Last week Leadership‘s editor-in-chief, Marshall Shelley, brought you live posts from the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta–one of the most influential and popular ministry conferences for younger church leaders.
Next week senior editor Skye Jethani will be attending the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa. With nearly 5,000 delegates representing over 200 countries, Cape Town 2010 will be the most diverse gathering of church leaders focused on mission in history.
For those unfamiliar with the Lausanne Movement, it was launched by Billy Graham and John Stott in the late 1960s. The first congress occurred in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. Time magazine called the meeting “a formidable forum, possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held.” Out of that first congress came the Lausanne Covenant–a widely affirmed and celebrated document of Christian conviction and mission.
A second Lausanne congress was held in Manila in 1989. This gathering is where the “10/40 window” idea was widely introduced to the global church. It led many denominations and missions agencies to focus their efforts for the next two decades on the unreached nations in the Muslim world.
After 21 years, many church leaders felt that a third congress was necessary to address the enormous changes that have occurred and the new challenges facing the church’s mission. In Cape Town six key issues will be the focus of the conference:
1. The Challenge of the New Atheism.
2. The Impact of Hedonism.
3. The Reality of Islam.
4. The Globalized World.
5. The Brokenness of Our World.
6. Seismic Shifts in Global Christianity.
Within these six issues groups will gather to discuss and work on matters of global poverty, justice, evangelization, church planting, Bible translation, and many other topics.
The congress will also have hours of concentrated bible study through the book of Ephesians. Expositors from around the world have been cooperating for months and will be presenting their teaching from Ephesians each morning of the congress. Speakers include:
Ajith Fernando
Ruth Padilla DeBorst
John Piper
Vaughan Roberts
Calisto Odede
Ramez & Rebecca Atallah
This is only a tiny bit of what will be happening in Cape Town. Theologians from around the world, led by Christopher Wright, will be working on new papers to give the church a firm doctrinal foundation for missions in the 21st century. And a significant number of younger global church leaders will convene to develop new partnerships. Here is a video about the Lausanne Young Leaders forum:
Stay tuned next week for blog updates from Skye Jethani. And be sure to check out the Lausanne Movement website for live updates and video from the Cape Town congress.
