An international congress taking place in Cape Town South Africa this week is expected to to chart the course for the global evangelical church for years, even decades to come. It’s called the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization.
Among the 4,000 invited participants are a number of Madison residents, most of them associated with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. That includes InterVarsity president Alec Hill; Lisa Espinelli Chin, director of InterVarsity’s International Student Ministry; and Helyn Luisi-Mills, director of InterVarsity’s Global Projects Ministry.
InterVarsity-connected Christian leaders have been a part of all three Lausanne conferences, going back to the original 1974 conference in Switzerland when Paul Little served as program director. Paul Little was director of evangelism for InterVarsity and wrote How to Give Away Your Faith. More on InterVarsity’s Lausanne connections are posted at InterVarsity’s website.
The Lausanne/Cape Town website has a great deal of information about the gathering. It states that 197 countries are represented and that the delegates prayed the Lords Prayer in unison in 200 languages. Here’s a further report from the Christian Post.
News reports on NPR and other media have covered the efforts by the Chinese government to block the participation of several hundred Chinese delegates.
Since the first Lausanne Congress in Switzerland in 1974 and the second one in Manila in 1989 the internet has brought about huge changes in the communications world. Christians everywhere, and anyone else who is interested, now have the capability to follow developments at this conference much more closely through information provided by the congress itself, through the news media covering the congress, and through congress participants who are posting information on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
The Congress lasts through October 25, 2010.
Wrap-up report from the Christian Post