Updates from Cape Town 2010

Don Sweeting the president of RTS/Orlando is posting daily reflections from the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization at his blog The Chief End of Man. He points out that Lausanne is the closest thing evangelicals have to a global church council and writes:

Why another large council? Councils arise out of new situations that the church finds itself in. It has always been that way. The early church councils arose because of some new challenge to the church—the rise of Arianism, or Pelagianism, or the Christianization of the Roman Empire.

Think of how the world has changed since the last Lausanne Congress in 1989. We have seen the collapse of communism, the unbottling and radicalizing of Islam, the wiring of the world through the internet, the acceleration of globalism and urbanization, the continued growth of mega cities, the shifting of the center of Christianity from the West to the South and the East. Each of these changes has brought new challenges to the church. A congress like this gives Christian leaders an opportunity to confess their faith (the uniqueness of Christ and the abiding importance of his cross and resurrection) in a new cultural situation.

The fact that a majority of the delegates to Lausanne III are from outside Europe and North America is dramatic confirmation of Jesus' words in Matthew 24:14!