Pastor Scott's Thoughts

Cape Town 2010 Final Reflections

I am waiting for my plane home and reflecting over my experiences in Cape Town. Things did not slow down during the final weekend of Lausanne but continued to be jam-packed and meaningful. Every session during the eight days was wonderful, but I think by the end just about everybody was on overload. I'm very ready to head home.

There are lots of things that I take home with me (including a couple vuvuzelas) but the most important things I take back are the faith experiences and insights. I'm sure those of you who see me regularly at home will soon grow tired of hearing me say, "Well, when I was in Cape Town..." I'll be ruminating on my experiences here for some time, but now that the last session is over, I have already begun to reflect on the significance of being here.

Here are the ten things that I think of as the immediate impacts of the Cape Town Conference for me.

1. It is an important and powerful experience to worship wtih believers from 200 nations.

Every plenary session began with worship. There is something revelatory about worshiping God with a crowd that in so many ways is a reflection of the worship of heaven. I don't believe I made it through a worship time without a few tears. On one of the first days we sang the chorus "He Reigns." Imagine standing in Africa and singing these words with 5,000 believers from around the world in one room...

It's the song of the redeemed rising from the African plain.

It's the song of the forgiven drowning out the Amazon rain.

The song of Asian believers, filled with God's holy fire.

It's every tribe, every tongue, every nation; a love song born of a faithful choir.

It's all God's children singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah he reigns. He reigns!"

Imagine singing the next verse knowing that several believers were arrested at the airport on the way to Cape Town and continue to be detained because they were trying to be present at the conference...

Let it rise above the four winds, caught up in the heavenly sound.

Let praises echo from the towers of cathedrals to the faithful gathered underground...

And all the powers of darkness tremble at what they've just heard.

'Cause all the powers of darkness can't drown out a single word...

Tonight with a full choir and orchestra we sang these words:

Let every kingdom, every tribe on this terrestrial ball,

To Him all majesty ascribe and crown Him Lord of all.

To Him all majesty ascribe and crown Him Lord of all.

I didn't make it through it... Most of the people around me were having the same problem.

Most importantly, and most appropriately, the conference ended last night in Eucharist around the Lord's table. There was something about being around the table of communion with 200 nations that made it sacred beyond description. I couldn't help but think about how Christ meets the whole world in all of it's brokenness, redeems us through his grace, and makes us a new humanity (a holy nation) in his love.

2. The Lausanne Movement theme, "The whole Church, proclaiming the whole gospel, to the whole world" had a deep resonnance.

The Lausanne motto was spoken dozens of times over the course of the week. But there was a real sense that it was more than a beautiful sentiment but that in our time together it's hopeful vision was becoming a reality. In the globalized world there is an increasing sense of awareness and responsibility for one another around the world. When one part of the global Body of Christ hurts, we all hurt with it.

3. The significant role of entrepreneurial laity in the spread of the gospel.

I spent a good deal of time meeting with a "think tank" of government, business, and education leaders. As you can imagine the government and business leaders were very successful and very committed lay women and men who have a passion for using the platform, resources, and wisdom God has given them in the work of gospel's transforming work around the world. If the gospel is going to have a global impact it will not be primarily because preachers and church leaders get their act together. (Although that would be great). But I am more convinced than ever that it will be (and probably always has been) committed lay people using the gifts God has given them in service to God's kingdom that will make the most difference. One speaker shared about a local church sign that gave the name of the church and then read: ""Pastor: Rev. Thompson". And below that it said, "Ministers: Every One Else." I like that and am deeply awed by the ministers from government, business, and education I met here.

4. The culture of evangelical Christian has changed significantly in the last 20 years.

A couple of people who were at the Second Lausanne Conference in 1989 shared with me that when it was over they did not believe there would ever be another global meeting because of the great tensions present at the 89 meeting. The world was in the midst of political turmoil (when is it not?), but evangelicals were also experiencing a great deal of tension. There were apparently three major areas of tension. There was tension over the Pentecostals and Charismatics that were present at the conference. There was a great deal of anger on the part of some of the Latin American delegates that there were some evangelical Catholics present. And the conference was deeply divided between those who define evangelism narrowly as the salvation of the souls of people and those who were advocating a broadening of the understanding of evangelism to include concepts such as justice and compassion.

