I guess I’m supposed to care, but I don’t. If the news coverage is any indication of the interests of Americans, I am supposed to care how late Brittney Spears stayed out bar-hopping last night; but I don’t care.
According to the news coverage, I’m supposed to care that someone stole O.J.’s football jersey and he threatened the guy to get it back. I’m supposed to care that Tom Cruise’s newest girlfriend (or wife, I can’t remember) might be pregnant. I’m supposed to care what Anna Nicole Smith had in her refrigerator when she died.
I’m supposed to care who won the best actress nomination or who sold the most records last year and which rap star is on his way to prison. No matter how hard I try, I just don’t seem to care.

However, as a Christian, there are some very important things I do care deeply about. I care about millions of lost souls who will die without a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. I care about 14 million AIDS orphans in Africa who have no parents.
I care very deeply about Christian pastors in China who are being arrested and tortured every day because they refuse to stop preaching Christ. I care about my friends in Cuba who are daily harassed by the communists and have their churches randomly closed based on trumped up charges.

I care about the daily abuse and murder of Christians in North Korea and Sudan .
I also care about 1.4 million babies who are murdered in their mother’s wombs each year in America . I care about children being abused right here in Oklahoma in our very communities. I care about the moral collapse of American culture and the precipitous decline of faith in America .

I care about nearly 200,000 brave American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan placing themselves in harm’s way so I and my children can live free.

I care about the kind of world my grandchildren will grow up in and the legacy that I am leaving them. I care about the education of our children and the future of our communities.
I care about the future of the church in America and pray we will be able to remain relevant in a society that is changing at the speed of light.

So I guess the list of things I truly care about is quite long and this is just a sampling. But I don’t care who wins American Idol and I certainly don’t care who gets kicked off the island on Survivor.

Here’s a quiz? What are the three countries in the world with the largest number of professing Christians?

Yes, the United States is still number one. Number two is Brazil and number three is China. Yes, China.

The number of Chinese Christians is now in excess of 100 million. The church there is growing so rapidly that China will probably be number one within 20 years.

We Americans don’t usually think of Christianity as being anything other than a white man’s religion. But the new reality is that Caucasians are now a minority. 60% of Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Since North America is the only continent in the world where Christianity is not growing, it’s easy to see that the future of our faith is multi-colored and multi-cultural.

The Asia Times columnist “Spengler” recently wrote that China may soon occupy the role that the United States has occupied for the past 200 years: “the natural ground for mass evangelization.” He adds that “if this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it.”

The most ambitious Chinese Christians have now formulated what they call the Back To Jerusalem Movement. This group is training thousands of Chinese believers to take the gospel of Christ to the Muslim world following the path of the ancient Silk Road. They believe God has uniquely gifted and prepared them for this task.

South Korea is now the number two missionary sending nation in the world, just behind the United States. The recent capture of a group of South Korean missionaries in Afghanistan brought Korean Christians into the spotlight for a few weeks. But in the past couple of decades, these dedicated believers have quietly penetrated some of the most far flung places in the globe.

In Europe, traditional cathedrals stand empty while thousands of house churches and storefronts ring with the eclectic sounds of tattooed and pierced young people worshipping God with distortion guitars and a radical form of faith.

Many of these churches are led by African Christians who have migrated to Europe in search of jobs but succeeded in re-establishing true Christianity in many areas where it had all but disappeared.

As American Christians, we can either resist the flow of what God is obviously doing around the world, or we can embrace this new reality and seek to help it flourish.

The most striking movement to come to American Christianity in recent decades is the phenomenon of ordinary believers traveling to foreign countries to assist in the growth of God’s work. Every year, hundreds of thousands of American Christians fan out around the globe teaching children’s classes, digging wells in remote villages, building schools and churches and preaching the gospel in places where it is needed the most.

The role of American Christianity is rapidly shifting from leading to helping and supporting. We should gladly accept this new role. It bodes well for the future of our faith.