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| AE Founder Michael Cassidy welcomes Lausanne to Africa. |
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).”
· “Two hundred years ago, mission leaders began to dream of how the Great Commission of our Lord might be fulfilled and the Gospel taken to the world. That dream is now being accelerated by cooperation and collaboration in ministry as never before. An explosion of partnerships, networks, and alliances has developed as leaders have recognized the tremendous synergy that comes from working together. The self-protecting, exclusionary silo-building of the past is being replaced by a Jesus-centered, action-oriented cooperative mentality. (A question from MC: Is your own home church functioning like this?) But in the midst of these discussions, leaders need to ask, ‘What should the priorities be for the Body of Christ?”
· “The focus of our required priorities now must be towards seeing disciple-making in every people group of the world. Evangelism is not enough. ‘Teaching others to observe all that Jesus has commanded’ (Matthew 28:20) must be an ongoing process. When Ralph Winter brought this idea of unreached people groups to the attention of the first Lausanne Congress in 1974, there were an estimated 16,750 such groups. There are now just 2,365 groups with populations of more than 5,000 that remain unengaged. But, there are church planters at work. The fact that we still have many individuals living around us who don’t know Christ doesn’t take away from Christ’s commandment to take the Gospel to every people group.”
· “These priorities concentrate on where the Church is NOT. They don’t try to address every responsibility of the Church in its witness for Christ. The purpose of speaking to these priorities is to accelerate the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel where it has not yet been proclaimed, i.e. those people groups, language groups and geographic locations that have not yet heard the message, where the Church has not yet been established.” (MC comment: I always appreciated Oswald Smith’s challenge when he was pastor of People’s Church, Toronto, where I have been privileged to preach a few times: ‘Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?’)
· “This presentation now assumes that every part of the world is called to go to every part of the world. No country is exempt from sending and no country is exempt from receiving. There is no room for triumphalism. Our lives should be characterized by obedience to God, servanthood to one another, and humility with grace. No sanctified business plans or entrepreneurial ventures can replace the supreme importance of His blessing.”
· “We also believe that loving one another and working together should be the standard of the Church. God has given each person and organization unique gifts and callings. We should honor those callings. But, all of us can give some percentage of our time and resources to work together on the priorities of the whole Body of Christ.”
· Eshleman then goes on to talk about where we are missing the mark in fulfilling the Great Commission in several areas. So he notes that:
- True life comes from the Word of God (II Timothy. 4:2) – yet, not every people group has the Word of God available.
- God told us to make disciples of all people groups. Yet there are thousands of people groups to whom we have not gone.
- God told us to preach the Gospel to all creation. Yet we have neglected two-thirds (or 70%) of the world who are oral learners. We don’t prioritize children, even though 64% receive Christ before the age of 19.
- We also ignore those who can’t see, hear or walk – 11% of the world’s population (i.e. the disabled). (NB – Barbara Watt of AE/SA’s Disability Connection ministry says only 5% of this 11% are evangelized. What a challenge! Praise God for Barbara’s ministry to the disabled.)
· As a result of all the above, we are left with some very sad statistics:
- 2,252 language groups have no one working on Scripture translations.
- 2,365 people groups with over 5,000 in population still have no missionary.
- 95% of the world’s countries do not have a current survey showing the villages and barrios where there are no local churches.
- 70% of the world needs to receive the Gospel message orally really to understand it, but we tend to minister only with a literate approach.
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| Dr. Paul Eshelman |
· So then, Eshleman asks: “What is the need?”
“More written translations of the Scripture:
- Scripture translation is the number one needed priority throughout the world. It is impossible to do ministry without a biblical foundation.
- Look at the present reality in the 6,909 spoken languages of the world.
- Of these only 451 languages have a complete Bible.
- Only another 1,185 groups have a New Testament.
- 843 language groups have only a portion of Scripture. It is estimated that there are 2 billion people in these 2,028 language groups without any Old Testament. It is extremely difficult to make disciples without the Old Testament Scripture explaining the character of God. Nearly 2,000 language translations have begun work on the New Testament, but as yet, do not have one complete book. BUT HERE IS THE TRAGEDY—2,252 language groups do not have one verse of Scripture and no one is working on them.
- Eshleman goes on to say that the huge challenge here is to develop the capacity to launch the Oral Story Bible, along with many more oral translations of 50 to 60 scriptural stories.
- He also calls for the recruiting and sending out of 4,000 teams immediately with each team being required to produce an Oral Story Bible for one of these groups within two years.