There are lots of changes that have taken place in two decades that we could point to, but whatever cultural and theological changes have taken place, there was very little tension and a great spirit of unity that was present in Cape Town. There were rumors about some folk who were upset that a woman was invited to give the message at one of the morning devotional sessions. But the leaders addressed the concern by saying essentially, "We in the Lausanne movement are committed to God's use of the whole Church - including women - to be instruments of his gospel." So women were equally involved in all of the areas of ministry during the week, and that seemed to settle the question.

Perhaps it is the rise of secularism in the West and the decline of denominationalism around the world, but it was clear - at least to me - that the emphasis was on working together and that there was very little spirit of competition but a prevailing sense of unity among those present. Even on the issues of justice and compassion it was very clear that the question has at least been settled for now that the Body of Christ is to be continually involved in evangelism and compassion/justice and that the two are not, nor should they be, mutually exclusive.

5. There is a great deal of ambiguity in being a Westerner.

It's important to say that every culture brings a mixed bag of blessing and curses, and the cultures of "the West" are certainly no exception. It was obviously important to those that planned the conference that leaders from the West have a voice but not be thevoice in the meetings. It was so interesting hearing people from other nations and regions of the world reflect on their impressions of the West (America in particular) and celebrate some of the good things the West does but also speak prophetically - and from personal experience - about many of the ways the West misuses its power and wealth in the world. Sitting in on those conversations is an experience that every American ought to have. But only if we are willing to listen confessionally and not defensively.

6. The quote that still haunts me is: "There are no closed countries. There are only countries where Christians are not currently willing to pay the price to take the gospel there."

Which leads to the next one...

7. There are as many saints living and at work in the world today as there have ever been.

One of the last speakers made the comment, "I don't know if and when Lausanne Four will take place. But if we were to meet again in ten years, there is no doubt that many in this room will have been martyred for your faith."

It was a humbling experience to hear the stories told just around my table of people who live in a great deal of danger and at a great deal of personal risk for the sake of the gospel. There were several moments during the week that will not be broadcast on the internet, when pictures were forbidden, and when we were asked not to re-tell the stories or use individual's names later on. The lives of these modern day St. Patricks are largely invisible to the global Church, but they are known by God.

At the same time, I read an article this week that referenced a study in the US which essentially said that over the couple of decades Christians in America have stopped defining regular church attendance as weekly and now consider regular attendance to be monthly. Just saying...

8. It doesn't matter what you say, if you say it with a British accent, it just sounds smarter.

That rule also applies to the various British-shaped accents in Africa. Unfortunately, the inverse is largely true for Southern [USA] accents.

9. There will always be the need for strong leading personalities, but the Church of the next generation will most likely be led by significant organizations and partnerships rather than by individuals.

Obviously when you go to something like Lausanne there is some question about who will be the "next" Billy Graham? Who will be the leader who will rise up and in their essence embody the vision and purposes of the larger evangelical movement?

There were certainly some large and recognizable personalities present (and some unfortunately absent), but it was mentioned several times that the power of connection is quickly surpassing the power of influence. I am a little biased, but looking at the roster of speakers and leaders, it could be argued that the next Billy Graham are places like Fuller Seminary, Navigators, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, African Enterprise, etc.

It feels like this is the age of collaboration.

10. Christian unity can only happen when we keep the mission of the Church at the forefront.

I am amazed at the sense of unity across languages, cultures, denominations, theological traditions, economic status, etc. when people are united in mission. Lausanne distributed a statement of faith and will put out a statement of mission coming out of this conference. The statement of faith is really quite beautiful and contains ten basic points. We love God because he first loved us. We love the living God. We love God the Father. We love God the Son. We love God the Holy Spirit. We love God's Word. We love God's world. We love the gospel of God. We love the people of God. And we love the mission of God. The document describes each of those points, but when I read it I get the sense that although it is thoughtfully put together that it was not - and is not - continually word-smithed. The movement holds the statements of faith necessary to fulfill the mission.

