Interesting Read- Latourette- Europe Part 1

The Great Century in Europe and the United States: A.D. 1800 – A.D. 1914 by Kenneth Scott Latourette is volume 4 of  The History of the Expansion of Christianity and deals with Christian history up to the end of World War II. It is a worthy read, so I'll only briefly highlight some of the content in these posts. Although the other volumes cover Christianity’s expansion in Europe, his fourth volume entails the expansion of Christianity during "the Great Century in Europe and the United States of America," as the subtitle suggests. Optimistically, he begins his survey of nineteenth century Christianity as a “burst of religious life” (4). Due to western European’s “denial and rejection of Christianity” (6), this burst was primarily in Protestantism. However, Latourette’s examination of the great century also incorporates the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy.

            Latourette establishes the inquiry for his fourth volume by asking qualitative questions. He seeks to identify “what was the Christianity that was spread” and why it spread. He is interested in discovering the process by which it spread and why it failed in some places. He is also interested in establishing some key indicators that show the effect Christianity had on the secular atmosphere as well as what effect that environment had on Christianity’s development. Latourettes questions provide a good framework for studying church growth and trends in Christianity still today.

            He immediately lays the secular backdrop against which Christian expansion is highlighted. During the nineteenth century, there was an explosive growth of man’s knowledge about the physical universe. Mankind began to master his environment and took broad steps to eliminate poverty. With an increased trust in the scientific method and an emphasis on objectivity and the individual, Latourette believes there was a dulling effect on the Christian faith. The entire structure of man’s life changed as did the ideology of society as a whole. The intellectual emphasis of rationalism seemed to hurt Christianity, while Latourette believes romanticism had helped. Moreover, world peace helped missions efforts as did a greater sense of optimism that the world could actually be reached for Christ. As western & northern people groups expanded in Europe, there was a transformation of non-European cultures. Consequently, there developed a world culture with English serving as the major global language.

            These socio-economic and political/idealogical elements either worked for or against Christianity’s evangelistic thrust, but without judging them Latourette sees them as role players in the larger scene. He identifies new movements which expanded Christianity. These movements had the cumulative effect of helping nineteenth century Protestantism to become “more purely religious than ever before” (330).

            Amidst an underlying religious skepticism of the day, several new revivals or organizations were formed in the west. The Salvation Army began its work at this time. The YMCA was formed. Sunday School became a staple of church education. The individualist spirit of the west filtered through the western church and several new denominations were formed as a result. Disciples of Christ, Free Baptists, Mormons and Christian Science were among those who enjoyed this newfound religious expression, as did the Pietists and Wesleyans.

In the same way, the western church began to deal with a growing criticism from European Christian thinkers. In Germany a critical historical study of the Bible gained popularity as men like Schleiermacher and Hegel made their mark on society. And although there was a revival in the Russian Orthodox Church, the overwhelming growth in the nineteenth century in Europe was still within Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church.

            Latourette identifies several methods of expansion. Because there was an “absence of action assistance by governments” (47), churches began to take a greater responsibility for missions. Average lay Christians saw their involvement in missions as extremely important. Women began to see their own role expand in missions. Because missionaries raised a high standard for church membership, salvation was celebrated as the result of an individual personal decision.

Specifically within the Roman Catholic Church, missionary work expanded. Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, for example, rose in the ranks of those Catholics who actively involved themselves in mission. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Association of the Holy Childhood became leaders in collecting funds for Catholic missions. This led to mission stations, a prefecture apostolic, a vicariate apostolic and revamped diocese structures specifically geared toward missions. There was an unprecedented support of Roman Catholic missions.

Protestant missions took on a whole new dimension as well. The Baptist Missionary Society and individual mission leaders like William Carey, David Brainerd and Zinzendorf led in the pursuit of active missions engagement. The Religious Tract Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts also created new opportunities for Protestant missions. This increase in missions emphasis led to Evangelicalism as a movement where conversion of the individual, greater education of church members and healing the sick was stressed. American missionaries sought to transform society as a whole and not just convert individuals. Missionaries like Samuel Mills, Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice became heroes of the faith.

