Migration

• Large numbers of Christian immigrants have come to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean, West Africa and the European Union.
• Seventy-five percent of these immigrants have settled in London and an additional 10% in the Southwest with the rest primarily in cities across the UK.
• Immigrants who join existing, indigenous congregations face issues of adjusting to worship style and language barriers which can make it difficult to receive pastoral care or training in the faith.
• Catholic and Anglican Churches have tried to respond to these issues by appointing immigrant chaplains, episcopal vicars, and/or trained volunteers to assist with integration.
• Many immigrants, especially those from Caribbean or West African countries, have joined independent churches or non-indigenous Pentecostal denominations.
• This has the advantage of offering a familiar worship style and social support.
• There are now an estimated 500,000 Christians in the UK attending black-majority churches; 70 years ago, there were hardly any of these churches.
• Reverse mission is the recent phenomenon of missionaries coming to the United Kingdom in the 21st century from countries to which missionaries from Britain travelled in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• These missionaries see the United Kingdom as now so secular that it constitutes a ‘mission field’; this corresponds with the global shift of Christian adherence from the Northern to the Southern hemisphere partly due to the rise of Pentecostal forms of Christianity.
• Reverse mission includes short-term visits of groups or individuals (i.e a visiting African choir), longer-term church workers, majority migrant churches who see evangelisation as a part of their mission and indigenous UK denominations or theological colleges who appoint leaders from migrant backgrounds hoping this will positively influence their churches.
• Neither reverse mission nor the rise of immigrant churches have stemmed the tide of Church decline in the UK.
• Many reverse missionaries report a lack of progress in their efforts due to the strength of secular attitudes and the resistance of UK nationals to an evangelistic form of Christianity.