25 unbelievable years xxi xxiv

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It has been an exciting task to try to sum up the events stand-ing immediately behind us, and in so doing to discover, first,that the past twenty-five years constitute a massive historical

transition, as foreboding as it is unique for the past 1500 years;and then to measure the development of the worldwide Chris-tian movement throughout this period to discover the astonish-ing fact that in an hour of gloom on every side, with church rollsand giving sagging, and crime and immorality ballooning, thatChristianity, as a movement, had never been in better shape.

But this is not merely an isolated attempt to discuss the pasttwenty-five years. The many references throughout this essayto the late Kenneth Scott Latourette make it clear that this is aconscious attempt to continue on from the point, 1944, wherehis workA History of the Expansion of Christianityleft off. But

we did not merely start there and work on our own from thatpoint on. These pages could not, if we tried, be totally inde-

pendent of his many other writings. For this reason the firsttwo items in the appendix will introduce the reader to both theman and his other significant books which were written beforeand during the period under discussioneven though in none

PREFACE

TOTHE 1970 EDITION


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THE TWENTY-FIVE UNBELIEVABLE YEARSxii

of them did he attempt to sum up these twenty-five years as aperiod.

While we could not imitate his style, much less repeat all

the materials in his other writings on this period, we do hope tohave written with his same fact-based, optimistic perspective,and to have done so in one sense especially. One of the unusualelements in Latourettes perspective was his desire to go beyondmere church history and to describe what may be called theinfrastructureof the Christian movementthat is, to describeChristianity as a movement which is more than an account of

the rise and development of the various church structures. Thismatter of infrastructure is a crucial issue at this time of thewholesale rethinking of the Christian cause and its structure.

The purpose of this study, then, is to offer hope and insightto students, laymen, pastors and even to missionaries. There isnothing honorable about a pessimism that is unwarranted. Suchpessimism is a poison that can pollute the environment. It canpervert industries, nations, churches, and young peoples minds.

A British visitor in the U.S. recently observed that Americanshave been overtaken by a fit of compulsive pessimism. Every-thing is assumed to be going wrong on both the foreign anddomestic fronts. Newspapers daily add a new load of gloom.Christians, whose hopes encompass the world, are offered littlecause for rejoicing.

Yet on the home front there is eminent reason for hope. In

eight years the number of people listed as living in poverty hasdropped from 22% to 13%, and the number of black familiesearning more than $15,000 per year has gone from 20,000 to400,000. Is this hopelessness? Or when Christians think of Asiaas impenetrable, do they forget that in the city of Seoul, Koreaalone, there are now 600 Christian churches? (But let us notanticipate the text).

Latourette cannot be held accountable for any of the spe-cific conclusions in this essay, although whatever valid insightsit has are to be attributed either to him or to the many friends

who have read this in manuscript and have made many spe-cific suggestions. They too must remain unblamed, though not


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unnamed: David Barrett, Dale Brunner, Raymond Buker, Sr.,Harry Burke, Clyde Cook, Harold Cook, Ralph Covell, Ed-

ward Dayton, Arthur Glasser, Harold Lindsell, John A. Mackay,

Donald McGavran, Robert Munger, George Peters, Paul Rees,Alan Tippett, and Peter Wagner. My wifes collaboration hasbeen on a scale that sets her apart from all others.


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Three magnificent, heaven-sent surprises, each equallyunbelievable to the uninformed greet us as we lookacross the 1969-1979 decade. This decade is the one im-

mediately following the 25 year transition (1945-1969) which Idubbed Unbelievable when this book was written in 1969.

The first of these three surprises is actually no surprise tothose who through the years have kept in close touch with themissionary movement, but for most people it seems unbelievable

when they are told the details of the surprising expansion and

power of the Christian movement. That is to say, in view of theagonizing and demoralizing quarter century retreat by the West-ern powers following World War II, it was hard in those daysto believe that in former colonial areas Christianity could haveeven survived, much less grown stronger, yet it was true. Andthose facts are likely still unbelievable to people now who haveto look back through the period of the sixties, when the young

people were so encompassed by despair, cynicism, and futilitythat many flung themselves hopelessly and destructively againstthe cage of the very structure of society.

