Reflections on YLG 2016

I thank God for the opportunity to be at the Lausanne Younger Leaders’ Gathering (YLG). This is a gathering which happens once in 10 years or so. YLG 2016 is the third of such gatherings – the first was held in Singapore in 1987 and the second in Malaysia (Port Dickson) in 2006.

The Lausanne Movement itself was birthed in July 1974 with the first congress held at Lausanne, Switzerland and had over 2,400 participants from 150 nations. Billy Graham and John Stott were the 2 key architects of this movement and they perceived the need for a global congress to re-frame Christian mission in a world of political, economic, intellectual, and religious upheaval. As stated on its website, it seeks to connect influencers and ideas for global mission. Recognizing the need in addition to connect and energize young leaders around the world in the cause of world evangelization, and particularly through the initiative and efforts of Leighton Ford, the second Lausanne Movement chairman, YLG was started to build leadership succession in global mission.

YLG has been for me the largest and longest conference I have ever attended. Going as a mentor, the conference duration for me was effectively 9 days (2 – 10 Aug), 1 day more compared with the participants. 8 of the 9 days were literally packed from morning to night with Scripture Engagement, Connect time with our respective groups (mentors were also connect group leaders), workshops, labs (where we try to put thoughts to actionable steps), plenary sessions, leadership forums, 1-on-1 meetings, regional gatherings, ad-hoc groups and lots of chance interactions and conversations with different people in between.

Arrival of YLG delegates on campus

The YLG2016 theme ‘United in the Great Story’ aimed to give younger leaders from the global church a fresh vision of the Great Story our God has been crafting from Creation to New Creation via the cross. With more than 1,000 participants coming from all continents (except Antarctica) and over 140 countries, it was likened to a Christian “United Nations” (as one Singaporean participant alluded it to). There was so much diversity - not only in terms of the nations represented but also the different languages, ethnicities, denominations, walks of life and ages. Yet, we connected quite quickly because we sensed that we are one big global community of God's people joined together by the Great Story!

YLG meets centered on the theme of being united in the Great Story

Several participants have testified of how God really came through in providing the resources for them to travel to Jakarta. Each person has had to raise his/her own funds, a process that can sometimes be daunting and discouraging. Praise God we heard many stories of God’s kindness and grace to them even up to the last days just before the conference. Some also experienced difficulties along the way to Jakarta: held by immigration authorities, denied visas, experienced cancelled flights and some had financial challenges.  Nevertheless, we heard heart-warming stories of how God eventually cleared the way for them to be at the conference.

A poignant example was seen in how God cleared the way for the PRC delegation to come. They were previously denied travel to the Lausanne Cape Town Congress in 2010. Some were then stopped at the airport and others even barred from leaving their homes. But this time, all of them were able to be here. The presence of the PRC delegation at the YLG after their problems encountered during the Cape Town 2010 Congress was of particular joy to me personally. We could see the Chinese participants eagerly initiating discussions with nearly every other major region of the world seeking to discover how they could be partners for global mission. They have a vision called ‘Mission China 2030’ to send 20,000 missionaries overseas by 2030. Their meeting with African participants at YLG2016 seemed particularly fruitful as currently more than one million Chinese live in Africa and present itself as a largely unreached people group for the African church.

YLG in session!

Throughout the gathering, major challenges for this generation have been discussed, e.g. how to proclaim the truth of Christ in a skeptical world? What does it mean to preach the whole gospel and the Lordship of Christ over poverty and the environment? how to respond to different conceptions of human sexuality? the persecuted church, and major challenges facing evangelicalism in the next decades.

What are my personal takeaways?

Connection, Collaboration, Continuity & Community

YLG Group photo

We met and connected, the 1000+ participants and 160+ mentors, for over a week. It will all be just a nice warm fuzzy feeling which will fizzle away over time - if we don’t do anything about it. In that week, we have heard many stories of what God is doing around the world. We have met and seen face-to-face the people who testified of God’s goodness and faithfulness to them. These are people living in dangerous places, places where war and conflicts are the order of the day, where terrorism deeply affects their lives, people who know what it means to be living in the margins, people who experience sustained oppression and persecution, who see or who may personally know of victims of human trafficking. Through all these, I see one thing constant – and that is, God’s unfailing faithfulness and goodness in each of their circumstances. It will not be right for us to simply walk away and forget about it, carrying on living our somewhat selfish lives here in comfortable Singapore.

