‘If God desires every knee to bow to Jesus and every tongue to confess him, so should we. We should be “jealous” (as Scripture sometimes puts it) for the honour of his name -- troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honour and glory which are due to it. The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God) but rather zeal -- burning and passionate zeal -- for the glory of Jesus Christ. … Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die.’[8] John Stott
The reason I draw out this implication of the cross is to hold together in this congress and in the church of Christ two truths that are often felt to be at odds with each other, but don’t have to be.
One truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls it impels us out toward the alleviation of all unjust suffering in this age. That’s what love does!
The other truth is that when the gospel takes root in our souls it awakens us to the horrible reality of eternal suffering in hell, under the wrath of a just and omnipotent God. And it impels us to rescue the perishing, and to warn people to flee from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10).
I plead with you. Don’t choose between those two truths. Embrace them both. It doesn’t mean we all spend our time in the same way. God forbid. But it means we let the Bible define reality and define love.
Could Lausanne say—could the evangelical church say—we Christians care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering? I hope we can say that. But if we feel resistant to saying “especially eternal suffering,” or if we feel resistant to saying “we care about all suffering in this age,” then either we have a defective view of hell or a defective heart.
I pray that Lausanne would have neither.
Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. Although reconciliation with other people is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ. ...In the Church's mission of sacrificial service evangelism is primary.
After Lausanne '74 there were several consultations. ... I had the privilege of attending the 4 consultations arranged by John Stott. ... The last, in Grand Rapids, 1982, Evangelism & Social Responsibility. I think those conferences were very very important for the Lausanne Movement. And they really emphasised the importance of a holistic mission, what we, in Latin America call 'integral mission'. Not trying to specialise in evangelism, to specialise in social action, but combining all that the church is supposed to be about.
We commit ourselves to the integral and dynamic exercise of all dimensions of mission to which God calls his Church.
God commands us to make known to all nations the truth of God’s revelation and the gospel of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ, calling all people to repentance, faith, baptism and obedient discipleship.
God commands us to reflect his own character through compassionate care for the needy, and to demonstrate the values and the power of the kingdom of God in striving for justice and peace and in caring for God’s creation.
Having come from a mathematical training, I'd expect to want logic, priorities, and points. I do appreciate those - without priorities, it's hard to have direction. But I've been learning to embrace things a lot more globally, drawing on a background of storytelling, myths and music, and learning from those who think differently: whether Ravi Zacharias moving persuasively with circles and spokes, our African friends giving time to description until you 'get the picture' rather than expediently moving in a line to 'getting the point', or a former colleague giving a talk from such an artist's perspective that it was tremendously engaging but I couldn't follow it - and he said similar of my logical discourse!'Citizenship in the Roman empire, as in others of the sort, depends on lineage, power and financial means, and it classes people into first, second, third categories. Belonging, in Jewish cultural religion, also rested on family line and social status. In contrast, membership in the household of God is a gift: gentile and Jew, slave and free, women and men, old and young, people from South and North, East and West, people without all their limbs and wits and people with them, all belong, thanks to God's reconciling work in Christ.
'This new household, the Church, is built not on money, or power, charismatic leaders or individual saints, but on the foundation of the apostles and prophets: on the whole recorded history of God's work in God's world through God's people. When Rome claims that it's imperial power that holds everything together, and temples become symbols of dominion; and when today we are tempted to place our confidence in nations' military or economic power, big church budgets, or successive business ventures, and when denominational and institutional preoccupations easily become more important than people, then, with Paul, we must counter-culturally claim that Christ is the peace without which the entire construction would crumble apart. He is the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
'Where, we asked at the beginning, does God live? Paul closes with this amazing and humbling affirmation: in Christ, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. We, the Church, with all our imperfections, petty concerns, pride and prejudice, are God's holy temple, God's earthly home. Yes, by God's grace it is here: in the immensely diverse, transnational, transethnic, transcultural community, that God chooses to live. God lives in the new humanity, created by God, reconciled by Christ and indwelled and gifted by the Holy Spirit.'