But it is the mission that is the unifying factor.

One woman who lives in a Muslim nation shared this week about her church where the worship practices are nearly identical to those practiced in a Muslim temple. The worshipers sit on the floor with the Bible open in front of them in the same manner as they would in Islam. The pastor is called an Imam, etc. The people have adopted all of the cultural and religious practices of the Muslim faith that they can except that Christ is proclaimed as Lord. The people realized that the biggest barriers to Christian faith for the people were cultural and not ideological. And so where they can leave culture - even a culture of worship - in place, they do. The woman - who herself is a converted Muslim - said, "Some of you may be freaking out about this, but you need to know that Christ is redeeming Muslims without making them Western Christians."

I thought, "Amen, sister. But I know some idiot bloggers who would freak out over this stuff..."

There is an old statement that floats around the church that says, "When we don't evangelize, we cannibalize." I thought about some of the cranky people some of us have been dealing with the last couple of years around the church in America who have made it their life pursuit to discover what's wrong with everyone else's theology. I must say, it was nice to spend a week free of them. It was nice to be with people who are convinced that evil, injustice, and the devil are our foes and not our other brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is a gross over statement, but I generally find that those who are most adamantly (and sometimes violently) argumentative and uncivil with other Christians are trying to protect what has been rather than build what may - by God's grace - be.

Anyways, it was a great deal of fun to dwell among the missional for a week. I hope that with what remains of my life and ministry that God will count me among the saints from around the world I was blessed to be at the table with this week. May God continue to bless his Church in all of its languages, cultures, tribes, lands, and customs.

Heading home...

Cape Town 2010 Journal - Friday, October 22

Like each morning, the day started with a study of Ephesians. The text for the day was 4:1-16 regarding the unity of the Spirit in the diverse Body of Christ. The people of God are one in ten Spirit of love, but God, in his wisdom has gifted us differently. As the speaker for the morning, Vaughan Roberts, pointed out, "When humans freeze water the make ice cubes that are identical to one another. But when God freezes water he makes snow flakes completely unique from one another."

It was a good word to start a day that was focused on the millions of people still living in unreached areas of the world and on what God is doing in Africa.

There are 2,252 known languages in which there is not one verse of Scripture translated. The delegation was given research listing 632 people groups with populations over 50,000 who are categorized as unengaged and unreached people with no written Scripture, no Jesus film, no Christian radio, no Christian church, and no known Christians living within the population. Some of the people groups - especially in China and India - are quite large. Some as large as 21 million.

The research shows just over 216.5 million people living in completely unreached areas. One if the Lausanne goals is that by 2020 the Scripture would be translated into every language and that works of mission would have been started among the 632 unreached groups. The focus for the morning was gathering in our groups and wrestling with this question: Where is the church not present, and what are we going to do about it?

The evening service was focused on all that God is doing in Africa. There are 887 million people living in Africa and the Church has grown 3000% in the last century. There is no question that having this conference here has been important and it was very clear tonight that the Africans are extremely proud to be hosting the global Church in this way.

The worship was as much about dancing tonight as it was about singing. It was hilarious watching the Europeans and Americans trying to find the rhythm. Im guessing that Os Guinness' great grandfather may have danced a bit when he first started making his famous ale, but his great grandson has largely lost the moves.

One of the amazing realities of Africa is that the average age of the population is 18.5. Only 1 out of 40 African males has an emotionally healthy relationship with their father, so some of the focus tonight was on the exciting sports ministries developing all over the continent. Christian men are being recruited and trained to not just be good coaches, but to be significant male role models in the lives of young people throughout Africa.

Thank God for the unique and beautiful things his Spirit is doing throughout the world.

