, Lois, for her patient and loving cooperation as well – putting up with my many late nights at the computer – home, but not really home. She truly understands the value of this project and supported me all the way.

It is my prayer that this document will truly be of help to many youth directors, youth pastors and youth organizations as we seek to partner together to build the Kingdom of God in the new century.

Dr. Art Deyo

7670 S. Vaughn Ct.

Englewood, Colorado 80112

U.S.A

August 2000

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