'Let me say without any fear or favour, that any church leader who is not leading in mission loses his apostolicity - simple. The apostles were church leaders because they were leaders in mission. Anytime you get to the point where you’re a church leader and you’re not leading your people in mission, you’ve lost the leadership. You can own the title, drive the cars, own the houses, but you’ve lost it - as far as heaven is concerned.
And I think church leaders need to know that so that they can really be the leaders in mission and create the enthusiasm. Let me tell you: if you are a church leader and you got out on witnessing, and the bank manager sees you and the people see you, it will not be long before your diocese or your circuit or your presbytery begins to say, 'Hey guys, we’d better join this man.' That’s why you’re put there in leadership!'
- Archbishop Ben Kwashi, of Jos, Nigeria
Now rhetoric, preaching, speaking: all these are skills practised and esteemed in Greco-Roman society, to which the recipients of Paul's letter belonged. They're highly aware of the power of the spoken word in building personal prestige and swaying public opinion. But Jesus' peace-preaching had a far more significant impact. It was grounded in his peace-being and his peace-making as expressions of the ongoing reconciling work of God who declares things into being. In the beginning, God, the creative community of love, spoke the world into existence out of chaos. In Jesus, the Word made flesh, God spoke redemption and new life into history. And through the Spirit's breath, God speaks community out of distanced individuals. God speaks and it comes to pass.
Paul had begun his letter by portraying the grand cosmic scheme of things: everything brought under Christ's lordship. He now zooms in on a visible, historical expression of that unity and authority. He leads us not to some ancient temples or some opulent modern church building. No! Instead, he lands squarely on his listeners - on the local community of Christ's followers, v19: 'So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God...'
What God in Christ has spoken into being is nothing more and nothing less than the Church, the body of Jesus' followers, the new humanity, woven together out of people from different ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious strands.
'And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience' Ah, this is about them: the Jewish Christians might have sighed in relief. ... They might have rested assured of their belonging, and believed they owned the right to determine who was in and who was out of the new community being forged by the apostles' teaching. Become like us - the true believers: look at the world through our lenses, and organise your experience into our categories; otherwise, you will only ever be second class. We can tolerate a little colour here and there, a token representative of minority groups, but they must be willing to blend in, to accommodate to our standards and expectations, our jargon, our styles. Yet Paul leaves no room for such smug self-righteousness. He continues: 'We ALL once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of humankind.'
'This truth is something that is culturally distant to most people. It's difficult for them to understand: how they can be redeemed from sin, how Jesus could turn God's wrath, and how the blood could cleanse them, how they are justified because he bore their guilt. So it's a difficult thing for our people to understand that. But it was difficult for the first century Jew. Paul says in 1 Cor 1.23 that the gospel is foolishness: 'We preach Christ crucified, which is foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block to the Jew.' But, what did he do? Did he not preach this message? In 1 Cor 2.2 he says, 'I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.' He laboured to get this message across. And so in the epistles he used different pictures and all sorts of things to remind us of the fullness of our salvation.
'I fear that today many of us have surrendered to the culture and focussed on what is easy to understand, rather than labouring to describe what the work of Christ really did. We must be using our greatest creative energies to get through the Biblical concept of the work of Christ to the people that we minister to. That's the challenge that we have. Not to present God just as one who meets needs, but the One who has a plan for the whole universe.'
In the final weeks of preparation for The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, I came across this: John Piper's reflections of 20 years ago, of attending Lausanne II, in Manila. They moved me to tears and reminded me of the impact that congress had on churches, pastors and missions across the world. 
We pray it will resound in inspiration and shaping of ministries such as DesiringGod, and thousands lesser known, to the ends of the globe. Not just that more would be busy for Jesus, but that our Lord would use it to hasten his return in glory.
The cross must be an essential element in our definition of vocational fulfilment.
