Lausanne Congress

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa starts next week.
There'll be 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.

The Lausanne Movement 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

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. As well as the above, 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.

Thanks to the Out of Ur site for this summary.

Obstacles/Movements/Internet

One last item from the series of 18 obstacles by Mark Driscoll, in his address to Sydney Anglicans. The obstacles are listed here. While I'm not sure that the generalised statement below is entirely true, it has a point. And what is vital for modern ministers/pastors/leaders to grasp is what Driscoll says about the Internet. If ten million people download Driscoll's sermons in a year, how many might be downloading your sermons - do you know? Are they available for download? Do you advertise the fact?

Often new movements come into existence when there's new technology. For example, the Protestant Reformation happened at the time of the printing press, Billy Graham used the advances in amplification and radio at the time he was preaching. Today, we have the internet. Old systems were based on control, but today, there is no control. "You can sit on your Macbook and even if no leader approves of it, you could communicate to the world. That changes everything." People spend more time looking at a screen than a human being. Mark Driscoll's sermons are downloaded more than 10 million times each year. "That's crazy - we could never have a meeting with 10 million people, we'd call it a country."

Leading with a Limp

One of the books that Steve Graham focused on in his talks to the South Island Pastors' Conference was Dan Allender's book, Leading with a Limp, which came out in 2006. The book looks at the fact that many leaders have suffered, or need to suffer, brokenness, before they can lead others: 'we achieve leadership by falling off our throne.'
The book deals with five areas: crisis, complexity, betrayal, loneliness and weariness. All of which should sound familiar to most leaders!
The issue is how we deal with these areas, whether with a typically ineffective response or by finding options to bring about an effective solution. In each case Allender shows that a leader can either fall into an ineffective area, or tip over into one that leads to a positive outcome. For example, with the area of crisis, the leader can either drop into cowardice, or into courage. With the latter he can then move on into confidence in God that whatever he or she is doing it no longer needs to impress others.
That last paragraph doesn't by any means do justice to the way Allender treats the topic (or the way Steve re-presented it), but it may just give you a taster.
Here are some comments about the book:
“There are good books on leadership, but this one is profound. It is better than a ‘how to do it’ book; this is a ‘how to be it’ book for leaders. Dan Allender offers serious wisdom rather than simple platitudes.”
–Mark Sanborn
“After reading this book, the first two words out of my mouth were ‘At last!’ Amid a deluge of spiritual gifts inventories, at last there is someone who understands how God’s strength is made perfect in our imperfections. At last someone has brought spiritual strengths and spiritual weaknesses into conversation. For Dan Allender, the limp is a limpid way of walking that leads into the very presence of God.”
–Leonard Sweet
“Leading with a Limp is not your basic, cafeteria-brand manual on how to ‘do’ leadership. It is a call to openly face your shortcomings as a leader. Dan Allender reminds us that our greatest asset as leaders is not our competence but the courage to name and deal with our frailties and imperfections.”
–Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr

Steve Graham at Mosgiel

The South Island Pastors' Conference took place last week in Mosgiel, at the East Taieri Presbyterian Church. The main speaker was Steve Graham, the Dean of the Bible College in Christchurch.
I'll be mentioning other books and articles Steve spoke about, but let's start with one that's available on the Net. It's called Teaching a Calvinist to Dance. A couple of quotes:
It can be a little intimidating in a Reformed context to admit that one is Pentecostal. It's a bit like being at the ballet and letting it slip that you're partial to NASCAR and country music. Both claims tend to clear a room. And yet I happily define myself as a Reformed charismatic, a Pentecostal Calvinist.
I started a master's degree in philosophical theology at the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate school in the Dutch Reformed tradition at the University of Toronto. So my week looked a bit odd: Monday to Friday I was immersed in the intellectual resources of the Reformed tradition, diving into the works of Calvin, Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd.

Steve talked about brokenness in leadership too, but perhaps more of his focus was on the need for Presbyterians to work more in the middle area of the supernatural-this-worldly, in other words, not being content to live just in the natural, with the supernatural as something for the future next world, but to live with a sense of the supernatural in our everyday lives. (This is sometimes called the Flaw of the Excluded Middle.)

We'll look at these other areas further in other posts.