Lausanne World Congress 2010: Michael Cassidy Report, Pt. 3

AE Founder Michael Cassidy welcomes Lausanne to Africa.

While many people addressed this issue I want to share with you basically at this moment from the paper by Dr. Paul Eshleman which you could also look up on the Lausanne website (www.lausanne.org). It was entitled World Evangelisation in the 21st Century. To me it was a very important utterance, so I share some of it with you. May the Lord help you and your home church to embrace, absorb and respond to some of this as the Spirit leads you.

Says Dr. Eshelman:

· “Throughout the world today, pastors, mission leaders and lay people are working towards the day when every person on earth will have access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There are movements to reach every people group, to finish the task of world evangelization, to complete the Great Commission and to work toward the worship of our God by every people throughout the world. Various researchers, organizations and confessions define these terms differently, but they all revolve around our Lord’s command to ‘make disciples of all nations.’ At the first Lausanne Congress in 1974, Dr. Ralph Winter clarified for us that the scriptural references to nations actually refer to the ‘panta ta ethne’ (Greek) or people groups. He and others began to speak of the idea of missiological ‘closure’ among these people groups. This simply refers to finishing. Their idea was that the irreducible, essential mission task of making disciples in every people group was a completable task. In fact, it was one of the only tasks given to God’s people that have a completable dimension to it.”

· “It is difficult to keep track of the evangelization of every person, since day-by-day hundreds of thousands of children are born. However, the idea of ‘making disciples of every people’ or raising up a church within every people is one possible approximation of what the Great Commission may mean. More and more mission leaders speak not only of evangelism, but the biblical imperative of making disciples and seeing Christ worshipped and obeyed within every people group of the world. As leaders in the Church, we need to know where the command of the Great Commission is not being fulfilled. While being obedient to our individual callings, we can still serve the whole Body of Christ by helping to reach those people groups that have been neglected since the first century. Most important on an individual basis is that it would be said of each of us, as of David, that he ‘served God’s purpose for his own generation’ (Acts 13:36).”

Lausanne World Congress 2010: Michael Cassidy Report, Pt. 2

Addressing closing gathering.

I can’t stand the way time flies, or else maybe time stands still, or just ticks over, and it is we who fly! Anyway, it does feel as if the year is racing to a conclusion and time is constrained as so many little things rush in, some of them apparently urgent, so that they can distract us from the important. In fact the Urgent is an almost perennial enemy of the Important. Even so I try to register Alvin Toffler’s dictum which I have on the front page of my daily diary which says: “You have got to think about Big Things while you are doing small things, so that all the small things go in the Right Direction.”

Anyway, before November slips through my fingers I want you to have my report Number Two on the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation held in Cape Town from October 16th to 24th.

This Congress was, as I said in my last letter, a First Order experience which none of us who attended will ever forget. But part of the problem was that such a Mount Everest volume of material and happenings came at us that it is exceedingly difficult to do more than just pick up the headlines in a report like this and then leave interested people to chase down the details via the internet and via the Congress website which is www.lausanne.org. Or if you are wanting to get the content of the major papers as submitted in advance of the Congress itself, then you can also google ‘Lausanne Cape Town 2010 Papers’, and select ‘Advance Papers/The Lausanne Global Conversation.’ There you will see quite an overwhelming array of material, some of which undoubtedly will capture your attention and be worthy of your study, scrutiny and application. You will see there many of the different subjects treated during the Congress and you can single out those of special interest to you or your church. All the Congress material is also at AE Leadership Training Centre and can be obtained by emailing Marius, Verna or Noeline at: registrar@ae.org.za or phone 033 3477050.

Now let’s get on with this report.

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