In 1884, France constructed the magnificent St Louis Cathedral in Carthage, Tunisia. The Bey (monarch) of Tunis ceded the cathedral property to the French crown in perpetuity to serve as the leading cathedral for all Africa. The Byzantine-Moorish edifice with its soaring cupolas, stained-glassed windows and six-ton
great bell was expected to anchor Christianity in North Africa for a thousand years. A century later, however, worship in the cathedral had ceased, and the building was relegated to concerts and social events under its new name, the Acropolium.
Christianity, in contrast, translates into local human cultures and languages. In the Christian faith, the eternal God of all creation translated Himself into a local human form and adopted the language and culture of the Jewish people. In the same way, Christianity has advanced by translating that eternal gospel into local cultures.
Buildings do not a movement make. With the eyes of the world, we see “Christian” buildings and institutions as trophies of conquest and evidence of advance, while viewing the absence of buildings as evidence of … well, the absence of movements. But this is not the case.
In a neighboring North African country, I conducted interviews in a nondescript church building where more than two dozen church elders, all of them converts from a Muslim background, had gathered to tell their stories of new life in Christ and how the gospel was spreading across their North African homeland. The loss of the cathedral has not prevented movements to Christ happening.
The Christian mission enterprise has long been seduced by the hope that by establishing church buildings, hospitals, and schools, they are somehow establishing
outposts of the Kingdom of God. In reality, the Kingdom of God is established through born-again men and women who submit their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Movements take place when people hear the gospel and respond. The evidence of this Kingdom advance is found, not in buildings and institutions, but in the viral spread of the gospel, as demonstrated through transformed lives, sharing the message of Christ with others and gathering together for fellowship and the study of God’s Word. Buildings follow.
The viral transmission of the gospel in North Africa is spreading in the same way it permeated the ancient Roman Empire. It’s the way the gospel continues to spread across the Muslim world today. Buildings, cathedrals, hospitals and universities will follow, but they never precede viral movements.
LET’S PRAY
- Pray that Christians will see the Kingdom of God as communities of born-again believers, not as buildings.
- Pray that Christians will invest resources in demonstrating and sharing the gospel and in discipleship rather than in the construction of buildings and institutions.
- Pray for emerging movements in North Africa and across the House of Islam that are spreading from person to person by the thousands.
Post credited to the editors at Worldchristian: visit http://www. worldchristianconcern.org/donate to support mission efforts to reach the unreached for Christ.
