Vol. 35, No. 1 January 2011 Mission by the Numbers t the boarding school in Ethiopia where I spent eight Aformative years, personal Bible reading—in the King James Version—was an essential part of the daily regimen. Given On Page my youthful preference for tales of adventure, conflict, and war, 3 Edinburgh 2010: Common Call St. Paul’s epistles vied unsuccessfully with such action-packed 4 Edinburgh 2010 Centennial World Missionary books as Genesis, Joshua, Judges, and 1–2 Samuel. Here I could Conference: A Report escape the everyday banalities of primary education by losing Janet Carroll myself in the richly textured dramas of men and women, tribes 5 Tokyo 2010: Global Mission Consultation and nations, whose stories—replete with love and war, trust and Allen Yeh treachery, bravery and cowardice, success and failure—seemed 7 Report on Cape Town 2010 much more interesting than my own. And there were enigmas, Stanley W. Green too, such as the one in 2 Samuel 24 (kjv): “And again the anger 10 2010Boston: The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity Full-Time On-Location)))))) U.S. Workers 1996 to 2008 B<?<<< Norman E. Thomas 12 A Current Snapshot of North American AB?<<< >?>BA Protestant Missions 8?@=< 8?9>A A. Scott Moreau 8?=B> A<?<<< 8?>>: =?<<8 9?A;@ 18 Christianity Is Moving from North to South @?:8B :?B:; :?9>< —So What About the East? >B?<<< Dyron B. Daughrity 23 The Legacy of Hélène de Chappotin ><?<<< >>?<@A >;?9B@ >A?@A@ >>?@8A >A?A=< Mary Motte 28 Christianity 2011: Martyrs and the Resurgence ;B?<<< 899: 899= ;<<8 ;<<B ;<<= of Religion ,-+C$%(5')DAE)F(/57G H&I$%(5')D8)0-)A)F(/57G Todd M. Johnson, David B. Barrett, and Peter F. %(+0'/6(57 Crossing From Mission Handbook (2010) 30 Reconfiguring Home: eluguT Biblewomen, Protestant Missionaries, and Christian Marriage of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’” It seemed James Elisha Taneti odd that God should vent his anger against Israel by prodding 32 Noteworthy King David to try his hand at demographics! If it was anger 36 Worldwide Roman Catholic Church Workforce against David for smiting someone, I could understand the Lord’s Increases displeasure—but counting? How upset could God actually have 38 Fourth IACM Conference, July 27–August 2, 2010 been? Both arithmetic and geography were our daily fare as pupils, Lazar Thanuzraj Stanislaus and we had to learn population counts for countries and major 40 My Pilgrimage in Mission cities all over the world if we wanted to pass. Were the censuses William J. Yoder that yielded these numbers an expression of God’s displeasure? The New Testament, of course, has its own share of number- 45 Book Reviews words, specific and general. “There followed him great multitudes 54 Dissertation Notices Continued next page 56 Book Notes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, story of Christian martyrs and “martyrdom situations” in stark and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan” (Matt. 4:25 kjv). numbers and explains how the authors arrived at their astonishing And in the prologue to the world’s most famous sermon, “See- estimate of one million Christian martyrs over the past decade. ing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain” (Matt. 5:1 kjv). While some may perhaps debate the statistical methodology, these Multitudes gathered, multitudes followed, multitudes marveled, tallies represent the annihilation of real people. Each humanly multitudes heard—and so on it went. (How many people does it authorized and administered killing is an affront to God. After take to make one multitude?) The Bible’s grand apocalyptic finale all, no matter what a temporal power might maintain, God’s includes somewhat more precise, if symbolic, numbers: twelve image, not Caesar’s, is stamped on each human being. To render tribes, seven churches, seals, angels, plagues, and bowls of God’s unto Caesar what can never be his is idolatry. wrath, as well as twenty-four elders and 144,000 sealed. But St. The graph accompanying this editorial is a supplement to John the Divine otherwise avoids quantification. He allows only Scott Moreau’s perceptive analysis of the latest edition of the that he saw in his vision “a great multitude, which no man could Protestant Mission Handbook, one of the premiere sources of reli- number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, able North American missionary numbers. From the graph one [standing] before the throne, and before the Lamb . [crying can garner a number of interesting bits of information. We learn, out] with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth for example, that over the past decade, the number of American upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9–10 kjv). Modern “on-location” missionaries serving assignments of from one to utilitarian sensibilities recoil from such numerical imprecision. four years has increased significantly, while the number of those Since it first appeared twenty-six years ago, the annual sta- serving longer terms has increased only incrementally. Beyond tistical table on world Christianity published in this journal each that, we know nothing more about the men and women (without January has tended to elicit one predictable response: “Where whom there would be no numbers) than that they are Americans. do they get these numbers?!” We refer such questioners to the The graph can tell us how many, but not who, where, what, why, or prefaces of two benchmark reference works: the original World so what—the only important questions of everyday life. Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford Univ. Press, 1982) and World Mission by numbers is helpful, but limited. In the work Christian Trends, a.d. 30–a.d. 2200: Interpreting the Annual Christian of God there can be no substitute for inefficiency. The Incarna- Megacensus (William Carey Library, 2001), where the statistical tion was an astoundingly inefficient and parochial event. What methodologies are explained. Since the inception of the feature moved Jesus to compassion (Matt. 9:36, 15:32; Mark 6:34) were in 1984, and although our demographers have rounded off their not nameless, featureless digits behind some grand aggregate, numbers to the nearest thousand, they have never employed the but specific children, women, and men such as the two blind terms “multitudes,” “great multitudes,” or “multitude which no men of Matthew 20:34: “So Jesus had compassion on them” (kjv). man could number.” Numbers thus expressed are notoriously For readers of the IBMR, then, compassion is the most Christian difficult for spreadsheet software to tabulate and analyze. response to numbers. The “Missiometrics 2011” feature in this issue reports the —Jonathan J. Bonk InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research in 1977. Renamed InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research in 1981. Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the Editor overseas MInIstrIes study center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, U.S.A. Jonathan J. Bonk (203) 624-6672 • Fax (203) 865-2857 • [email protected] • www.internationalbulletin.org Associate Editor Dwight P. Baker Contributing Editors Assistant Editors Catalino G. Arévalo, S.J. John F. Gorski, M.M. Graham Kings Wilbert R. Shenk Craig A. Noll David B. Barrett Darrell L. Guder Anne-Marie Kool Brian Stanley Rona Johnston Gordon Daniel H. Bays Philip Jenkins Mary Motte, F.M.M. Tite Tiénou Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D. Daniel Jeyaraj C. René Padilla Ruth A. Tucker Managing Editor William R. Burrows Jan A. B. Jongeneel James M. Phillips Desmond Tutu Daniel J. Nicholas Angelyn Dries, O.S.F. Sebastian Karotemprel, S.D.B. Dana L. Robert Andrew F. Walls Senior Contributing Editors Samuel Escobar Kirsteen Kim Lamin Sanneh Anastasios Yannoulatos Gerald H. Anderson Robert T. Coote Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be addressed to the editors. Manuscripts unaccompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope (or international postal coupons) will not be returned. Opinions Circulation expressed in the IBMR are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. Aiyana Ehrman The articles in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Bibliografia Missionaria, Book Review Index, Christian [email protected] Periodical Index, Guide to People in Periodical Literature, Guide to Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature, (203) 285-1559 IBR (International Bibliography of Book Reviews), IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature), Missionalia, Advertising Religious and Theological Abstracts, and Religion Index One: Periodicals. Charles A. Roth, Jr. OnlinE E-JOURnAl: The IBMR is available in e-journal and print editions. To subscribe—at no charge—to the full CA Roth Jr Inc. text IBMR e-journal (PDF and HTML), go to www.internationalbulletin.org/register. Index, abstracts, and full text of this P.O. Box 635 journal are also available on databases provided by ATLAS, EBSCO, H. W. Wilson Company, The Gale Group, and University Yarmouth, Maine 04096-0635 Microfilms. Back issues may be purchased or read online. Consult InfoTrac database at academic and public libraries. Telephone: (516) 729-3509 PRinT SUbSCRiPTiOnS: Subscribe, renew, or change an address at www.internationalbulletin.org or write Fax: (914) 470-0483 InternatIonal BulletIn of MIssIonary research, P.O. Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000. Address correspondence concerning print subscriptions and missing issues to: Circulation Coordinator, [email protected]. Single copy price: $8. [email protected] Subscription rate worldwide: one year (4 issues) $32. Foreign subscribers must pay with U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank, Copyright © 2011 Visa, MasterCard, or International Money Order.