A New Era in Global Missions Emerging From Asia, Voices from the Global Church, part 3

India

India’s church growth in the mid-19th century has been evangelization focusing on the poorer members of society. The church’s expansion generally corresponded to Southern India in the last fifty years. India’s missionary movement started to reach traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic majorities in northern India. The working class is receptive to the gospel, particularly in rural areas and among migrants in urban slums such as the Dalits, the outcast ‘untouchables’ in the Hindu caste system.   

Indian missionaries are involved in “cross-cultural” church planting among the 2,138 unreached people groups (UPGs), with 99% of missionaries working cross-culturally amongst ethnic groups within the country. Indian missionary growth “has also led to a change in understanding of the title ‘missionary,’ a term traditionally used only to describe those who came from abroad and associated with ‘white’ people (Ekström 2011, 232).” Christianity in India is estimated at 4% to 5%, comprising over 50 million Christians.  The India Missions Association (IMA) has previously claimed 60,000 Indian workers with 300 indigenous mission agencies working in India.

India’s main strength is the availability of a large number of volunteers. Missionaries are often bi-vocational, combining ministry with a job or receiving support from the diaspora or overseas. Christianity in India has been viewed with hostility as a foreign religion, and the church is experiencing growing persecution. Conversion laws have been used to accuse Christians of using illegal means to proselytize. The decline in democratic freedoms with the church escalated after Prime Minister Modi’s victory in 2014. The recent rise of nationalism has witnessed the removal of foreign influence with increased aggression towards local churches. The new tightened environment has decreased mission activities for a season, but a new indigenous church movement is taking place among the high-caste Hindu communities in Northern India. 

Other Asian Countries

Other Asian countries have also participated in missions. The number of Filipino overseas missionaries involved in cross-cultural work is around 2,000. A Filipino church in Manila with 200,000 members has commissioned over 150 missionaries, with many planting cross-cultural churches across Asia. Thousands more of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), including domestic helpers, nannies, construction workers, engineers, architects, nurses, IT, chefs, and seafarers…are also reaching cross-culturally.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore have also witnessed significant church growth. Christians are estimated at 15% to 20% of the population. In Indonesia, around 1,000 indigenous workers are involved in cross-cultural church planting among the 130 unreached groups within the country. Malaysia also has a similar number of cross-cultural workers in many of the 157 people groups, including several hundred cross-cultural missionaries sent overseas. Hong Kong has commissioned 670 overseas career missionaries (2023), Taiwan has sent 600 (2017), and Singapore has at least 428 (2019).  

Arise Asia

A new dynamic of Asian missions movement is on the horizon. Asian leaders from the Asia Evangelical Alliance, Asia Theological Association, CCCOWE, Movement Day, and the Lausanne Movement met in 2022 to discuss the future of the Asian church and its mission primarily within the Asian context. In July 2023, over 1,800 students and young people from 37 Asian countries gathered at Arise Asia with the theme of global missions to “go where there is no gospel.” Several hundred cross-cultural mission commitments were made by young people with an average age of 25. An Arise Asia movement is gaining momentum from the next generation of Millennials and Gen Zs. The church in Asia is at a turning point in history, transitioning from a mission-receiving region to becoming a missionary-sending continent. 

Conclusion

In a new era of global missions, a new missionary force has emerged from the East and in the Global South. The new dynamic of a poly-centric global missions movement sends missionaries from multiple centers across the majority world. These new missionary movement sending centers have their own unique strategies methods and challenges according to their cultural, socioeconomic, and political context.

Asia is now a new center with a new missionary era that is interconnected to a global missions community in a connected world. The witness of the gospel message is the same with the call to the unreached peoples, unreached regions to go to the ends of the earth; to go to where there is no gospel.