China on Track to Have Largest Christian Population in the World With 200M Believers Despite Crackdown

Despite increasing persecution of Christians in China, the Communist country is on track to have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030, according to Rodney Pennington who studies religious trends for OMF International.

“We are overjoyed with what the Lord has already done in China,” said Pennington, vice president for mobilization of OMF, a missions organization, in an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday. “But that doesn’t mean the task is finished.”

By 2030 “China will almost certainly have the most evangelical Christians,” he said, “and that will greatly shape the global evangelical Church in the coming years. That said, there are still many needs in China, especially in areas like discipleship, cross-cultural outreach and ministering to children and youth.”

“While 200 million Chinese believers by the year 2030 may seem ambitious, it certainly gives us a strong goal to pray toward,” Pennington added.

Yu Jie, a Chinese Christian and democracy activist, said in an essay published in the August edition of First Things that Chinese Christians are known to say “the greater the persecution, the greater the revival.” If recent reports are correct, the persecution has indeed been great but the revival has been, in Yu’s words, a “gushing well or geyser.”