Christian Post
Feb 9 2008

Portrait of Christianity in the Next 1,000 Years

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Sat, Feb. 09 2008 06:30 AM ET

What will the Christian church look like in the next 1,000 years?

Aaron Kruse, a New Life Church member, worships during services
Sunday, Feb., 18, 2007, in Colorado Springs, Colo.If a devout
Christian from the year 1000 A.D. were to be dropped into a
mid-morning service at a 21st century progressive church, the
medieval Christian wouuld not recognize the Christian faith, says
Kevin Kelly in the latest issue of Willow magazine – a publication of
the influential Willow Creek Community Church.

So it’s "reasonable and responsible to expect tremendous change in
the Christian church" in the next millennium, he writes.

Besides the end of the world happening in this lifetime, Kelly offers
five other scenarios – or plausible stories – for what the church may
look like in the year 3,000 A.D.

And he cautions, "If Christians don’t seize the future, then
unbelievers will."

Scenario One

The center of Christianity will continue to shift west. Since the
time of Christ, the center of gravity for the global Christian church
has steadily moved west from its epicenter in Jerusalem. It has
shifted to Armenia, Greece, Rome, then into Europe, and further west
into North and South America.

Many reports indicate that the center of Christianity is now in Asia
and Africa where the Christian population is booming.

But Kelly says it won’t stop there.

"If the move west continues as it has for the last 2,000 years,
Christianity’s center of gravity will keep migrating westward beyond
East and Central Asia. The new missionaries based in Asia in the
coming century will reach out to unbelievers in the birthplace of
Christianity."

Eventually, the epicenter of Christianity will circumnavigate the
globe and arrive back where it began in Jerusalem.

That means, "unless Christianity in the U.S. becomes less parochial
and more global, what happens in North American Christianity in the
next 500 years may simply be the side-show," Kelly writes. "The main
event will happen elsewhere around the globe."

Scenario Two

The varieties of Christianity, including the number of creeds and
denominations, will continue to increase. Christian denominations
have increased from 500 in 1800 to 40,000 in 2007, Kelly cites.

And nothing will apparently halt the diversification.

"When you can get 72 varieties of mustard in the supermarket, choice
is accepted," he writes. "There is no known counter force visible in
our culture which would work against increased varieties in Christian
approaches."

Scenario Three

Churches outside mainstream Christianity are growing the fastest. The
greatest growth in the future is expected from such marginal church
groups as the Mormons and the Amish.

The growth, however, won’t go without criticism. These churches will
be, and some already are, considered cults or heretics by the
orthodox, Kelly points out.

Nevertheless, Kelly says "an entirely safe bet would be that the
largest denomination 1,000 years from now is one that does not exist
at the moment."

Currently, the largest church in the United States is Lakewood
Church, a nondenominational church of now 40,000 weekly attendants,
in Houston. It was founded in 1959.

Scenario Four

An overwhelming majority of the challenges – such as abortion, stem
cell therapies and pornography – Christianity will be facing in the
next millennium will be driven by new technologies. Kelly points out
that today’s challenges are tame compared to the ones coming.

And as Christians have already been witnessing, the next generations
of Christians will speak the Facebook and YouTube language as easily
as Americans speak English today.

"The long-term trend is more technology in the Christian culture;
what is missing, and what may take several generations to supply, is
an understanding of the spiritual meaning of technology," Kelly
writes.

Scenario Five

As culture continues to move toward a future of questioning and
doubt, Christianity has to "develop a cultural practice of positive
questioning, of active holy doubt, and a clear articulation of what
is eternal and what is in flux," he notes.

That practice is likely to be constructed not by theologians, Kelly
says, but by members of the worldwide church in a distributed social
media context. "The wiki-church."

And that includes Muslims.

The Christian community is shrinking in Europe while the Islamic
community continues to grow. And while Islam has turned radical and
militant in other parts of the world, Kelly points to the millions of
non-militant moderate Muslim communities.

"On many social issues moderate Islam and conservative Christianity
agree," he contends. "They are both people of the book. They both
honor many of the same prophets. They agree on many religious issues
like prayer, sexuality, sin, and family.

"It is not impossible to imagine Muslims and Christians becoming
allies in the inevitable culture wars of the future. It is no more
impossible than imagining Christians and Jews would be allies a
thousand years ago."

Kelly predicts 100 years from now, a conservative Christian-Islam
alliance might be a serious global political force.

While none of the five scenarios may happen, they are presented in
order to gain a firm grasp of the present trends, Kelly says.

"Sometimes it takes an exercise of extrapolating to a thousand years
from now to see what is happening tomorrow. Only by extending a trend
can we see if it might endure, or survive in the face of other
trends, or if it might provoke an awareness of a trend we could not
see before."

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