 

Cape Town 2010 Journal - Thursday, October 21

There are days where the experience of sights, sounds, and smells will stick with you forever. Today was one of those days.

The Lausanne participants were given Thursday off so that we could hit the town and take whatever tour we wanted to take. Most of the folk in the think tank on business, education, and government I am part of went on a tour of the Khayelitsha Township. Khayelitsha is essentially a series of shanty-town slums that go on for miles and miles. Khayelitsha was part of the black only region and the poverty there is a remnant of the Apartheid era.

Where we pulled up in the buses there were thousands of bags of garbage open and poured out all over the ground. People from the community had come to dump their garbage while others in the community came and went through the garbage to see if there was anything of nutritional or material value worth taking. The "homes" in Khayelitsha are small shacks made from whatever materials can be scrounged together. Because of the lack of resources many if not most share walls with one another. And so they are lined up one after another.

We walked through the neighborhood but we were mainly there to see two places. The first was a small school run by a wonderful Christian woman who lives in the neighborhood. The school is just barely six feet high (I had to duck to stay inside) and is no more than twenty feet wide and twenty feet long. In that space there were at least forty children trying to learn - and many more children outside wanting to get in.

The second place we visited is a small home called the Sinethemba Community Organization. It is a small home started by 200 or so mothers in Khayelitsha who decided to work together to do three things. To clean up their neighborhood as best they can so that their children would have somewhere besides the dirt and sewage to play and eat. To build community gardens so that there would be organic food to eat and also to give people in the community - particularly youth - some constructive work to do. And to start a soup kitchen using the food grown to feed the youth who are HIV positive and need to be able to have a certain level of nutrition in order to take the HIV medicine.

They sang and welcomed us to their youth center today with cabbage soup and fresh bread for lunch. It wasn't much but it was the very best that they had. They only had one request in return, that we take the cups in which they served the soup to us and we place it on our tables or on our desks to remember the people of Khayelitsha. Remembering them will not be a problem.

If you would like to see pictures of Khayelitsha and the Sinethema Community Organization, you can go here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=600063332#!/album.php?aid=236606&id=600063332

If you would like to know more about Sinethema or be a supporter of their work you can go to: www.sinethemba-cob.co.za/

Cape Town Journal 2010 - Wednesday, October 20

It was another unbelievable day here in Cape Town. Several great speakers including John Piper and Tim Keller were incredibly inspriational. But in my opinion the day - and probably the whole week - hit its highlight with the message delivered this morning by Libby Little, the widow of medical missionary Tom Little who was killed along with nine others in August in Afghanisan. I can't remember many times in my life when I sat through a message and found myself sobbing almost without control.

My article has been due for The Happenings - the monthly magazine of PazNaz - and so I wrote about her message for the new edition. I apologize to those who read The Happenings for putting the article here before it shows up there. But I thought some of my friends outside of PazNaz would appreciate hearing about it. Here it is:

Grace Like Goat Cheese

 On August 5^th ten unarmed medical missionaries were shot to death by a group of unknown Taliban militants in a remote mountain region of Afghanistan. The victims has just enjoyed a picnic lunch, and were returning to Kabul after a difficult trip that included days of hiking over a 3,500 meter mountain pass into isolated villages in the Nuristan province. The killers spared the life of the group’s Afghan driver after he begged for his life. Among the victims were six Americans, one German, one British citizen, and two Afghans. There were three women who were killed, including Dr. Karen Woo, who was due to be married before the end of the month. One of the American victims was a twenty-four year old medical student who was exploring God’s call upon his life to be a medical missionary.

The leader of the team was Dr. Tom Little, an eye doctor from New York who along with his wife Libby and their three daughters, had spent three decades working among the neediest people in Afghanistan. Tom had made hundreds of medical trips within the country and five trips to this particular region over the years and always did so with permission of the local leaders. He usually traveled with his wife Libby, whose life was most likely spared because she stayed home to be with their daughter for the birth of their first grandchild.

