Many images come to mind when one thinks of Europe: charming little towns with quiet streets, cafes, museums, historical landmarks, and beautiful country sides. Images of comfort and satisfaction. It is not often that we imagine Europe as being spiritually needy because we usually imagine it as tourists would.

However, the needs of Europe come into sharp focus when we compare the prosperity of the evangelical church in other parts of the world with the poverty of the European Evangelical church. We can see this in the massive sea change that occurred during the last the 20th Century.

When examining the last 100 years, the Evangelical church has seen enormous growth in the two-thirds world. The Latin American Evangelical church increased by 5164% percent over the last 100 years. Evangelical Christianity also exponentially increased across Africa by over 4154% percent during the same time period. Asia saw enormous growth to the rate of 2265% percent during the 20th century. For example, in 1900 China had a young church of less than 1 million. By 2000 the church in China had grown to 80 million. The editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia summarize this explosive growth by stating that “Christianity has in fact surged ahead in the world’s less-developed countries from 83 millions in 1900 to 1,120 millions by AD 2000.”

On the other hand, Europe, the very heart of historic Christendom, has seen a hemorrhaging of the faithful. For 19 centuries, Europe was the primary home of Christian life and mission. The editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia observe on page 1 the startling news of the devastating de-Christianization of Europe in the 20th century:

“No-one in 1900 expected the massive defections from Christianity that subsequently took place in Western Europe due to secularism, (and) in Russia and later Eastern Europe due to Communism.”

We see these twin movements, the enormous growth of the Christian church in the Two-thirds world, and the wilting of the church in Europe over last 100 years, depicted in the graph below

.