TallSkinnyKiwi

Lausanne Day 3: Happenings

I got some sleep last night, turning in around 1am for an early night. I think a lot of people here look better and less tired but maybe thats just me.

Day 3 at Lausanne World Congress in Cape Town. The theme is World Faiths. We saw a video of an Indian believer explaining how 15 members of his family gave their lives over to Jesus when he explained that Jesus was his guru who had saved him from karma.

John Piper gave a message on Ephesians 3 to help us along with our morning's Bible study. I tried to upload the audio for you but the bandwidth here is woefully insufficient and I gave up so that I wouldnt find myself competing for the precious little bandwidth here with the Lausanne team who will post it when they can.

Libby Little told us the story of her husbands death in Agfhanistan in July this year. Tom Little was a medical worker bringing medical supplies and assistance when he and his team of voluteers were murdered. She received a standing ovation as she walked off, but I am not sure she saw it.

 

Lausanne Fringe Event: Tonight in Cape Town

UPDATE: Michael Frost will be joining us tonight along with some other friends. Hope you can come. Facebook event just made by someone here.

I was invited to speak to the youth in Cape Town.Thanks to John Hewitson for setting this up. Its a free event and a good opportunity for me to meet you young Capetonians in person, and those Cape Town bloggers who want to hook up, and for you all to meet some of my friends from the Lausanne World Congress.

"CHURCH AND MISSION FOR PEOPLE THAT DONT LIKE EITHER" a chat with Tallskinnykiwi and friends from Lausanne

Thursday 21st October 2010, 7:30pm, Christ Church, Summerley Road, Kenilworth.

Video at Lausanne Congress

People are asking me where to get video. There is plenty of high quality video but bandwidith has been a challenge here in Cape Town and we all hope the addition of an additional pipe today will ease the problems.

 

[UPDATE: getting better now. check out official site for videos here]

But in the meantime, check out some video taken by participants in the auditorium. Thanks to the Aussies for this video of the opening ceremony. You can find more here on their church site.

Keep checking the Lausanne Congress official video site and watch out for the movie of this good looking guy [me actually] talking about his hopes for Lausanne.

Another busy evening

Its busy here. And its really hard to sit down and blog anything because we are caught up in a whirlwind of discussions, meetings, drinks with friends and friends of friends, official meetings, "Oh you must meet this guy next to me" and "please tell me what you are doing in this country" and by the end of the night we are beyond tired. We are stupified. And then we get up early to start the next day.

Frinstance. Last night I was hanging out with Os Guinness [excuse the name drop] after our interview for Outreach Magazine and we were both immediately dragged to a large table of business people and Foundation leaders and mission leaders and young people and this young bald guy named Issac just bought pizza for our table and we ate it while he looked at our family travel blog on someone's ipad and I'm trying to get away to this book launch for Operation World because I said I would go and I figured since I helped write parts of the book I should be there and meanwhile Oz is ALSO supposed to be somewhere else at a gathering who knows where and more people are walking by and saying hello and Bob Beltz from Walden who is showing a preview of some Narnia movie is taking off, despite being the guy who dragged me over to this table in the first place and the guy next to me tells me that the bald dude who bought the pizza is the musician from The Fray and he will open for U2 next year and I am tempted to stay longer but I need to be at the OW launch and when I get there its 11pm and the room is empty so I go off to hang out with more friends and get to bed around 1:30am.

You get the picture. Its busy. But that's just another evening here at Cape Town.

47 On-Site Lausanne Bloggers

You want the skinny on which bloggers are with me at Lausanne World Congress here in Cape Town. OK. How about 40 of them?

You already know about the Official Lausanne Blog and of course you know about Notes on Lausanne [Outreach Magazine] by Andrew Jones [I can honestly and objectively recommend this one]. Did you know that the most significant conversations are happening outside the plenary sessions??? No, because that post and many others are only available at Notes on Lausanne and thats where the bulk of my posts will go.

But here is the list On-Site Lausanne Congress Bloggers that you have been looking for:

http://www.italker.org.uk  
http://misionglocal.blogspot.com/
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/
http://jeffgoins.myadventures.org

http://wrecked.org 
http://wherehermadnessresides.blogspot.com/
http://www.jdpayne.org/
http://www.daintl.org/wordpress
http://www.brigada.org
http://Thinke.org
http://www.dionforster.com/
http://www.kouya.net  
http://krishk.wordpress.com
http://flirtingwithfaith.com
http://www.daveingland.com
http://jamesbcarroll.wordpress.com
http://ryansrandomremarks.blogspot.com/
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog
http://anglicandownunder.blogspot.com
http://www.pres-outlook.com/blog
http://chriskidd.co.uk/
http://stephenmurray.co.za
http://www.conversantlife.com/blogs
http://www.medema.nl
http://www.willmancini.com
http://lesliethinkingallowed.blogspot.com/
http://markpenrith.wordpress.com
http://www.boerenroem.nl

http://topchretien.jesus.net/topblog/ 
http://blog.jesus.net/
http://www.thebrooknetwork.org
http://xenos-theology.blogspot.com/
http://profrah.wordpress.com
http://lifeasmission.com/blog/
http://petersprogress.wordpress.com/
http://www.innovationinmission.com
http://www.missoeseadoracao.net
www.fabriciocunha.com.br
http://www.marydemuth.com

http://codylorance.blogspot.com

http://www.justinlong.org

http://new.shipoffools.com/lausanne/

http://danielcalle.blogspot.com

http://nickpark.wordpress.com/

http://blog.theseedcompany.org

http://www.thekindlings.ca

Are you physically in Cape Town at the Congress and yet not on this list? Add yourself and your blog URL to the comments. Lets go for 50.

