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).”