Evangelical growth is worldwide phenomenon

Evangelical Christians are the main force behind the growth of Christianity, according to Patrick Johnstone, author of The Church is Larger Than You Think.

Johnstone's assessment of the growth in evangelical Christianity was reported in the November-December issue of Good News magazine, a journal that promotes evangelical renewal in the United Methodist Church.

1. Evangelical Christianity has grown slowly but steadily in the West, while the rest of Western Christianity has shrunk significantly;

2. The real growth of Evangelical Christianity in recent years has been in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In 1960, non-Western Evangelicals were about half as numerous as those in the West; in the year 2000 they will be four times, and in 2010, seven times as numerous;

3. Although Christianity as a whole is growing slightly slower than Islam, Protestant Christianity is expanding faster than Islam at 2.9 percent per year, which is almost double the rate of population growth-currently at 1.7 percent;

4. The Roman Catholic Church is expanding more slowly than the population, which means that the percentage of Catholics in the population is decreasing. This is mainly due to the secularization in Europe and the trend to Evangelicalism in Latin America;

5. Protestantism is growing almost twice as fast as the world population, but this is almost entirely due to Evangelicals. Non-Evangelical Protestant churches are shrinking significantly. "Liberal theology is being preached in ever-shrinking churches in increasingly empty church buildings."

6. Evangelical Christianity is expanding more than three times as fast as the world population, and is hence the only religious group in the world with significant growth through conversion, at a rate almost double that of Islam.

Tell me something, how wonderful was it for you, positioned as you were atop your un-garrisoned, Protestant parapet, to freely look about the splendor and grandeur of Rome?

And, then, when you ventured inside the gate, were you greeted with cheers and offered dainties, or were you fed the gruel of the cradled? Was your Protestant ego stroked, were your questions answered with kind, and loving lips. Were your questions ever treated as acts of treason, or was that now to be considered a dangerous additive to the grease applied to your landing gear? Were you subjected, even in the smallest degree, to the vagaries and cruelties of the shifting sands of Salvation? Did one of your RCIA lessons consist of expostulations on certain grave and damning acts, only to find on the next, that these grave and damning acts, while perhaps 'still on the books' had lost their damning and prosecutorial zeal?

Following all this, did you wake up one morning to find yourself like the Epileptic, the day following a Gran Mal, with neither a forward or backward looking gaze, but instead with a formless, frozen and amputated stare?

And finally, to prove your catechetical bonafides, riddle me this Convert: if I attend an Orthodox Divine Liturgy today, with the intent of leaving Rome for parts East, is that a grave sin that I must confess before approaching the Blessed Sacrament or not? If so, would the same have applied last summer, will the same apply this summer, barring Reunion?

Enjoy the dainties, Convert, but remember this, the dainties you feast upon come at the expense of the innumerable souls, who having suffered agonies and torment, were disposed of as yesterday's trash. Your welcome wagon is their ash heap.

I second that. Ummm ... what?

I'm not a convert, so your emotional rant is meaningless to me.

if I attend an Orthodox Divine Liturgy today, with the intent of leaving Rome for parts East, is that a grave sin that I must confess before approaching the Blessed Sacrament or not?

The intent to leave the church is always a sin. Attending an Eastern Orthodox liturgy isn't. What is arbitrary about that? Nothing.

I know a sweet little 9 year old autistic boy. His mother was talking about how everyone is in sin. She described it as everyone is real bad in God's eyes.
He looked at her and said "everybody? Even me?" She said "yes honey, even you."
His eyes got real big and he screamed out "I'm in trouble!" No God loves everybody, no God has a wonderful plan for your life, just the truth: we are all lost.

A message so clear even this little boy could understand his need for a savior.

I'm sorry, but that's pathological - the brainwashing technique of a cult. There isn't a lot of difference between that kind of psychological torture of children and what happens in the Islamic madrassas.

Evangelical Protestantism desperately needs to undergo a critical self-analysis. Too many unhealthy beliefs are justified by the priest-enriching doctrine of Original Sin.

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