Want me to take you off the list? No prob. email me tallskinnykiwi at gmail dot com

Thanks to the Lausanne Social Media team for most of the links. Yesterday they made me an honorary member and even gave me a special secret agent badge with special access. Thanks guys. Here's us.

Hello Cape Town!

Hi everyone in Cape Town. Great city!

And hello to all the participants of the Lausanne World Congress. My name is Andrew and I am the guy with the silly smile and wearing the silly straw hat. Say hi to me if you see me. And if you are a blogger, please put a link below.

Lausanne Opening Ceremony and Welcome

The Opening Ceremony for the Lausanne World Congress was an amazing multi-media multi-sensory muscial spectacle. I was moved and uplifted and actually quite emotional . . . really. .  surprising for a insensitive hard nut like me.

Hard to describe it in words. But imagine standing with 4000 people from almost 200 countries looking up at 5 huge video screens with gorgous African scenery, accompanied by a real orchestra, too many choirs to count, various music bands all playing at the same time.

There were teams of drummers emerging from backstage and swapping themselves with childrens choirs and more musical groups, colorful tribal dress and random work uniforms, flags like sails, deep deep deep sound, bombarding your senses and high decibel African music rocking your body with waves of complex harmonies so complex you can't get your mind around it. You cant fathom it. You just have to join it.

Add to that experience moments of great hymns of the past, photos of children and landscapes with African sunsets and African voices continually saying "Welcome" and you get the picture. It was an extravagant welcome and a great kick off to the Lasaunne World Congress here in Cape Town. Well done Africa! Nice to be back in your country again.

As for the rest of the evening, there was an absolutely superb video of the history of missons over the past 2000 years which I cant wait to show you all. There was some good dramatic performance of the wide reach of the gospel to transform abusive social customs and unjust political structures. And more singing of course.

Yes, there were a few things that made you say "Huh?" like some overreaching remarks about the theological breadth and historical significance of this event [mostly evangelical protestants]. And, as the Australians remarked, maybe the opening ceremony really did had more endings than the Lord of the Rings. But overall is was overwhelming good and spiritually uplifting. A great start to the conference.

Link to video here when its uploaded (just a few hours)

Others: David Neff, Chris Sudgen,

Jesus Film and Paul Eshleman

Dr. Paul Eshleman directed the most watched movie in the world  - "Jesus"  - which is now in 1112 languages and has been seen by a ridiculously large number of people. I just had a nice chat with Dr. Eshleman as part of an interview for Outreach Magazine that will come out in the Jan-Feb issue next year.

I asked him if he would do anything differently with the Jesus Film project, what that would be. He said he would have given more attention to "planting churches along the way."

Lausanne World Congress: Registration

Well I made it to Cape Town and right now I am at the Congress center. Registration for the Lausanne World Congress continues. I heard there might be up to 5500 but we will have to wait and see. 200 Chinese house church leaders were prevented in coming so that adds a little sadness to the whole event.


Very well organized here. Friendly people. And lots of friends turning up including . .


Gaby from Budapest, who you will have met on my blog from our various leadership roundtables in Europe. Gaby is one of the younger crowd here at Lasuanne



And on the other hand, my friend Bill Taylor, who is one of the  . . . ah . . . great cheerleaders of Lausanne and a key influencer in the World Evangelical Alliance. The last time I saw Bill was in Malaysia for Great Commission Roundtable (2001) where many of us hooked up and began talking about what we would do in 2010.

I just got a free dinner pass which is good coz i hadn't eaten all day. Nice to be here. Really.

"Missional Church" is like "Female Woman"

Chris Wright, who spoke right after me at yesterdays Anglican conference in Cape Town, hinted at the redundancy of the word "missional". He recounted a friend who told him that saying "missional church" is like saying "female woman". Or in other words, every church should be missional. It is not an option. You cannot have a church that is not committed to mission.



Chris also shared some of the history of Lausanne, in particular the somewhat dualist nature of the famed 1974 event in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland, where "holistic mission" was a small interest group. Back then, there was a tension between the balancing demands of evangelistic activity and social action. Today, such a tension is hardly noticeable. Holistic mission involves both elements of practical compassionate social response, and backed up with a clear explanation of the good news of Jesus.

Chris is the author of the large but worth book The Mission of God that I purchased and really appreciated. His new book will be shorter and will focus on the role of the missional community. Its called The Mission of God's People and I had dinner with the editor this evening.

Previously on TSK: Chris Wright on the Mission of God and postmodernism.