Of course, it may well be that this lost generation of youthhas found many useful ways to improve, not just tear down,

PREFACE

TOTHE 1980 EDITION


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THE TWENTY-FIVE UNBELIEVABLE YEARSxvi

the past. Nevertheless, the enduring tragedy of the darkened60s was the unfortunate fact that most serious Christian youthsimply had no way to get at the facts this book contains, so as to

be surprised. Here in this book many previous editions havemarshalled the evidences for realistic optimism about what reallycountthe worldwide progress of the Gospel. Here can be seenthe growing, not retreating, influence of evangelical Christianityin virtually every land, and the convergence of church historyand secular history as religious issues regain prominence in

world affairs.

But there is no trace in this book of the second surprise,which emerged distinctly beyond the period it covered. The sec-ond surprise is sketched briefly in the Epilogue. There you willsee a ten-page extract from a 1974 address at Lausanne, wherethe author was himself five years later only barely discoveringthe surprisingly large mission task remaining to be dealt with.Obviously the first surprise, essential to counteract the poison-ing pessimism of the syndrome of the 60s, must necessarily bequalified by the second surprisethe vast but not inconceivablescope of the remaining task. The fact that this newly discoveredtask is truly vastmore vast than I had ever imaginedis notas important as the fact that it is conceivable. Thus, this secondsurprise is not really bad news. The surprising largeness of theremaining task merely constitutes the much required of thoseto whom much has been given.

At first, we could easily be dismayed by the content of thissecond surprise, and by the realization that four out of fivenon-Christians in the world live within some 16,750 social units

within which there is not yet a church. At the same time we canbe awed and thrilled by the fact that more than any other faith,the Christian faith 1) has pervaded more cultures of mankind,2) has made itself at home as an astringent, purifying power

and challenges the morals and the ethics of a wider variety ofsocieties, and 3) has done so to such an extent that it can trulybe said there is really only one world religion today. Islam is thenext largest religious tradition, and although it is now changingrapidly, it still is, by comparison, Mecca-bound, Arabic-bound,


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and obscurantist. Its holy book remains in ancient Arabic unin-telligible to all but a handfull of even the mere 7% of Muslims

who speak some variety of Arabic. For every Islamic book about

Christianity there are 1,000 Christian books about Islam.But, in view of the mood of the 60s, the third surprise is

the most unexpected of all. It would have been impossible in1969 to predict the massive positive shift in the attitudes ofcollege students. In actual fact, my analysis of the attendance atthe series of IVCF-sponsored student missionary conventionsat Urbana actually shows a declining percentage of students

signing cards, despite a rising attendance. I did not know (butthe evidence would have predicted) that the attendance of thenext meeting in 1970 would be still greater and the card signingpercentage still lower. That was true.

However, contrary to this pattern, it was a total surprise inthe 1973 and 1976 when not only did the attendance continueto increase but the card signing jumped from 8% in 1970, to28% in 1973, and to 50% in 1976. There is every evidencethat the 1979 meeting will sustain this new trend. IVCF is tobe praised for a new kind of staff which specializes in Missions,and for planning Urbana Onward follow-through confer-ences. Of course Intervarsity, Campus Crusadeand Navigatorshave all along been working on campuses around the world, butnow IVCF is linking up more closely than ever with the tradi-tional mission societies in its Urbana Onward conferences. And

Campus Crusadesown mission agency,Agape, is going out of itsway to share its verve and management style with the older mis-sions in a series of executive seminars. Everything seems to pointto a new era of collaboration between campus organizations andmission agencies. This has no precedent since the days of theStudent Volunteer Movement.