Despite the danger and despite many close calls over the years, Dr. Little continued to tell people that he felt “compelled by God” to minister to the forgotten people in the mountains of Afghanistan. He travelled with International Assistance Mission which has been at work in Afghanistan since 1966.

I had the privilege of hearing Libby Little address the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town and tell the story of her life in mission with Tom. A few days after the authorities discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of the missionary workers the FBI came to the Little’s home and gave to Libby the notebook and journal Tom carried with him on his trips. The journal described the difficulty of the hike in the villages over the mountains in freezing rain. In one village Tom described the hundreds of rotten teeth that the team had to pull. In one village a teenager was dying painfully from tetanus. In another village all there was to eat was dry bread and goat cheese.

One member of the team developed horrific blisters on their feet because of the intense climbing. As one native Afghan worked on the missionary’s bleeding feet he kept saying over and over again, “How beautiful are the feet. How beautiful are the feet…”

On the last Sabbath day before the team was killed, Dr. Little led the team in worship. Libby found the notes from his sermon stained with blood and covered with sand wedged within his journal. The three texts for his message were from Paul:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2)

For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other the fragrance of life. (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)

At the end of his notes he had written three words: Nuristan goat cheese. Libby said she knew what that meant. The goat cheese from Nuristan is some of the worst smelling cheese in the world. And when a Westerner first encounters it they are usually repulsed. But, she said, once you start to eat it, its saltiness and flavor become an acquired taste – and a taste that you even begin to crave.  She knew that to close his devotional to the team that her husband had to have described the work they were doing as Nuristan goat cheese. When God sends his people to challenging places the grace of God is a hard thing for people to accept. But when God’s people keep going back again and again the grace of God not only becomes an acquired taste but the heart craving of the people.

Incredibly neither Libby, her children, nor the International Assistance Mission are giving up on the people of Afghanistan.  There is more Nuristan goat cheese to share.

Because of deadlines for publication I am writing this article while still in South Africa. By the time you read it, by God’s grace, I will be home. This global conference is only half-way over, but already one of the things I am taking away from the trip is the way in the West most Christians have traded mission for safety. Not only do we forget how challenging it is to be a Christian in many parts of the world, and thus we take our freedoms for granted, but more importantly we forget that first and foremost the gospel is trying to teach us how to die well for the sake of the kingdom. In America, where we regularly spend twice as much on military defense as we do on education, we have turned safety into a god of sorts. No wonder it is so difficult for us to hear the Lord invite us to “take up our cross” and follow him.

The speaker who followed Libby Little (whose name I cannot give because of the danger inherent where he works) said two profound things. First, “There are no countries closed to the gospel. There are only places believers are unwilling to do whatever it takes, even to the point of death, to witness to the truth of Christ.” And, “In the end, we do not have lives worth preserving, but we have a gospel worth proclaiming.”

May Christ once again teach his people to say with the apostle Paul, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

Cape Town 2010 Journal - Tuesday, October 19

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in flesh the dividing wall of hostility... Ephesians 2:14

The morning Bible study started today with Ephesians chapter two where Paul declares repeatedly that Christ is our peace and has, in his death and resurrection, formed a new humanity in which the previous dividing walls have been removed. What I took away from today is the great challenge for Christians around the world to embody the peace of Christ in our lives.

The focus of the morning session was on works of peacemaking and reconciliation in Africa and the focus of the evening session was on Christian attempts at making peace in the Middle East. There were also sessions dealing with the major problems of AIDS/HIV and human trafficking.

My favorite speaker of the day was Antoine Rutayisire, the Dean of the Anglican Cathedral of Kigali. He has been an important leader in the rebuilding of Rwanda. He emphasized the reality that as the center of Christian growth has moved to the South and to the East that the great challenge for those proclaiming the gospel is that these nations are frequently the nations that have been most recently broken by war, strife, poverty, and histories of bondage.

 Rwanda for decades was held up as a model for how a nation could be Christianized with 90 percent of the population confessing to be Christian. But in 1994, in this "Christian nation" there was a genocide that killed a million people in 100 days.