- Eshleman then calls for a more intentional distribution and use of the Scriptures.
- Eshleman’s encyclopedic paper then addresses evangelization and its specific needs. He calls first for mission-minded people to go to those who are most neglected. He challenges us with ‘more intentional demonstration of love and prayer for the largest religious blocs throughout the world, namely, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.’ He then says we need to increase the number of workers going to the ‘least reached.’ He illustrates this with the Urdu Shaikhs of India who have more than 46 million people and only eight confirmed missionary workers at this writing.
- Eshleman then says that we must use the best ‘platforms’ for delivering the message. He notes that we have a staggering array of possibilities that range from personal witness to group and mass evangelism, as well as evangelism through the media, (e.g. film, radio, television, Internet, cell phone, iPod, iPads, etc. He calls for Christians to have an imaginative use also for Cell phone technology.)
- He notes in terms of the Internet that Global Media Outreach is seeing a million people every month indicate a decision to receive Christ as Lord and Saviour. About 400,000 people per day come to one of their 102 websites. On average, 60,000 of these indicate that they have prayed a prayer of repentance and commitment. About 15% of these leave their contact information so that they can be followed up by 5,000 e-missionaries. (Check out their website that shows their progress each day at www.greatcommission2020.com).
- Eshleman also notes that we need to believe that people will respond to the message if we are faithful to go and tell them. He says that there are some amazing reports of what is happening through media outreach, especially to Muslims. No less than seven Christian television stations are broadcasting across the Middle East and people are calling in to find out how to receive Christ. One man called in and said: ‘I want to know how to receive Christ.’ The host on the show started to tell him. The man interrupted him saying: ‘Wait, let me put you on speaker phone. There are 175 sheikhs here with me who also want to know.’
- From Germany a man called in to one of the programmes and said: ‘We are 1,000 Muslims in Germany who would like to follow Jesus.’
- From Saudi Arabia a man called in to say: ‘There are 50,000 of us here in Saudi who are now following Isa (Jesus).’
- From Iraq the story came of two Imams who met weekly to eat lunch together. One led a mosque, the other a madrasa (Moslem training school). In the same week, they each had a vision of Jesus appearing to them. Both men have turned to Jesus and are now following Him as new disciples.
· So then, Eshleman asks: “What is the need?”
- “As we take the Gospel to the unreached people groups, we need to pay close attention to the spiritual condition of those who go and to the churches which send them. Some would exhort us not to forget the woeful state of the Church in some parts of the world. They point to increasing reports of sexual immorality, financial scandals, involvement in Internet pornography and preoccupation with materialism. With surveys showing little difference between the lifestyles of believers and non-believers, there are questions of how much the Church has to share with the world when its own house is not in order.”
- So, “we need to be people of humility who realize that the power to see lives changed does not come from better methods but cleaner vessels. World evangelization is an empty enterprise without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Bill Bright often said that if he had only one message to give, he would talk to Christians about the power of the Holy Spirit and the necessity of being filled with the Holy Spirit every moment of every day.”
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I concur very strongly with the above and in the great privilege I had of making just a few brief remarks in the closing Communion Service of the Congress, I said as much and stressed as vigorously as I could our need for the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, along with His fruit and gifts, if we are to respond to all the challenges of world mission and evangelization at this time. Maybe next time round I will share a few of those remarks.
In the meantime let me say that there was so much more in Lausanne 3 than I have been able to bring to you in these three reports. That’s why next year I think I will pick up on some other emphases. One of these came forth in the superb presentation on cities and urban mission as brought by Dr Tim Keller, Pastor of the amazing Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. I have had the privilege of visiting that church, and meeting some of their staff, and if ever there was an effective urban ministry it is that one. And I think they have planted 70 or 80 other congregations both in New York and beyond. So Tim knows what he is talking about, and I will give you some of that next time. Or else you can look it up for yourself by going to www.lausanne.org
CONCLUSION
May I say first of all in closing that I would be so very happy if some of you out there were to ask yourselves what some of these Lausanne 3 reports are saying both to you individually and to your home church. In an international tele-conference call the other day with some of our AE leaders around Africa and around the world I urged that our AE ministry should be a “post-Lausanne 3 ministry”, rather than continue as a “pre-Lausanne 3” ministry. The Cape Town gathering was a land-breaking milestone in the history of the contemporary church and it will certainly take years to bring forth all of its conclusions and recommendations as well as fully embracing the theological formulations of the Cape Town Commitment.
- Michael (& Carol)
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