Thoughts Along The Journey

Number❶ take-away: Preach, proclaim, and share the Gospel fearlessly. 

Number❷ take-away: Recognize that we are living in the 21^st century. 

Number❸ take-away: Live out our identity. 

Thinking further, my number❹ take-away would be: We cannot accomplish the task on our own.  Cape Town 2010 made me realize how “small” my world still is, and how great is our need for global church partnerships.  With the dramatic shift of the center of Christianity to the Global South, more than ever we must explore how to work together with other agencies and national churches/associations.

But even more so, when we are faced with the reality of the immense lostness of our world, we recognize how we need one another to fully participate in God’s great mission:

• 27 million slaves in the world today, with 10-15 million being children
• One half of the world population lives on less than $2 USD/day
• There are more than 18 million orphans
• 3.5 billion people are either Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists
• There are 640 Unreached People Groups that do not have any worker among them, nor any worker heading to share the message of Jesus Christ with them

I would encourage you to watch Patrick Fung’s presentation (OMF International Director) from the last day of the Lausanne Congress: http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/11415.  It is hard hitting, but it made me reflect on what I think about partnerships, and how to approach partnerships from a gospel heart.

If partnerships are bathed in trust, what is my (or our) current trust level with others?  And what small step to further build trust should I (we) take today?

Filed under: Cape Town 2010, Gospel, Partnership |