Dr. Rutayisire articulated several problems that he believes caused the horrific genocides despite the fact that so many claimed to be Christian. For one, those who brought the gospel to Rwanda invited people to go to heaven but they did not challenge their allegiances. In the words of one Rwandan, "We were one inch deep Christian, but still one foot deep Hutu or Tutsi." Adding to the problem was the fact that the missionaries in Rwanda were deeply divided against one another. Rather than bringing peace they increased division by adding new labels such as Catholic, Protestant, Charismatic, etc. to the already present cultural and historical divisions.

 But he shared that what the Church is now learning in Rwanda is that it is the nature of sin to divide people from God and from one another. They are learning that Jesus is both the sin bearer and the pain bearer; meaning that Christ died to forgive the abuser but he also suffered in identification with the victims. In his death he thus brings peace between the two. Therefore, Dr. R. shared that there is a new perspective on mission in Rwanda. The call to follow Christ is an invitation to take on a new identity that supersedes all other identities and teaches us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

A rather humbling moment for me came around the discussion table. We were asked to share in our small group how God is helping us as Christian leaders to break down the dividing walls between people where we are. Tahmina shared about her work with the Dalit caste (the lowest of the castes in India). It was stated today that there are more slaves in the world right now than at any single time in history and the largest number of those slaves are Dalits from India. Tahmina is helping Dalits find Christ, become educated, and receive justice. But she shared how difficult it is to reconcile people who have been abused, whose family members have been sold into sex trafficking, who have been beaten and had family killed with those that have looked have not only been the oppressors, but who have looked down upon them as untouchables.

Richard is a Church leader in Nigeria who shared amazing stories of working to reconcile people groups who share similar histories of violence and bloodshed with the Rwandans.

Hong Sung is working in Malaysia to help Muslim converts to Christianity find reconciliation and peace with families and communities that more often than not disown them (or sometimes try to kill them).

These huge stories continued around the table like that and the challenges were overwhelming. I stayed silent intentionally, but eventually I was the only one left who had not shared so they asked me, "Scott, what kind of reconciliation are you working for with God's help in California?"

I said, "Well, we have many ways we are finding opportunities for reconciliation. There are certainly racial, cultural, and economic divisions where I live that God is helping us try and address. And there are many ways God is helping us to at least reach over those walls." I was too embarrassed to say that most of the time I'm trying to reconcile people who prefer different styles of worship with one another and lately I've been spending a ton of time trying to bring together emergents and anti-emergents. I was sure they would have just stared at me in silent pity.

I couldn't help but be humbled by the challenges that our brothers and sisters in Christ are facing around the world and to stop and pray that God has mercy on those of us who have so few real walls that we use the gifts of freedom and prosperity that have been given us to build unnecessary ones. Lord, have mercy.

Cape Town 2010 Journal - Monday, October 18

This was the first full day of the conference. And it was a very FULL day. I think I was in a session of some kind for 10 solid hours today and each session was unique and valuable in its own way.

There were three highlights for me today:

The first was the morning Bible study. The delegation is divided into small table groups. Each morning the delegation is studying the book of Ephesians together. Today we read chapter one and then studied it inductively together. My table group includes leaders from Australia, India, Malaysia, Lebanon, Nigeria, and one other American. The discussion was fascinating because we each heard the Word from within our various contexts. I really look forward to the rest of our small group sessions together.

Secondly, the morning plenary session was on the nature of Truth in a pluralistic setting. There were several very strong speakers - including Os Guinness - but for me the highlight of the session was the message given by Michael Herbst who is the Chaplain of the University of Greifswald in Germany. Like all of the session speakers, Dr. Herbst emphasized the need to hold to absolute truth because if the truth of Christ is only personal then it is ultimately not even true for the individual. (Anything that is true for me but not necessarily true for you, isn't true. If it is true, it is true for everyone). However, in a beautiful way Dr. Herbst emphasized that the truth of Christ is always incarnate, embodied truth and not just a set of compelling, logical propositions. Propositions come, but they flow out of an encounter with the Truth embodied in Jesus. Herbst emphasized that if we follow the command of Jesus to love our neighbor, we cannot stay silent about truth, but at the same time we cannot manipulate or coerce our neighbor either. The Truth of Christ is always "truth from below."

