Gordon Conwell’s Center for Study of Global Christianity has released their 2007 report on the “Status of Global Mission“. I think this report is pretty interesting and certainly worth a look. Some of the highlights I noticed from my quick observation include:

• The huge global urbanization trend. From the 1800’s when only 4% of the world’s population was urban to even the 1970’s when slightly more than a third of the population lived in cities, in 2025, its projected that nearly 60% of the world’s population will live in cities.
  
  
• And not just small cities, but very big cities. In 2025 its projected that there will be over 650 cities in the world that have a population of over 1 million people.
  
  
• In the future, the majority of the world’s poor will live in cities. In 2025, the urban poor will number 3 billion people. That’s 38% of the world’s overall projected population.
  
  
• These cities are huge mission fields. I could write a lot about this, and perhaps will in a future post, but the statistic in this report does it pretty well by showing that right now, in 2007, 146,000 non-Christians come to cities every day!
  
  
• Islam is projected to grow slightly faster than Christianity. Take a look at the larger positive trend numbers. This trend will particularly be interesting to watch as Islam spreads throughout both Europe and Africa.
  
  
• The percentage of Christians to the total population is projected to remain fairly flat. Its 33% right now and projected to rise to only 34%.
  
  
• The number of Christian martyrs in 2025 will be almost 100 times the number from 1800. This is very shocking probably for a lot of western Christians. We forget how difficult it is for the global church. Organizations like The Barnabas Fund are trying to help the global persecuted church.
  
  
• There is a huge rise and spread of Christianity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Most people probably already know about these trends, but its still worth noting. These are the percentages of overall Christians from both 1900 and the projected date of 2025:
• Africa: 2% - 25%
• Asia: 4% - 19%
• Latin America: 11% - 25%
  
  
• While Europe is turning away from Christianity at an alarming rate. In 1800, almost 85% of all Christians lived in Europe. In 2025 its projected that only 20% of the worlds Christians will live in Europe. Its very likely that in 2025, missionaries from Latin America, Asia, and Africa will be coming to Europe and America (who’s also projected to show decline as a percentage of all global Christians) to spread the gospel.
  
  
• The amount of wealth possessed by the global church is staggering. In 2007, the personal income of all church going Christians is $16.4 trillion, with a ‘T”. That’s projected to rise by 10 trillion and be at 26 trillion by the year 2025. I’d love to see the data to learn what percentage of the overall wealth comes from the American church, but I would imagine it has to be very high. Do you realize that, according to these numbers, if the global Christian church was giving the full tithe that we’d be giving away $1.6 trillion dollars? I’ve got to imagine this much money would end the world’s hunger problem, end senseless deaths from treatable diseases, and most likely eliminate extreme poverty.
  
  
• But sadly, according to the data, Christians are only tithing at 2%: This number even includes “Christian causes” and not even just the local church. I’m calculating this number by looking at the 2007 data and dividing $370 billion by 16.4 trillion. Even if you wanted to get picky and apply a 33% tax to the overall income, the tithe only rises to 3%.

There’s a lot of good stuff in this report. Give it a look. I’d love to hear people’s responses to these observations as well as your own observations from looking at the report.