L4: Day 3 Tuesday

Today is the 50^th birthday of Lausanne(!!!), and the theme for today is “Missional Community.” This morning’s exposition was done by Anne Zaki (a colleague at The Evangelical Seminary of Cairo) who skillfully unpacked a ton of profound insights from Acts 15. A Pakistani woman remarked to me how pleasantly shocked she was to see so many women of color on stage – and preaching at that!

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Yesterday was a very difficult day in Lebanon. Many Lebanese colleagues are here and understandably distracted, as am I.

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From the stage, I do hear the word “revival” a lot in the presentations. By contrast, one highlight for me was Dale Stephenson, a pastor in Australia, gave a simple explanation of DMM without saying DMM: disciple people to faith, look for a person of peace, and discovery bible studies. He hit many of the main points in an engaging way. The fact that he related it to his post-Christian Australian context was perhaps more appropriate for this audience. Yet we do see revivals and awakenings sometimes in the world. Upon reflection, perhaps revivalism is part of the legacy of Billy Graham who was a cofounder of Lausanne. But I am reasonably obsessed about movements.

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I attended a workshop done by Rick Warren entitled, “How to Finish the Task.” He began his talk by claiming that he has never had a scandal and also that Saddleback is the most successful missionary sending church in history. He also said his mentor was Billy Graham. Honestly, Rick gave around 4 sermons in one talk.

Rick wants people to go to places that have no believer, no Bible, and no Body of Christ. (Rick is the king of catchy epithets.) From what I gather, Rick claims if we collaborate and re-evangelize all the nominal Christians in the world, then we can reach the rest of the world if they, in turn, make disciples: the southern hemisphere must re-evangelize the northern hemisphere. (Yes I sensed the disconnect too. Maybe this is what you get when you combine sermons?)

Some quotes from Rick though which I thought were interesting:

The business of Christianity is moving people from “come and see” to “come and die.”

Rabbits don’t have menstrual cycles, they can get pregnant 5 seconds after giving birth. This is the house church. If we are going to finish the Great Commission, we need 10s of millions of rabbit churches. We only need megachurches in megacities.

The moment we start building church buildings, the growth of the church will decline.

The church at its birth is the church at its best. You don’t need a new model; you need the first model.

What God did in the first century, we want him to do it in the 21st century.

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The interest group I attended yesterday was “Church Planting.” They are promoting Saturation Church Planting as a goal (churches everywhere), not a methodology. You can read more about the CP issue network here.

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The “Gap” I attended was Islam. At my table was Keith Swartley, David Garrison, Joshua Lingel, and a couple MBBs. A great question for missiological imagination we discussed:

For significant progress towards fulfilling the Great Commission among Muslims, what needs to happen by 2050?

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Much focus on integrity, spirituality, proclamation evangelism, and reaching the unreached. Michael Oh again mentioned the legacy of Ralph Winter, but not Rene Padilla. I imagine the integral mission crowd is feeling a bit marginalized (I heard a group here wrote a strong negative response to the Seoul Statement). Although I personally have been mostly satisfied with the overall balance. I am trying to learn, listen, and be humble.