L4: Day 4 Wednesday

Today’s theme is Persecution and Mission. Acts 8:1-4 & 11:19-26 was wonderfully expounded by Patrick Fung. Two key quotes:

• Here is a gospel movement by God’s people, the unknown, unnamed, uncelebrated, ordinary disciples of Christ.
• They lived to be forgotten so that Christ would be remembered.

Many stories this morning of persecution and suffering, from China, India, and Iran primarily. The talk from Iran was particularly engaging and edifying. Although I would nuance the missiology being presented, I appreciate that they are not romanticizing persecution.

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For me, there is not much new information so far. The overall theme of L4 is “collaboration.” In the CP interest group, the theme was “Collaborate to Saturate.” The Lausanne App, which we are all required to use, is being promoted often as a tool for collaboration.

I actually do much collaboration in my ministry, and Motus Dei met today actually where we discussed our upcoming MQ (Movemental Intelligence) Symposium in May 2025.

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I attended an excellent breakout group led well by Cory Hartman of New Generations on Disciple Making Movements. He tried out some unpublished thoughts that were not ready for “prime time.” Here is his definition of DMM:

A DMM is 1) a chain reaction, 2) of ordinary people, 3) multiplying disciples who obey, 4) through their natural social networks, 5) manifesting as generations of gatherings spawning gatherings (gatherings can be DBSs or churches), 6) that maintains its quality without depending on the ones who started it.

A DMM is more specific than a move of God, more specific than a gospel movement, and more specific than a people movement, and is a bit different than a church planting movement.

The meeting was well attended. I find it fascinating that so many people have no idea about movements today. And also that so many people here just continue to operate from within a Protestant micro-Christendom ecclesiology.

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So if you were waiting for some controversy of L4, here is perhaps the first one. At the beginning of the week, Ruth Padilla DeBorst gave a wonderful message on injustice. (Side note: prophets often pay a price for their words.) The point of contention was this statement from her talk:

what makes God’s people such are not superficial expressions of religious piety, ‘Christianese’ jargon, worship jingles, or colonialist theologies that justify and finance oppression under the guise of some dispensational eschatology.

Apparently, that was enough for some to protest to the conference organizers who then offered an apology:

As Congress Director, I would like to offer an apology for a presentation this week which singled out ‘dispensational eschatology’ in a critical tone, implying that it contributed to violence and injustice, and which failed to note that many theologies have been misused and misapplied as justifications for violence. That same presentation referred to the suffering of the Palestinian people, but did not express comparable empathy for the suffering of Israeli people, nor adequately express concern for many other peoples and nations of the world that are currently in the throes of violent conflict.

I have thoughts. The wording of the email apology was quite nuanced. Dispensationalists don't feel their theology is oppressive. Whether we agree or not is beside the point. Lausanne tries hard to be big tent Evangelicalism – not an easy task.

A second thought: is Zionist Dispensational theology inherently oppressive by nature to Palestinians? By way of analogy, is boxing a violent sport? I suppose it depends on your perspective. L4’s ‘apology’ can be seen as silencing Ruth’s prophetic voice. Many here do not feel that an apology was necessary nor consistent because other speakers who have also offered insight which others might find offensive. For example, no one is apologizing for throwing cessationism under the bus on Monday!

Ruth then penned an open letter to L4 (forwarded many times on WhatsApp) that I thought was an important response. The whole controversy has been covered already at the Christian Post where you can read the email from L4 and Ruth’s response in their entirety. (NB: I do not think The Christian Post is a professional or unbiased news source; I only share this link because they are the first to report on this, from what I can tell.)