He concluded with a beautiful story of three students living intentionally and missionally in a dreary Communist-era apartment complex in highly secular East Germany where the truth and knowledge of Christian faith is almost entirely lost. He argued, rightly, that the life of witness to truth in a post-Christian context is slow and unspectacular, but it is also patient, loving, and profound in its beauty and faithfulness.

The final highlight of this first full day for me was in the evening plenary session where the focus was on what God is doing in Asia and on then persistent suffering of many around the world for the sake of the gospel.

It is obvious to everyone here that there is a great deal of disappointment that the Chinese delegation was not allowed to come. Their presence was to be a major celebration of this congress, but at the last minute the Chinese government would not give them the permission to travel. In fact, although this is not confirmed, there is a good deal of talk around the conference that some of the delegates from the unregistered church in China have been arrested and detained because of this process. Apparently a press release was put out today from the Lausanne leaders regarding the situation in China in an attempt to make peace with the Chinese government and to put pressure on them to deal graciously with the delegation that was supposed to have come. The entire delegation here in South Africa stood behind their chairs and prayed with their hands out pointing toward the chairs so that those who might be able to watch from China would know that there is still room at the table for them and that their absence is a point of deep grief for the conference and the silence of their voices is obvious to all.

But by far the most emotional moment of the conference thus far was when a young North Korean girl shared the story of the death of her mother and the likely death of her father. Her father was taken away by the North Korean government years ago for preaching the gospel and he has not been seen or heard from since. The daughter believes that he was assassinated and his body buried somewhere, but the family was given no information. She was adopted by a Chinese pastor and now she is a believer and has resumed the work of her father to try and bring the gospel to her people in North Korea. Her speech to the delegation was powerful and emotional. The entire room wept and applauded until she was brought back out onto the platform.

Tonight was an important reminder of the continuing cost of discipleship for many around the world. But also of God's redemptive faithfulness to those who suffer.

Cape Town 2010 Journal - Sunday, October 17

It has already been an amazing experience to be here in Cape Town for the Third Lausanne Conference on Global Evangelism. The conference is made up of evangelical global leaders from around the world. It has been written and said several times already that this is the most diverse and globally representative meeting of Christian leaders in the 2000 year history of Christianity. The make up of the participants is roughly 1200 leaders of various para-church and mission ministries, 1200 Christian scholars, 1200 pastors and denominational leaders, and 600 lay leaders from business, government, education, medicine, and media.

I arrived safely and tired on Saturday at 2:30pm and had to be at my first meeting at 4:30. One of the groups that I am a part of this week is the "Government, Business, and Academia Global Think Tank" which is a group that has been largely coordinated by leaders at APU. On Saturday evening the "think tank" was hosted for dinner at an amazing South African estate on a small lake with a view of Table Rock Mountain. It could not have been a more picturesque setting.

The theme for the first conversation of the think tank was the rising challenge of secularism and the new atheism represented by popular voices such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. The presenter was Stefan Gustavsson who is the director of the Credo Institute and the General Secretary of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance.

The meetings are obviously interesting, but for me the highlight is the significance of nearly every person you meet. Certainly the answers to the question "Where are you from?" are fascinating. But the answers to the question "And what do you do?" are even more amazing and humbling. Here are some examples of the work being done by just the people I met on the bus and at dinner the first night: a Norwegian who links multiple banks and corporations together to form industries and micro financing opportunities in developing nations; a key leader in Middle East missions, the president of Navigators, the secretary of education for South Africa, a Christian leader in the film industry, etc., etc. It is just a blessing to be with creative, committed people who are doing kingdom work around the globe.

