Mile wide, inch deep
When we talk about the relationship between the Global North church, especially the Anglosphere, and the Global South church, it's pretty common to hear this phrase as a description of one of the great needs in the Global South. That is, that whereas the church there often experiences great growth, it lacks theological depth and teaching. And, having worked in such a context, this isn't just a description that GN people impose on the GS, but it's something I heard repeatedly from brothers and sisters there - they articulated the need for theological depth and training.
I think this is true. But it's a truth that needs nuancing and contextualising. In two important ways. Firstly, it continues to feed a superiority and charity mentality amongst GN Christians, which I think is always dangerous because it risks perpetuating a colonial mindset around world missions. We have everything, and we come and give it to you out of our beneficence. I don't think that's the dynamic Paul expresses in 2 Cor 8:14 "At the present time, your abundance will meet their need, so that one day their abundance may also meet your need, and thus there may be equality," and Rom 15:27 "For they were pleased to do this, and indeed they are indebted to the Jerusalem saints. For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they are obligated also to minister to them in material things." There is instead a mutuality, a reciprocity, and a meeting of needs where needs are that is expressed here.
However, I think there's a second way in which this truth needs an important re-thinking. I think we could say that this proverb is true of the Western church in a different way. That we have churches full of many professing believers who have an inch-deep spiritual life. I don't say this to be needlessly accusatory, or engage in berating people, or assert some kind of smug self-righteousness. I just have observed over the last couple of decades that it's quite possible for church members to sit in church for years, be well-versed in basic theology, and yet have no or little practice of personal piety - minimal to zero bible reading, minimal to zero organised prayer, just the occasional spontaneous prayer when circumstances provoke a need.
I'm also not saying that these people aren't believers! But I fear, for them and for the church, that the roots of such a faith are very shallow, and that this has two consequences. Firstly, rootless trees don't weather storms very well. It's easy to be a rootless Christian when life is relatively benign, gentle breezes, few hardships, the lot of most people in affluent societies. But no amount of personal or societal wealth will shelter you from all life's hardships, and how will they fare when the storms come? Secondly, instead of a life profoundly shaped by prayer and scripture, we have a life profoundly shaped by its absence, and that void is going to always be filled by something else. If we are not being discipled by the Scripture, we are being catechised by something else: tv, movies, social media, books, etc. (Not that any of those are bad in and of themselves, but if they are the only input into our minds, they are going to be the sole shapers of our hearts).
Not, again, that I think somehow that Global South Christians have this all figured out, but on a very broad generalisation level, I think we do see that those believers who have lives (i) more marked by the general hardships of life, and (ii) in more 'enthusiastic' traditions, tend on the whole to develop lives grounded in more persistent habits and practices of Scripture and prayer, and other things too. Maybe, then, in the spirit of suppling what we lack, we need to pay attention a bit more and learn a bit more about how GN believers could grow some deeper roots in daily life.