Data source: Gina A. Zurlo and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2024).
| Glossary item | Definition |
|---|---|
| Germanic | European ethnolinguistic family, with about 15 major languages, Teutonic. |
| gethsemane | A mercy ground (qv). |
| giganetwork | An electronic network linking a vast number of computers, around one billion or more. The number of general-purpose computers in the world reached 509 million by AD 2000 and will pass one billion by AD 2004. The number of Christian-owned and operated general-purpose computers is likely to reach one billion by AD 2008. |
| global codes | Codes used in the analysis of Christianity and mission which have the same meaning across the whole area of statistical analysis. |
| global diagram | A single-page analysis of a mission situation, concept, or term bringing together all relevant data, tables, graphics, diagrams, photographs. |
| global evangelization movement | A term describing the vast number of distinct agencies and plans directed towards world evangelization which have proliferated across the world since the year 1900. |
| global meganetwork | A Great Commission global meganetwork . |
| global mission | The mission of Jesus Christ as it involves the entire world. |
| global missions | Mission agencies with work in over 50 nations of the world or sending out over 5,000 foreign missionary personnel. |
| global network | A Great Commission global network. |
| global plans | A documented, christocentric plan, proposal, or program that starts with the Great Commission and articulates concern for evangelizing the world’s entire population. |
| global religion | A universal religion with adherents from 10 million to 200 million. |
| global statistics | Numbers, series of figures, and other varieties of statistics describing any aspect of the entire world, the Earth, our globe, its populations, its problems, its past, its present, and its future. |
| globalist | A specialist in globalistics, one who consistently takes the global view and emphasizes the big-picture approach to researching and understanding world problems. |
| globalistics | The professional study of the world in its entirety, with all its peoples, groupings, problems, and possibilities; together with detailed statistical enumeration. |
| globalized evangelization | An organized pseudo-global attempt by a church or mission agency to reach the world by taking a successful local program of mission and evangelism, adding to it simply a veneer of global terminology, and then regarding it as certain to evangelize the whole world. |
| globalized mission | Pseudo-global missions, as initiated by mission agencies which profess to work for global mission, which propound a veneer of global or pseudo-global terminology, but which operate in budget-program isolation from other missions. |
| globalized missions | An impressionistic term for mission agencies whose publicity and propaganda continuously employs global mission terminology but whose actions in practice remain parochial. |
| globe | A term referring here to the entire population of Earth, used instead of ‘world’ to distinguish it from the usage World A, World B, World C. |
| glossolalia | (NT Greek). The gift of tongues; ecstatic speech unintelligible to hearers, uttered in worship services of contemporary charismatic churches. |
| glossozone (zone) | One of 100 linguistic areas describing the whole world of 13,500 languages. |
| Gnosticism | The thought and practice of various cults of late pre-Christian and early Christian centuries, declared heretical by the church, characterized chiefly by pretension to mystic and esoteric religious insights, by emphasis on knowledge (gnosis) rather than faith, and by the conviction that matter is evil. |
| Gnostics | Followers of a complex Jewish-Christian syncretistic movement in the 2nd century AD. The only surviving Gnostics today are the 39,000 Mandaeans (qv) of Iraq and Iran. |
| Goa | See of Latin Catholic patriarchate and patriarch, since 1886 |
| goals | An aim or set of objectives to accomplish a purpose, here relating to world evangelization, usually in a specified time or by a certain date. |
Data on 18 categories of religion, including non-religious, by country, province, and people.
Data on all religions, Christian activities, and trends.
Membership data, year begun, and rates of change.
Population and religion data on all major cities & provinces.
Detailed information covering religion, culture, and geography.
A repository of historical data, including a chronology of Christianity from the 1st to 21st centuries.