An Observation of Good Soil

This post is loosely related to my previous post A Guide to Getting Beyond Typical Church Outreach: http://beyondoutreach.blogspot.com/2011/05/guide-to-getting-beyond-typical-church.html

Kenneth Keathley, was a professor of mine at NOBTS. He has posted a very interesting article answering the question of how many Chinese Christians there are in China. He wrote:

[In] a recent First Things article (First Things, May 2011, pp. 14-16), three Baylor sociologists claim they have arrived at a reasonably accurate count, and they place the number at 70 million [Christians].

When the Communists came to power in 1949, there were about one million Chinese professing Christians at that time…  The Communist government outlawed religion, so the fledgling Christian church was expected to disappear.  However, by the last quarter of the 20th century it was clear that, rather than dissolving, Christianity was growing in China--and growing rapidly…

What can we conclude about these findings?  On the upside, there is the simple fact that the church in China has grown from one million to 70 million.  A 70-fold increase in 60 years is remarkable by anyone's reckoning.  It also means that in China there are more professing Christians than there are members of the Communist Party.

You can read the full article here: http://www.theologyforthechurch.com/1/post/2011/05/how-many-chinese-christians-are-there.html

This is a 6,900% increase. That fits quite nicely in the curve or a 30, 60 and 100 fold return that Jesus cited in the parable of the sower. Good soil.