As Protestantism spread other missions organizations were founded. As mission societies multiplied, the United States emerged as a leader in protestant missions. College students and women developed their own missions organizations. Laymen like D.L. Moody raised the bar in average church members’ engaging the lost. There was an exponential rise in nondenominational societies, and universities themselves sent out missionary bands. As a result, more Christian colleges were formed, and a greater cooperation in Protestant missions efforts was forged.

In the Russian Orthodox Church, there was also an increase in missions emphasis with the main difference being the financial support of the state. The Orthodox Missionary Society began to raise additional funds for missions which led to new churches in Siberia. With the combined efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church, “the total of all the organizations, local, regional, and national, must have mounted into the thousands” (94).

In chapter five Latourette turns his attention to the people groups being reached. Protestants began to actively target Jews, the most prominent organization being the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. Britain accounted for ore than half of all Protestant organizations in Europe that were actively engaging Jews, and the largest number of Jewish conversions to Protestant Christianity was in the British Isles. Germany held second place, and together these two countries accounted for three out of every four Jewish baptisms for the years between 1815 and 1914. Latourette points out that nineteenth century Christianity saw the largest number of Jews converted since first century. Most Jews of the world lived in European Russia where they experienced what Latourette calls “conversion by coercion” (117). Unfortunately in Southern Europe, little headway was made to advance the gospel to Jews.

Russia had its own rich Protestant history. While German Mennonites went to southern Russia to advance the gospel among Russian peasants, Lord Radstock began to reach the upper class who consequently reached the common people of northern Russia. Shtundists and others who emphasized ecstatic manifestations of the Spirit marked a Protestant awakening in Russia. Nonetheless, “scores of zealous missionaries laboured, and yet, except in few rare cases where they took advantage of non-religious factors and in Russia, where the state gave determined support to Orthodox missions, only a relatively few thousands of converts were made" (143). Mark Edworthy, in his book The Wall that Remains: A Fascinating Account of God's Faithfulness, gives another good backdrop to the Eastern European and Russian protestant movement.

In other places in Europe, missionary evangelists like Florence Nightingale and George Mueller who emphasized the humanitarian aspect of the gospel also made headway. Consequently, social involvement of missionaries led to reform movements and the temperance movement. This in turn moved toward total abstinence in places where alcoholism was rampant.

Latourette also discusses the cultural impact of these reforms and their opponents. With the concept of revolution, Karl Marx made his mark on the world. There was a progressive Liberalism growing. Interestingly, Latourette identifies modern democracy as a direct result of Protestant Christianity. Nineteenth century culture was impacted greatly by a strong Christian influence on nationalism, architecture, art and sculpture. Writers like Tennyson, Browning, Dostoevski and Dickens included elements of Christian influence in their own writings.

I'll continue in the next post with Latourette's some specifics about the Russian Christian movement during this century.

Review of Dan Sinclair's Vision of the Possible

My next two posts will be a review of Dan Sinclair's approach to church planting, and since he interacts with David Garrison's CPM approach, tomorrow I'll observe how Sinclair and Garrison compare and contrast. Back in 2009, I posted on my blog an entry entitled, “Teaming101.”  In that post, I referenced Dan Sinclair’s A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams and mentioned 10 good teaming questions from his book. I want to expand my observations about Sinclair’s book to include his philosophy and missiology, and let me say from the outset that I think every church planter or churches even considering the idea of planting another church should read this book.

             Dan Sinclair takes a direct approach to providing a guidebook for planting new churches with team methods in pioneer areas among unreached people groups. He carefully balances these three components, namely church planting, team, and the unreached, as key parts to his book’s thesis. Sinclair believes it is best to use teams to plant churches in pioneer areas. Although his book is written from the perspective of one having served in Muslim contexts, much of his information is transferable to non-pioneer fields as well. The book has fourteen chapters, each dealing with various aspects of church planting. Not creating an exhaustive list by any means, Sinclair has chosen the top issues that pioneer church planters confront when working on teams.

