Apart from the very obvious disappointment of England's shockingly poor performance, this World Cup has once again presented us with a colourful and joyful coming together of the nations. Even those who can't stand football and will be glad when tomorrow comes and it is all over and they can have their TVs back must admit that the World Cup, like other major sporting international events, can show an alternative to the wars, ethnic conflicts and natural disasters that so often colour our view of the wider world. The World Cup, like it or not, reminds us that we are part of a world community. No longer can we take the view that what goes on "over there" is simply, in Neville Chamberlain's unfortunate phrase, "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." A global media, a global economy, global travel, a global entertainment industry, we cannot but know that we are all living on the same planet and to claim to "know nothing" about that world is now at best, gross ignorance and worst, a moral failure. We are part of one world and because of this we are each responsible for the other. Climate change and the global recession remind us of the fragility and interconnectedness of our world. "No man is an island," is John Donne's famous aphorism, and now no country is an island. And in our case here in the UK, no island is an island, either! Like it or not, we are part of a world community and our destiny is shared with the 7 billion others who live on our planet.

And I say, "like it or not", because you sometimes sense that we don't like it in this country. There is some bewilderment that the world suddenly seems to be such a small place and our role in it is much diminished. As a nation we sometimes fail to make the "post-colonial adjustment" and secretly yearn for days when a good part of the map was covered by the red of the British Empire. We think we should be good at football because, like a great many modern sports, we invented it, but, as in many great modern sports, we have been surpassed by others not least in football by Latin American nations like Argentina and Brazil. Sometimes we are guilty of failing to notice how the balance of power is tipping away from Britain, indeed from Europe as a whole, towards the so-called developing world or, as we now are asked to call it, the Global South. The same is true, of course, of the economy with China, India and Brazil poised to become the superpowers of the future. The 21st century is going to look very different economically to the 20th.

Now I should hesitate to predict how things will go in sport or economics because I know very little about either but what I do know something about how things are changing for the Christian church and I wonder whether these changes might give some pointers as to how things will go in other areas of human development.

I start with the perhaps the surprising news that the 20th century was the greatest ever century of Christian expansion and growth. Surprising because here in Europe the opposite has happened and active church attendance has declined significantly. The growth of the church is not in the West, but in the global south with massive increase in the number of Christians in Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. This is something of a shock to us in the West, to see the balance tip away from Europe and North America. Like football, we rather think that somehow we invented Christianity and it is discomforting to feel that much of its life and vigour now lies elsewhere.

Of course, the idea that Christianity is a basically Western religion was always a false one. It's origins lie in the Middle East. In its earliest centuries Christianity flourished in cities like Alexandria and Carthage in North Africa or Antioch and Caesarea. There was a rich and thriving Christian empire in Ethiopia by the 4th Century and Syrian Christians in the same century had carried the Christian message to China, all this whilst most of Europe, and certainly this country, was pagan with only pockets of Christianity. So Christianity was an eastern faith first and God is not an Englishman. But it is the case that in 1900 the centre of gravity in the Christian world lay somewhere in the North Atlantic. According the writer Phillip Jenkins in 1900 about 85% of those calling themselves Christians lived in Europe and the North America. By 2050 it is predicted it will be only 25% and the vast majority of Christians will live in Africa and South America. One more statistic. In 1900 there were 10 million Christians in Africa by 2025 there will be one billion. This is partly accounted for by the overall growth in the world's population but also by conversion, people moving from one religious affiliation to another.

Perhaps the most interesting place in this respect is China. Figures are hard to come by for obvious reasons but even the most conservative estimates reckon there are now more Christians in China that there are in the UK – some 54 million and growing. A writer for the Asia Times notes

I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now.

In other words China may not only be the leading economic nation of the 21st century, it may be the leading Christian nation too.

This rapid growth is not without its problems. Christianity is not the only growing world religion – all religions are expanding to a greater or lesser extent not least because of the increase in world's population. Islam in particular is growing and where Islamic and Christian expansion meet, especially in Africa, there are violent clashes often complicated by tribal conflicts as we have seen recently in Nigeria. It is also the case that the church of the Global South is much more conservative on some moral matters such as sexual morality that causes tensions with fellow believers in the more liberal Western church, as the Anglican Communion has found to its cost. What is clear is that these young churches of the Global South are not keen to lectured to by their former colonial masters on how they should behave as churches. They want to do it their way not ours. Just as the Brazilian football team don't want to play like England (thank goodness!), the churches of Africa, China and Latin America want to worship, preach, serve in ways appropriate to their culture. In Kenya they don't want have to sing from Hymns Ancient and Modern brought by the missionaries and, in fact, there has been an enormous upsurge of hymn writing especially in Africa using African language and melody and rhythm.

Now I mention all this because it seems to me that what is happening in the churches is perhaps indicative of a broader dynamic in the world in general. The world is changing at a great pace and the balance is tipping in new directions. New conflicts and tensions arise, new power arrangements come into being. And in a rapidly changing world we need to consider just where we fit in. We can live in denial, we can resist the changes or be constantly baffled by them or we can work creatively within the new world that is emerging around us. And one thing we will have to learn is humility. This will come hard to the West. We have seen ourselves for so long as the bringers of civilisation, economically powerful, militarily strong. But I suspect things are going to be different in the future. Still the money and resources lie, for example, with the churches of the West but the life and growth of the church is moving inexorably towards the equator. This may well be the case in other areas too. We will no longer be dictating the pace. If we are not top dog what will our role be? And as this is our civic service what might be the implications for us locally?

"Think globally, act locally" goes the slogan. The World Cup reminds us that we are part of the one planet. Churches try and remind themselves of this by forging partnerships with churches in other parts of the world. The Diocese of Lichfield has links with dioceses in South Africa, Germany, West Malaysia and Canada. I know local schools do this too. St Edward's Junior High school has a good link with a school in Kenya. These kinds of partnerships enable us to engage with the wider world, draw us out of our isolation and ignorance. I'm not sure what happens in SMDC but it would seem to me that local government should not become too parochial either not least for its own benefit, although the motive has to be more than our own economic well being. I don't know what partnerships are possible or even already in place but one of the things we can still offer to the global South is a long tradition of democratic politics. This could be offered in genuine humility with overseas partners on the clear understanding that we have as much to receive as we have to give in such partnerships.

And when we think globally we are compelled to act locally. Recycling in the Staffordshire Moorlands, for example, is a local contribution to the global problem of climate change and the degradations of the earth's resources. Trying to promote fairly traded goods is a way of acknowledging that we are part of this global community and that there is still a deal of inequality in the system.

We may no longer be top dog but we have a role to play still in a changing world, ready to give and receive as we are able. As Christians we can never claim that somehow what goes on in "far-away countries between people of whom we know nothing" has nothing to do with us. In our second reading we are reminded that "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son". God so loved the world. This is God's world, the world he loved, the world he longs to redeem and renew. In joining hands with brothers and sisters across the world we join hands with God himself, the greatest partnership of them all.