Amazingly, one person I ran into on the bus is a woman named Jennifer that graduated the year after me at NNU and who went on from there to be a missionary in Greece but is now living in Europe and is an important leader among evangelicals who are working against human trafficking.

This morning (Sunday) John Reynolds and Dave Bixby from APU took me to church with them. John grew up in South Africa and took us to the Gleemoor Baptist Church for worship. Gleemoor is a small Baptist church in a poor neighborhood in what at one time was a "coloured only" district. The service was beautiful and embodied what can be great about small churches. We had to fill out visitor cards because the pastor took time to introduce all of the guests during the service. There were three other visiting Lausanne participants there: a woman from Slovakia and two men from Ethiopia. He asked each group to bring greetings to the congregation. The pastor gave a bouquet of roses to one of the "sister saints" of the church on her 70th birthday. During the prayer time he not only mentioned the sick but he gave updates on praises and issues going on in many of the extended families represented within the congregation.

The sermon was in three sections over the command to "sing to the Lord a new song" from Psalm 96. It was in three parts because when you are commanded to sing, the response ought to include singing. And so we sang together A LOT. There were probably about 125 people in the service but there was something so wonderful about worshiping in that kind of church. The pews, floors, and walls were all made of hardwood and so the sounds of voices echoed off every service. People sang in full voice and the sound was so big that it inspired everyone to sing even more loudly because there was absolutely no fear of sticking out.

But more than the volume, there is something profound when people like those who were there this morning sing praises in a setting of poverty and struggle set within a history of oppression and division. The gospel comes to life in profound ways in a post-apartheid neighborhood working to be redeemed from decades of oppression, fear, and brokenness. And it was a privilege to be caught up in God's redemption of Gleewood and welcomed by the people as a brother in Christ for a morning.

After church John drove us by the beaches and down toward the tip of South Africa. It is spectacularly beautiful. Although I thought it was funny that most of the conversation revolved around the high number of sharks present in the water.

The "think tank" had another meeting over lunch. This time the topic was around evangelical responses to emerging technologies around the world. The basic point of the conversation was about the need for evangelical scholars to do more (and better) work in the areas of technological, biological, and digital ethics. The presenter was largely correct that evangelicals have tended to overlook the need for rich Christian ethical dialogue in these areas.

The highlight of the day was obviously the opening ceremony this evening. It is amazing to worship with 5000 or so other committed Christians. The worship was led tonight by an orchestra, an African choir, African drummers, and many different African dancers. There is just something about singing Crown Him with Many Crowns in that kind of setting that makes it impossible not to be thoroughly blessed.

Interestingly, a big portion of the service was devoted to a very well done film feature that described in quite a bit of detail the entire missional history of the Christian faith showing how the center of Christian influence has shifted several times throughout history. The film started with Pentecost and went all the way to the historic ecumenical mission conference in Edinburgh exactly a century ago in 1910. When the film was over there were several stories of saints from the last century from various nations around the world who opened areas to the gospel told through drama. The focus of the film and the sketches was on how in the last century the shift of influence in Christianity has gone from the North and the West to the South and the East.

The director of the event - Doug Birdsall - closed with a charge that this week be blessed by God and that it become a catalyst to continue "to take the whole gospel to the whole world." One of the goals he stated is that by the next Lausanne Conference (which is not scheduled) that there would be no unreached people groups or nations left on earth and that there would be no known language into which the Bible had not been translated.

It should be a great week. But its off to a very exciting start.

Heading to Cape Town

I leave in a couple of days for the Third Lausanne Conference on Global Evangelism in Cape Town, South Africa. 4000+ Christian leaders from around the world will be gathering and meeting from the 17th through the 24th of October to talk, pray, and strategize together about the future of evangelism around the world.

Billy Graham called together the first conference of this kind in 1967 in Lausanne, Switzerland and this is the third of its kind. It is a very distinct privilege to get invited to attend this historic confernce and I am really looking forward to it. Pray for safe travels and for God's blessing upon the gatherings. I will hopefully be blogging each day about the experience, so I will update you soon.

Below is the video telling about the conference.