However, the third surprise, on closer inspection, turns out

to be vastly more than a change in the student world. There is asignificant rustling in the tree tops, a quickening of the pulse, aturning of the tide, all across the world. The Berlin Congress of1966 was by contrast just an early voice crying in the wilderness.By 1974 the International Congress on World Evangelization at


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THE TWENTY-FIVE UNBELIEVABLE YEARSxviii

Lausanne was enabled to go much further. Even the 1971 GreenLake, Wisconsin meeting of IFMA/EFMA mission executivesthe largest such meeting in the last 70 yearswas still too early

to do more than explore the nature of the relationships of suc-cessful mission agencies to the new well established youngerchurches in the mission lands. Green Lake was in some waysthe capstone of an era. However, by 1976, a whole profusion ofinitiatives began to herald the beginning of a distinctly new erain missions.

All of a sudden it has become clear, to this writer, that in the

past decade we have been confronted by an amazing mixture ofapparently conflicting trends that can best be understood as theoverlapping of two considerably different phenomena: first thereare all the expected characteristics of the end of one era, and atthe same time we see appearing the radically different traits ofthe beginning of a new era. In regard to this interpretation thereis space here for only a few brief hints.

Let us suppose that the first era of modern missions began inthe 1790s and ended about 1865. In that latter year two thingshappened: the oldest American board, the ABCFM, withdrewall missionaries from Hawaii, and the first of a whole new era ofmissions, frontier, inland, interior, regions beyond, andunevangelized fields missions were born. Then the older mis-sions, in a massive shifting of gears, picked up the scent of new,geographical frontiers and Era Two was in full swing. Era Two

dragged a little longer than Era One because, for one reason, thenew frontiers of Era Three are less easily seen. They are cultural,not geographical, and as such took longer to acknowledge,accept and to pin down. It is still not widely understood thatthe magnificent achievements of missions in India have plantedchurches in less than 100 of the 3,000 castes, sub-castes andtribes of that sub-continent. The peoples still beyond are Hid-

den Peoples. They are not within the evangelistic outreach ofany present church or standard church-planting mission.But now, as we enter the last 20 years of this century, the

year 1980 must surely be the full, official Year of the HiddenPeoples. This is the threshold year for a 20-year countdown


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to reach out to 16,750 Hidden Peoples, with a new watchwordthat must read A Church for Every People by the Year 2,000.There is Pattaya, Thailand, in the Lausanne tradition, building

on a brilliant series of regional congresses, facing the leadershipof the worldwide evangelical movement with the challenge ofthe Hidden People. There is the World Consultation on Fron-tier Missions at Edinburgh planned for 1980 (see page 67), a

world-level meeting of the executives of mission agenciesnotjust western societies, but now Asian and African mission societ-ies to concentrate on the actual organizational coordination

necessary to deploy new mission teams to the 16,750 HiddenPeoples.Reporting as we are toward the end of 1979, we already

know of many major mission agencies that have restructuredto give new emphasis to the frontiers. The EFMA fall executiveretreat this year is given over wholly to Unreached Peoples.The Third Era is upon us. The tide has turned. I did not knowin 1969 that the number of career workers would decline forthe whole following decade. Now Era Three will reverse thattrend, and well see many new faces from many nations thatare not now sending nations. We may pray also for a growing

world-wide network of locally supported centers, concentrating,along with the U.S. Center for World Mission, on the peoples stillbeyond. The story continues.


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It is fascinating to know what happened in the past. It isespecially interesting to know specifically what peoplethought was happening to them and what they thought

was going to happen in the near future. Really, we are notproperly prepared to foretell our future today in 2005 if wecannot get a feel for how easily people in the past misunder-stood what was happening to them and what their future actu-ally held for them.

But that is not the main reason this book is not out of date.

It also accentuates the amazing contrast between the deadly pes-simism of those days and the radically different view the authorof this little book held at that time.

The main reason why this book is not out of date is be-cause few people even today realize that those precise twenty-five Unbelievable Years clearly constitute the most historicevent of the twentieth century. Wait, you say, how about the

biggest war of history, the Second World War? No, that warwas merely a triggering mechanism for what was going to hap-pen soon in any case.

Or, you say, how about the emergence early in the centuryof communism as a world force, or better, communisms incred-

PREFACE

TOTHE 2005 EDITION


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ible step backwards in the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union?Granted that the latter would well be a second-most importantevent. How different the relatively pacific revolution in virtu-

ally all of the non-western countrieswhich took place in thetwenty-five years this book describes! Was it really a far moreprofound event penetrating to even the tiniest rural settlementson this planet? That IS the thesis of this book.

