L4 Reflections
While attending L4 I was carefully listening and praying for various organizations I am connected to and hoping to bring back fresh insights to apply to our church and ministry. Here are ten personal takeaways that feel the most relevant.
1. Femi Adeleye of Ghana gave a talk where he stated that “four things are necessary for the spread of the Gospel today: conviction (believe that Jesus is the answer), flexibility (understand the world changes quickly, we can’t get too comfortable and must be ready to adapt), obedience (the early disciples crossed oceans, learned language, were willing to die), and dependence (prayer, expecting miracles, humility, repentance where needed).
Our job is to cultivate these things in ourselves and each other. Most barriers to the Gospel are internal. We care too much what people think about us or are hamstrung by unbiblical cultural views (i.e. fatalism or pessimism in Europe, radical individualism in America). The last word of the book of acts is “unhindered.” Let’s admit we have a lot less control than we think, take risks, share our faith, love with abandon, and trust God to do all the things that we cannot.
2. Anne Emile Zaki, a theologian from Egypt, taught from Acts15 on how the early church dealt with controversy and important disputes in its own midst. She pointed out that is a need to draw lines where God draws them, but not where He has not. We can’t afford to personally squabble or fight over things that don’t matter. Weakness in a group comes from not from weak members, but strength operating in isolation or in opposition to other members. The goal we should strive for is strength submitted to one another in unity. This unity comes from listening to Jesus together. She shared a compelling example from the film “The Boys in the Boat” which depicts a rowing team functioning far below it’s potential. They only get set right once the team gets a new coxswain, who sits at the back and steers, sees where they are going, sets the pace, and synchronizes their efforts to his voice. That is how we should be with Jesus, and it only happens if we keep our eyes on Him.
3. Australian pastor Dale Stevenson pointed out Acts 4:13 reads “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” The word for “ordinary men” is “idiotes” in Greek – literally where we get our word “idiots.” It’s apparently a pretty low bar to be used powerfully by God. The important thing wasn’t their background or formal training, it’s that they “had been with Jesus.” Many of us are newer in our faith or to being followers of Jesus – but if we take the example of the Apostles seriously, that shouldn’t matter much or hold us back.
4. Patrick Fung is from Singapore and leads the historic mission agency known as OMF. He gave my favorite talk of the entire congress. His subject was persecution and the early church. His main point is that Christianity spread through the roman empire mostly through the agency of unnamed believers. They were probably trades-people, businesspeople, soldiers, and refugees (not full time professional Christian workers), and they shared the Gospel as they went. They weren’t concerned with their own fame or success. They were willing to be forgotten so that Christ would be remembered. He pointed out that this is a consistent principle for how God works throughout history. Spiritual breakthroughs usually happen at the fringes and in unexpected places through unexpected people. I’ve seen this to be true over the years. The way forward rarely is the one I planned for or imagined. It all just points to the power of the Holy Spirit. He also pointed out that persecution has never killed the church, but compromise on the truth will. As an example, there were over 100 delegates from China at L4, while almost none from certain European countries where Christianity was once prevalent.
5. Two Iranian church leaders spoke about their experience being imprisoned but seeing God use it to further the Gospel. The man went to the third Lausanne congress and returned only to be thrown in jail and separated from his family for five years. The woman was also thrown in jail and put in solitary confinement. Both were released and threatened but continued to share Christ and plant churches all the same. At one point she was travelling weekly six hours each way to teach the Bible in a distant city. They pointed out that at the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979 there were reported to only be 500 Muslim background believers in the whole of Iran, now they get regular reports of as many as 3000 turning to Jesus in a day.
What really struck me about these Iranian leaders was their cogency, confidence, joy, and peace. I would expect people who have been so mistreated and abused to be much more damaged and fragile. But the opposite appears to be true. Overall, it’s a study in spiritual resilience and fruit. It’s easy to backdown when things get hard, or despair when an initiative doesn’t go the way we planned. We can lose days, weeks, even years to self-pity. But if we cast our cares on Him, instead of being shaken, we grow and end up fortified (2 Corinthians 4:7-18).
6. American pastor Phil Ryken shared this great Martin Luther quote: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.” His point was we should put more stock in teaching the Bible to people, than all our other strategies or personal gifts.
He also shared this often looked over passage from Acts 28:3-5
“Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, the goddess Justice has not allowed him to live.” But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects.”
