The global mission event of the century is only a week away! Its the Third Lausanne World Congress on World Evangelization also known as Lausanne 3.
Its huge.
We're talking 5000 invited delegates from all over the world.
Its bigger than Lausanne 1 and even bigger than Lausanne 2.
Its bigger than Edinburgh 1910 and 2010
Its the most wired, webbed, blogged, twittered, streamed missions event EVER!
Its also more SOUTHERLY than any missions conference you have ever followed.
It happens in Cape Town, South Africa and it starts next week. Like Oct 16 - 25th
Overblown hype? A lot of South Africans seem to think so, to judge from the way most South African bloggers are ignoring it.
Andrew Jones, alias Tall Skinny Kiwi, is one of the gurus of the emerging church movement. you can engage with him on his blog, or at the Lausanne Conversation here.
2 comments:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the post! I am continually grateful for the exposure that you give to Lausanne on your blogs. Thank you.
The idea that Lausanne is not gaining much attention or favour among South African Christians is valid to a point.
I've thought about the reasons for this often. In part it is because we can only have 50 'chosen' participants - that is a tiny representation per nation who are at the congress! You may find that everywhere (except America) has a similar problem with getting ordinary Christians excited about something that is not easy to participate in.
Second, I have thought that we in South Africa do not have a traditionally large 'evangelical' Christian community. Rather, we have main line conservative and liberal Christians, a growing number of pentecostal and charismatic groupings, and of course a massive African Initiated Christian grouping.
I'm sure that there are many other reasons as well.
However, let me add to this that South Africa has more active participants in the official blogger network than any other country (except America). Among the official Lausanne Blogger Network participants from South Africa are many of the top 20 Christian (Religion) bloggers. They include:
Stephen Murray, Mark Penrith, Peter Houston, John van de Laar, and my blog. You have also done a sterling job to promote and highlight many of the issues of Lausanne directly and indirectly.
I have asked Stephen Murray to come to Lausanne as a 'social networking' and 'blogger' champion. We shall also have Andrew Jones (tallskinnykiwi) and Aaron Marshall (techsmo and churchsmo) on site.
It is my hope that we shall generate a great deal of content and participation during the congress, and continue the interest once the congress is done!
The simplest way to stay up to date is to either follow Lausanne on twitter @CapeTown2010 or join our Lausanne facbook page.
Finally, because each country was only able to have 50 delegates present we have set up 'global link' sites across the world. These sites are open for anyone to attend and the proceedings, presentations and discussions of the Cape Town congress will be beamed out via satellite.
Thanks for posting your thoughts and for the opportunity to post this response. I'll add it to my blog as well.
Rich blessing,
Dion
What's it actually about, Steve?
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