This thesis is all the more relevant precisely because, as isimplied above, few people even today realize that those precisetwenty-five Unbelievable Years may be understood as the best

key to unlock for us the future of this planet in 2005.Even the two earlier Prefaces are still highly important sincethey accurately reflect the understanding of at least the authorof what was understood at those two earlier dates, the secondPreface itself being written almost a quarter of a century ago.

Finally, the purpose of any of these prefaces has not been,and is not now, an attempt to extend the story of those twenty-five years. They are over. They were a single event. We can atbest try to understand the subsequent impact of those days,

which had never happened before and can never happen again.What happened? Very simply and significantly, it was the

sudden release of virtually the entire non-Western world fromsubordination to the Western powers. No global phenomenonof that extent had ever occurred, nor could ever happen again.

What specifically can we gain by reexamining these previous

prefaces? Neither in 1970 nor even in 1980 did anyone foreseethe sudden and almost total reversal of the juggernaut of globalCommunism in the Gorbachev updating in 1991 which, with amighty, tumultuous wrench, terminated the Soviet Union andits global influence.

No one in 1970 foresaw the amazing emergence of theUnreached Peoples vision which by 1980 was just appear-

ing to sweep the mission world, but by now is well establishedeverywhere.Still more amazing, in 1970 and even 1980, few foresaw

what was already growing unnoticed in the West: the phe-nomenon of Third World Mission Agencies, that is, mission


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agencies born and bred within the former mission lands wherepractically all Western mission agencies had been content toplant only churches, not churches and mission agencies. Yet, in

1980 the Friends Missionary Prayer Band in India (one of thelargest mission agencies in the world today) had already beenburgeoning for twenty years. Note that though I had partici-pated for several years in highlighting the early evidences of thisThird World Mission movement, I did not even mention it inthe 1980 Preface. No one even then could have predicted themassive developments in this movement in the next 25 years.

Suddenly, by looking back this way, we must ask ourselvesAre we not today just as likely to be blind to major events inour future? Future studies are not widely pursued in churchand missions today, although hosts of books talk somewhat care-lessly about what is about to happen. David Hesselgrave notablyproduced a whole book about ten megatrends in missions. I per-sonally have listed twelve frontiers of mission that have emergedin his thinking over the past twenty five years.

However, right here is not the place to consider the future indetail, but simply to give a few examples of how looking back atthe Twenty-five Unbelievable Years can heighten our aware-ness of certain aspects of the future.

The most powerful lesson of the 25 year period under discus-sion, while not obvious to everyone, is its revelation of the degreeand vigor of the overseas movement of the Gospel in the absence

of missionaries. That alone should enable us to see more clearlythe fact that by 2005 in the former mission lands there weremore believers than in the former mission-sending homelands.

Note, for example, the fact that this overseas movementconsists in large part of movements inspired by the Christianfaith which do not easily classify as Christian. In India, forexample, reports vary from 14 to 24 million Hindus who, while

still culturally Hindu, are devout Bible believers, daily readingthe Bible and worshipping the God of the Bible. They do notchoose to call themselves Christians. Barrett and Johnson, inthe World Christian Encyclopediaindicate 52 million followersof Christ in Africa in the AIC (African Initiated Churches,


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once African Independent Churches). Everyone has heard of themany many millions of followers of Christ in China, most of

whom quite possibly would not easily fit the standard category

of Christian.Has Christianity gone out of control? Or, to put it otherwise,

has the Gospel of Christ gotten out of control of the culturaltradition called Christianity?Does the World Christian Encyclo-

pedianeed then to be renamed the World Encyclopedia of BiblicalFaith?

That question and many others may more easily be answered

if this little book enables a more realistic interpretation of a sud-den, massive change of ownership and management in the entirenon-Western world.

Ralph D. WinterPasadena, CaliforniaJanuary 1, 2005

25 unbelievable years xxi xxiv

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