This episode provides a compelling example of servant leadership. They had just been shipwrecked, and Paul took it upon himself to build a fire for everyone else so they could be warm and eat. He was an older man, an intellectual, and a seasoned leader – but it wasn’t beneath him to do menial labor to help people he barely knew, and some of whom were even his captors. While serving this way he got hurt (bitten), but God ultimately protected him. We should all aspire to serve like this, and really in any way that is required of us, unconcerned with recognition or status, and trust God to protect us from the pain that sometimes come with living this way (being misunderstood, loss of time, money, energy, etc). If you read on you will see that the islanders were profoundly affected by what they saw and end up turning to God as a result.
7. A Ukrainian pastor spoke about how they are coping with the war, and how because of the war many people are willing to talk about God who before were closed off. Another Ukrainian I met runs a seminary for training pastors to replace those who have so far been killed. Their building has been destroyed twice now by Russian shelling and they are asking for prayer and protection for their students. As you read this, please take a moment to pray for the people of Ukraine, and also this specific ministry.
8. Dr. Ronaldo Lidorio is an influential figure in the Brazilian mission movement. He and his family were missionaries in Ghana for nine years and now serve a remote Amazonian tribe. His talk was extremely motivating. He made a few key points that stick out. First, he urged churches not to send those to go far away who have not already been a blessing nearby. Put another way, if churches send out people to start new churches or be missionaries, the church should send their best proven leaders and servants. Second, where most see barriers, we should see opportunities. The ultimate example of this is Paul who was undeterred by being imprisoned or limited in other ways. He just assumed God had a plan to use his circumstances. Of course, the rest is history: the Gospel spread into Europe through Roman soldiers that Paul led to Christ while he was imprisoned, and he wrote several New Testament letters during that time as well. Will we see so called barriers in our lives and ministry the same way? Third, he suggested that Christians tend to subtly value their own reputations and those of their churches and organizations too much. We carry the banner of this organization or that church, and slowly become infatuated with our own stories and experiences. We need to lay down all other banners, and only carry the banner of Christ.
Reflecting on this last point, I am excited about my own church community and think God is doing great things. But our particular church isn’t really the point, is it? It’s about God and His love for people. That’s what we should be talking most about.
9. Rick Warren (author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life”) spoke briefly on what he sees as being imperative for the western church in particular at this juncture in history. He outlined ten “WE MUSTS”, 1. Pray for God’s power (Acts 1:14, 2:42, 1:8), 2. Translate God’s Word for everyone (2:4-5), 3. Appreciate our diversity (2:11), 4. Train every believer to preach the good news (2:17-18), 5. Apply God’s Word to ourselves (2:42, 2:12, 2:37, John 13:17), 6. Model love to the world (2:42), 7. Meet in our homes (2:46), 8. Become joyful (2:26, 2:28, 2:46-47), 9. Share everything and work together (2:44), 10. Make financial sacrifices (2:45).
I found it particularly interesting that he called for meeting in houses, given that he’s one of the founders of the American mega-church model. I later learned his church Saddleback is exploring what it would look like to return to being a house church movement. This insight mirrored a conversation I had with a Canadian/Malaysian leader who told me he is actively urging his denomination to sell their buildings and start learning how to multiply house churches instead, both for the sake of reaching new generations who don’t want the prevailing model of church, but also to make church life more authentic, biblical, and sustainable.
10. My final insight is a general one drawn from the dozens of conversations I had throughout the week with people from so many different backgrounds. I sat daily with an Inuit woman from Greenland, a Nigerian/Swiss campus ministry leader, an American running an AI start-up, the Japanese head of a Cambodian mission team, and a Vietnamese woman running a digital outreach ministry. In my other work group, I coordinated daily with people from Finland, Nepal, Hong Kong, and the States. During the week I had other random encounters with Christian leaders from Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia, Moldova, and Kenya. Some of them led large churches, others house or micro churches like us. Some were men, some were women. Some were workplace Christians, running businesses but aiming to leverage their influence for Christ, others were pastors, non-profit staff, or parachurch leaders. But in all cases, it was a privilege to converse and pray with so many folks who had these most important things in common: a deep relationship with God, love for the world, and a willingness to work to make a difference.
It reminds me of this passage in Revelation that gives us an idea of what heaven will be like.
(Revelation 7:9-10) “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
At Lausanne I got a foretaste of this future reality. I hope it can be encouraging to all of you to know that while we aren’t there yet, we are on our way.
