Lausanne 2010: Christian Discipleship and Mission in the Age of Globalisation

The Lausanne Conference on World Evangelisation begins in Cape Town next week, gathering 4,000 leaders from over 200 countries and LICC's Director Mark Greene will be attending on behalf of the organisation.  This promises to be an important moment and it has been interesting reading a number of the advance papers leading up to the event. 

Particularly stimulating from our point of view is the article by Os Guinness and David Wells, 'Global Gospel, Global Era: Christian Discipleship and Mission in the Age of Globalisation'. The article explores the challenges and opportunities for mission and discipleship in our globalised world and in a clear and succinct manner, outlining a range of cultural forces and challenges to mission in both the micro and macro spheres:

• The Political Temptation
• Plausibility Crisis
• The Downsides of the Age of Communication
• The Lethal Effect of Secularization
• The Midas Touch of Consumerism
• The Idol of Chronological Timeliness
• The Pressure of the Movement of Movements
• Creating and Contributing rather than Critiquing and Complaining

The article draws to its conclusion with the noteworthy comment (at least from Imagine's perspective) that: 

Evangelism in the global era appears easier, and in many ways it truly is, but discipleship is unquestionably harder, and so too is costly incarnational evangelism that is patterned on the life and death of Jesus rather than on the brilliance of modern insights and techniques.