Thirty years ago, American evangelist Billy Graham opened the conference on evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland, welcoming thousands of Christian leaders from around the globe, summarising the aim of the conference as "We want to find out how we can cooperate to fulfil the Great Commission as quickly and thoroughly as possible." Fifteen years later, the "Lausanne Movement", founded in 1974, held its second conference, this time in Manila. Another 15 years later, from 30th September to 5th October 2004, over 1,500 people from 127 nations and with 58 languages met in Thailand. The subject of the meeting was addressing the missionary challenges facing Christianity today.
Sensitive Navigation The conference was organised by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation and the Great Commission Round Table, and summarised the results of a year-long discussion process in which 4,000 Christian leaders from all over the globe participated.
>>> The conference also identified a widespread lack of spiritual mentors. Current church leaders do not invest enough time mentoring the future leaders they should identify and train. <<<
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Here's more ringside info from the above conference:
I sat in on a synergy group meeting between three issue groups: IG:9 (Partnerships and Collaboration), IG:12 (Future Leadership), and IG:13 (Prayer in Evangelism). It was a fascinating experience as I watched representatives from each of the groups grapple with similar issues and recognize common areas of struggle. One example of a common roadblock is the lack of mentors in the church. As the Future Leadership group works to identify and train future leaders, they have found a wide gap between the current leadership of the church and their involvement as mentors in raising up the next generation of leadership. This same issue is true for the prayer and partnership groups. Both are areas where the church is falling short; consequently, there are not mentors to train the next generation how to pray in evangelism or how to really partner and collaborate across organizational and denominational lines.
The early church had no problems identiying its next generation of leaders - they were the younger ones who would soon become the older ones or ELDERS. They were the "bearded ones" which is another translation the same word.
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