            He begins his discourse with a defense of the ongoing debate about the term apostle. According to Sinclair, apostleship has been a greatly “neglected subject” (p. 1). He believes an apostolic ministry is necessary for ongoing church planting. Therefore, he advocates that each church planting team have at least one team leader with some apostolic gifting (p. 11).

            He then moves into ecclesiology in chapter two. He defends the house church model as normative and promotes a plurality of elders for local church polity. His writing then turns from theory to practice with a discussion of the components necessary for a healthy church.

            As a supervisor of over 160 teams, Sinclair devotes chapters three and four to defining a rationale for the team approach and practical advice for maintaining a healthy effective team. He explains the importance of a Vision and Strategy Paper (VSP), which is a master plan or guide for the team’s strategic direction, and the Memo of Understanding (MOU) or team covenant. He advocates strong biblical leadership on the team but also defends a participative environment.

            Chapter five outlines the seven church planting phases developed by Dick Scoggins in Rhode Island as a useful communicative and evaluative tool. Phase I is pre-field training. Phase II is language and cultural acquisition. Phase III is personal evangelism. Phase IV is discipleship. Phase V is gathering. Phase VI is leadership development. Phase VII is reproduction. At first glance the phasing might seem like a linear approach, but Sinclair explains that “it is very common for ministry activities from various phases to be going on at the same time” (p. 60).

            He devotes chapter six to language acquisition. Interestingly, he advocates a language acquisition structure of two to three years committed to fulltime language study. Although he admits this might require adjustment in other scenarios, his “rule of thumb is thirty or more hours per week engaged in language activities for two years” (p. 102).

           Chapter seven is about platforms. Initially he deals with the ethics hurdle of doing covert missions operations, but he quickly moves into a definition of platforming. By deduction, it could be argued that both language acquisition and platforming make up phase II of the church planting phases.

            Sinclair says that “church planting is the main theme of this book” (p. 117). Accordingly, he defends personal evangelism as the central means to do so. He discusses evangelism methods that might work in resistant fields and recommends the “Discovery Course” for Muslim fields (p. 129). Although he is not in opposition to friendship evangelism, he nonetheless notes a demarcation between friendship evangelism and apostolic evangelism (p. 132). It is this apostolic evangelism that makes up phase III for church planting.

            Logically, Sinclair moves from evangelism to discipleship, phase IV in the phasing process. In chapter nine, he gives some very practical steps for hands-on discipleship. He also warns of potential pitfalls in a Muslim context.

            From discipleship he moves to phase V, leadership development that is characterized by servanthood. Team leaders are to be spiritually healthy, men or women of vision and faith, personally involved in church planting, able to listen to their team members, able to oversee individuals, and able to model accountability. Sinclair does a great job differentiating between essential and non-essential tasks of a team leader in this chapter. However, his shift in focus to the apostolic team itself is marked as he omits any mention of leadership development among nationals, perhaps what one would expect for phase V in church planting. Chapter eleven, nonetheless, does discuss the installation of elders and the timely withdrawal of foreign influence; so the shift in focus can be overlooked.

            Chapter twelve is Sinclair’s interaction with David Garrison’s statistics in Church Planting Movements. Click here for my review of Garrison’sbook. 

Sinclair adds supplemental information to Garrison’s materials in this chapter. Although much of the material overlaps, there are some dissimilarities in Sinclair’s own observations from four case studies in 2003. For example, he differs with one of Garrison’s conclusions regarding the financial support of national church leaders. Whereas Garrison promotes the POUCH approach marked by unpaid lay workers, Sinclair says this lack of financial support would make his church leaders “unable to be much involved in concerted expansion work” (p. 207).

            Sinclair defines the traditional, cell, and house church models in chapter thirteen, and then he lists some advantages and disadvantages for each. He denies that any one model is superior to the others, but he does hint at his preference for house church.

            His final chapter returns to the ecclesiological issue of multiple elder polity. In a question and answer format, Sinclair attempts to define the role of the church planter in elder installation and support. This chapter in conjunction with the epilogue places a premium on biblical teaching as the key element of church planting ministry.