Lausanne

Business as Mission and the Church – a Lausanne Report review

/ Phill

The Business as Mission (BAM) Think Tank of the Lausanne Committee just issued their latest report titled, “Business as Mission and the Church.” It is well worth a read.

Executive Summary

“We believe the local church can effectively disciple and equip their members to have a positive influence on the marketplace.

“The BAM and the Church Consultation Group focused on the role of business as mission in and through the local church. While the modern business as mission movement has been growing and expanding globally for several decades, much of this growth has been outside of local church contexts.

“Yet the BAM Manifesto, published twenty years ago, thoroughly grounded this movement in the Church when it ended with these recommendations:

We call upon the Church worldwide to identify, affirm, pray for, commission and release businesspeople and entrepreneurs to exercise their gifts and calling as businesspeople in the world—among all peoples and to the ends of the earth. We call upon businesspeople globally to receive this affirmation and to consider how their gifts and experience might be used to help meet the world’s most pressing spiritual and physical needs through Business as Mission.

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Has God stopped moving?

/ Steinar Opheim

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A 25-year anniversary coming up next month will either put God or the global church to shame.

Expectations where high as the 4.300 leaders at the Lausanne congress in Manila in 1989 were finalizing the Manila manifesto. For the first time the great challenge of the unreached people groups had been highlighted in front of leaders from the whole world-wide church. The participants from 173 nations were eager to take the Gospel further and make Jesus salvation known among the thousands of unreached people groups that were known. Leading voices believed that the job could be finished by the end of the millennium.

Now, 25 years later, the task of reaching the unreached in many ways looks just as unfinished as it did for the participants in Manila.

According to Joshua Project close to 7,000 of the world’s 16,600 people groups must still be labeled as unreached. The total number of people in these groups is close to three billion. More than 4,600 people groups are still below the radar of the worldwide church and no one is planning to reach them with the Gospel.

Shame

“We are deeply ashamed that nearly two millennia have passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, and still two-thirds of the world’s population have not yet acknowledged him,” confessed the participants at the Manila congress.

Who is to blame for the fact that next to nothing has changed in the quarter of a century that has passed by since then? Has God stopped being on the move or does he no longer have a desire to see all people saved? Or is it Jesus followers who have misunderstood the task their Lord gave them or maybe they are just unwilling to fulfill it.

In an article posted on Joshuaproject.net, Kent Parks in Act Beyond points out some reasons why the church has failed to fulfill the Great Commission. Lack of interest is one key factor.

– The emphasis on unreached people groups seems to have resulted in “boredom”among some church leaders – and they seem to want to find the next idea. One Asian mission leader shared that just about the time the Western Christians have succeeded in raising awareness for the unreached people groups s around the world, some seem to have developed “attention deficit disorder” and want to move on to something new, writes Parks.

Lack of friends

Joshua Project estimates that for every dollar of Christian resources less than one penny is directed at reaching unreached peoples. The American-based resource center also refers to a survey done a few years ago showing the likeliness of Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims being reached with the Gospel. According to the survey 86 out of 100 Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus worldwide do not know a single Christian.

John 1:14 states: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (The Message). If God is to continue to be on the move, Christ’s followers may need to be willing to move too.

The summer months often give time for reflection. Could you consider applying for a job, start a business or study in a place where you can reach one of the people groups that has yet to hear the Gospel?

Global network puts tentmaking high on its agenda

/ Steinar Opheim

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One of the world´s largest evangelical networks puts tentmaking in focus when it gathers 300 leaders for a worldwide consultation in India next week. One whole day of the four-day conference program will center on tentmaking and marketplace ministry.

“Tentmaking has not been given so much space since the Lausanne Conference in Manila in 1989,” rejoices Berit Helgoy Kloster. She is the senior associate for tentmaking in the worldwide Lausanne Movement that hosts the leadership consultation in India. For four decades she has worked to promote tentmaking both in her home nation, Norway, and through various international networks. Many times she has felt that she has been working against strong headwinds.  Now she senses that something new is happening.

Waking up

“The emphasis given to tentmaking and marketplace ministry at the conference in India shows that people are beginning to wake up and see the strategic importance of tentmakers in the worldwide mission force. Tentmakers can go everywhere, including to nations and places where traditional missionaries do not have access,” says Kloster to TMBrief.

The leaders attending next week’s conference in India will work on following up the Cape Town Commitment that was made by the Lausanne movement at a worldwide conference in South Africa in the fall of 2010. At that conference more than 4000 Christians from all over the world came together to form a document that could give direction to the global mission work. Tentmaking is mentioned in several paragraphs in the text. 

Focus on tentmaking

“Christians in many skills, trades, businesses and professions can often go to places where traditional church planters and evangelists may not. What these ‘tentmakers’ and business people do in the workplace must be valued as an aspect of the ministry of local churches,” states the Cape Town Commitment before it goes on to urge church and mission leaders to focus on tentmaking through the following paragraphs:

“We urge church leaders to understand the strategic impact of ministry in the workplace and to mobilize, equip and send out their church members as missionaries into the workplace, both in their own local communities and in countries that are closed to traditional forms of gospel witness. We urge mission leaders to integrate ‘tentmakers’ fully into the global missional strategy.”