Lausanne Younger Leaders Conference in Malaysia

The Lausanne Movement is currently hosting an international conference of younger leaders from 110 countries in order to advance the cause of global evangelization. This meeting started on 9/24 and will finish on 10/1.

Here is a snapshot from one day of the conference.

Personal devotions were followed by breakfast with a South African, American, New Zealander and an Australian. Afterwards, our small group (Australian, American, Tanzanian, Nigerian, German) met for the third time to share our "life lines" and reflect on God's calling on our lives. The executive director of CCC of Tanzania shared his story--one of early persecution, falling mute, attending an open air evangelistic event attended by 30,000 people, where healing was proclaimed and he was healed without touch. He returned home, put on a tape player, and sang to a large gathering, where people embraced Jesus as Lord. He later received the gift of healing and would walk into hospitals and heal children with burns, lame women, and people near death. This brother is incredibly humble, pursuing his entire country for the gospel and glory of Christ.

This meeting was followed by a workshop on "Building Teams," led by an OMF churchplanter and missions strategist, which proved very helpful for our preparation for churchplanting. After that, I had lunch with another international table and connected with a like-minded Presbyterian pastor, who has been influenced by Keller and is theologically oriented. After that, I went to a meeting to discuss the Lausanne III meeting in 2010, which will hopefully meet Beijing. It was very interesting. Some people want to re-write the Lausanne Covenant (probably not for the best reasons). Doug Birdsall handled the metting with grace and skill, holding the line on the historic 74 document as a basis for evangelical, theological and missiologial unity.

This was followed by a N. America meeting where we discussed what we wanted out of Lausanne and how we would evaluate our experience at Lausanne for success. I connected with more people and had the opportunity to give some input and debate some concepts.

After dinner, we worshipped from 110 tongues and prayed for all the nations for half an hour. This was motivated by a compelling missions presentation by Jason Mandryk, co-author of Operation World. God is at work. During this time God broke my heart not only for the nations, but also for America. So often, the U.S. is overlooked in these conferences. We might be evangelized but there are many that have not received Christ. In many respects, we are an undiscipled nation.

With you taking the whole gospel to the whole world...