South Africa (MNN) — With Lausanne over, mission leaders are thinking about what they're going to do with what they've learned.
Richard Coleman with
The Mission Society says the church in the West has lost sight of suffering. "There has been a desensitization to suffering because everything about church is comfortable. We drink coffee in the sanctuary. We wear jeans and flip flops in church. And everything has become so casual that you forget that there are brothers and sisters who are beaten for their faith."
Coleman says our faith isn't something that should be comfortable. He says Lausanne has given him a new "passion for the lost and a passion for the body of Christ around the world."
Nancy Sturrock with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) says for her, Lausanne was a time of celebrating what God has done in Nepal, a country in which she served. "60 years ago there was not a single Nepali Christian. And now, today they have a delegation of 31 Nepali brothers and sisters at an international congress like this. It's just an incredible sign of what God is doing in the world."
Sturrock says TEAM's goal is to reach the unreached. She says, "We're wanting to connect, especially with organizations from Asia, Africa or Latin America that are wanting to send people from their churches that we can team up with and reach the people who have not yet heard."
According to President of Russian Ministries Sergey Rakhuba, this Lausanne was different for him than the last congress. "I didn't have a chance to go. At that time I lived still in the Soviet Union, and it was right on the brink of the Soviet Union collapse."
Rakhuba says much of Lausanne focused on the unreached in countries in Asia, especially the Muslim world. He says we can't forget about the so-called "reached" nations, like Russia. He says Russia still has challenges. He says it has "120 different ethnic groups. And Russia still has power to dominate in that part of the world. So Russia without Christ is dangerous."
Rakhuba says the future of Russia is in the hands of the Next Generation — a generation they're training to reach the lost with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Time will tell what kind of impact Cape Town 2010 had on God's Kingdom. Pray that from these 4,000 leaders, millions of lives will be touched with the Gospel.