Young Christian workers who return to Sri Lanka after studying in the West struggle with this. They cannot use their qualifications fully because we cannot afford pure specialists. Some leave the country after a few years. Some start their own organisations so that they can fulfil their ‘vision’. Others pay the price of identifying with our people and ultimately have a deep impact on the nation.
Paul placed importance on the need to endure frustration patiently, groaning with creation as we await its redemption (Romans 8.18-25). Not including this in our understanding of vocational fulfilment today leads to a shallow church, failing to challenge the world’s standards of success and fulfilment.
I have a great fear for the church. The West is fast becoming an unreached region. The Bible and history show that suffering is an essential ingredient in reaching unreached people. As the church in the West has lost a theology of suffering, will it be ineffective in its evangelism? [Read more.]
I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom long ago the Lord already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives.Read Patrick's Declaration (Confessio) here. Dating c.450AD - contemporary with Augustine, Chrysostom and the Council of Chalcedon. A rivetting personal testimony and defence of 'throwing his life away among the pagans' - because of God's grace, and the promises of his word.
I wish to wait then for his promise which is never unfulfilled, just as it is promised in the Gospel: 'Many shall come from east and west and shall sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.' Just as we believe that believers will come from all the world.
So for that reason one should, in fact, fish well and diligently, just as the Lord foretells and teaches, saying, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,'...
According, therefore, to the measure of one's faith in the Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God's name everywhere with confidence and without fear, in order to leave behind, after my death, foundations for my brethren and sons whom I baptized in the Lord in so many thousands.
How do we listen to Christians around the world, to better spread the good news of Jesus Christ in our situation and worldwide? DesiringGod has posted a video of John Piper chairing a discussion with Doug Birdsall, Chris Wright and Lindsay Brown (3 leaders in the Lausanne movement) on that topic, and the Cape Town 2010 congress. Dr Piper confesses that if he went to plan such a congress, it'd flop - so watch the interviewees discuss how we hope, by the grace of God, it will be effective - and catch many pearls of wisdom from these four servants of God in the course of discussion.
Some of the questions asked and topics shared were these:
And to wrap up, Dr Piper asked the others for 30 seconds each on: 'Cape Town 2010, 16-25 October, 4000 people, 200 countries, coming together with these issues in mind, all informed by the gospel, to advance world evangelization: what are your dreams?'
Well worth watching.
October 16-25 will see 4,500 carefully-selected evangelical leaders and thinkers from 200 nations gather in Cape Town, South Africa, for The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. But participation will extend far beyond this.
Already some 200 seminaries, universities, churches and missions in over 50 countries have registered to host their own remote GlobaLink site for this unique event. The Lausanne Movement will supply tools for sites to interact with the Congress in Cape Town and with other GlobaLink gatherings. Sites will choose when to convene during the Congress week, as is most suitable for their situation.
Guests of each site will actively participate prior to the Congress as well as during the Congress, and, if they desire, beyond the Congress. Each site will receive printed resources, video and audio streaming, and news feeds from Cape Town. They will hear the presenters - some of the best minds and most courageous practitioners the Church has to offer - then take part themselves in the global discussion. ‘They will not just be observers,’ said Larry Russell, Director of Cape Town GlobaLink. ‘We intend that they genuinely participate. This is a global congress, and we are working to engage the whole evangelical church in as many nations as we can.’
Dr Victor Nakah, President of the Theological College of Zimbabwe and Chairman of Cape Town GlobaLink said, 'Each GlobaLink site could effectively host anywhere between eight and 2000 participants. This will be a great expression of joining together as the body of Christ to consider key issues. I would strongly encourage you to register your school, church, or mission agency as a GlobaLink site.'
The Third Lausanne Congress is to be held in collaboration with the World Evangelical Alliance. GlobaLink registration is available at www.lausanne.org/GlobaLink until May.
The Global Conversation - Intro October 2009 from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.
"The source of salvation is grace.[The covenant produced from that '74 congress is well-worth a read, too.]
The ground of our salvation is the atonement at the cross.
The means of our salvation is faith.
The evidence of our salvation is works."
