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Abstract
The objective of this article is to clearly reflect the reality of our modern world experiencing the convergence of two mighty movements meeting and flowing into each other. The first stream is the tidal wave of people migrating to the urban centres of our globalising world. The second stream is the result of a massive shift in the centre of Christianity away from its traditional rootedness in Western Christendom. The biggest challenge of our time is for this Christian Church, still stuck in the prevailing Christendom paradigm, to wake up to and actively engage this new post-Christendom context. This article would like to draw specific attention to the South African context where the traditional Western and now developing Southern Christianity find a common Developing World intersection. As ‘pilgrims or exiles’ that is facing a strange and confronting new world, the Western Church should accept the new missiological challenge that globalisation and urbanisation presents. The Western Church must heed a very urgent call to stay relevant and be actively involved in God’s global missio Dei currently unfolding in our world. The only way for the Christian Church to be local instruments of God’s Kingdom in a new urban world, is to actively seek a new glocal togetherness.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The Western theological academy needs to urgently engage the social sciences in order to cooperate and collaborate in all areas of urban and social development, urban planning, community development and even urban advocacy for the needs of the urban poor and marginalised. The Christian Church, as God’s ‘missionary people’, is Biblically mandated and spiritually equipped to be actively involved in the urban challenges that globalisation and urbanisation present.
Highlights
When Thomas Friedman wrote his bestseller book ‘The World is Flat’ (Friedman 2006), he wanted to emphasise the fact that the globalised world of the 21st century is a very real and confronting new reality
This will be the research focus of this article. It will focus on the unstoppable and all-inclusive process of globalisation that has connected everything and everybody on a global scale and on the seeming inability, ignorance or reluctance of the ‘traditional’1 Christian Church in the Western world, to adequately respond to this in an appropriate way. It must be stated from the onset that globalisation does present the Christian Church with wonderful opportunities and with very negative consequences
Africa’s urban http://www.ve.org.za population showed a 50% increase in just 15 years (Conn & Ortiz 2001:65)
Summary
When Thomas Friedman wrote his bestseller book ‘The World is Flat’ (Friedman 2006), he wanted to emphasise the fact that the globalised world of the 21st century is a very real and confronting new reality. What was unnerving to him was the fact that he realised that this flattening of the world had been taking place while he was ‘otherwise engaged’ (Friedman 2006:8) What he really meant was that while he was busy with something else, the reality of a flattening world was passing him by completely. This will be the research focus of this article It will focus on the unstoppable and all-inclusive process of globalisation that has connected everything and everybody on a global scale and on the seeming inability, ignorance or reluctance of the ‘traditional’ Christian Church in the Western world, to adequately respond to this in an appropriate way. It must be stated from the onset that globalisation does present the Christian Church with wonderful opportunities (when consciously engaged) and with very negative consequences (when ignored in any way)
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