Connect Group 80

God’s great story is that He is redeeming all creation and bringing all of us to the New Heavens and New Earth. We heard afresh the call to create, repent, bless, love, reconcile, and worship. Through sharing our stories in the context of widespread cultural diversity, we have been inspired to re-imagine what it looks like to cultivate God’s world, turn from idolatry, respond to redemption, and to be engaged in restoring peace, and to work for God’s glory. Real community is all about love, joy, unity, and the great “adventure of faith” shared with others, including peoples from other tribes, tongues and nations, along the way. 

The connections that were made at YLG, the people with whom we had ‘1-on-1’ sessions need therefore to be intentionally and faithfully nurtured and developed over the next couple of years. I believe God will do great things in and through us if we all remain faithful to His call.

Out of Egocentricity (God is Not Who You Think)

Throughout history we see how Islam has expanded its foothold in the world. By contrast, Christianity has lost much “territory”. I can think of the then Christian Europe where today, it is mostly secularized. On the other hand, the Global South has been witnessing God’s remarkable grace. For example, China is now said to be on track to become the world’s most Christian nation by 2030. The great continent of Africa is the zone of Christianity’s greatest growth. It is already the world’s most populous Christian continent, with slightly more Christians today than compared with North America and their numbers are still growing! The Pew Forum estimated that by 2050, sub-Sahara Africa will have 1.1 b Christians almost twice as much as its nearest rival for adherents, Islam. Already it has been estimated that by 2025, there will be about 633 m Christians.

In other words, God has a counter-intuitive way of working contrary to our conventional thinking. He can (and has already shown us how He can) establish footholds in places seemingly difficult for Christianity to take root. Already I’m sure you have heard by how the church in Syria is growing in spite of the strong persecution particularly by the ISIS. And as ISIS is rising, creating terror in many parts of the world, we simultaneously hear of many Muslims turning to Christ. It was also reported that an ISIS militant converted to Christianity after meeting Jesus in dream. This was according to a YWAM missionary in the Middle East. Speaking on The Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network, Gina Fadely, the former director of the organization’s Frontier Missions, said that one of YWAM's workers was introduced to an ISIS fighter who had killed a number of Christians. He even admitted to having enjoyed doing so, until he met Jesus in a dream…

It puts us in perspective when we listen to stories and testimonies of what God is doing around the world. Seriously, our own suffering and afflictions pales into insignificance compared with these. Not that they are unreal or made-up, but there are worst situations that God has spared us so far. We need to get out of our ego-centric selves and be intentionally more Christ-centered, learning to see things the way God sees them and having the heart of the Father for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.

Isn’t this an outworking of Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,”?

The Importance of Mentoring Relationships

The stress and focus of YLG 2016 on mentoring really reminded me again the importance of mentoring in the lives of God’s people in community at all levels – local church, national, regional and global. At the Lausanne level, this is important to grow and nurture younger leaders to stay faithful on course so that they will remain effective ministers of God’s grace in their respective places in their own generation. Community and relationships are key to spiritual growth and maturity. No ‘lone ranger’ Christian can survive on his or her own in a culture largely hostile to Christianity.

Personally, I have indicated my availability to serve the YLGen as an ongoing mentor and pray that God will find me fit to be a channel of His blessing to those that I will minister to in the years ahead.

Locally, I am similarly praying for God’s people here at Zion Bishan to realize the importance of mentoring relationships and be courageous enough to get into one or ask someone to be one’s mentor (or even mentee!). I hope to see more mentoring relationships formed here at ZB. Every one of us needs to belong in a mentoring relationship with one or more people. I hope to see that happening inter-generationally too. Firstly, there is too much of ‘generalism’ everywhere these days and not least in the community of God’s people. Yes, we do have distinct differences between the age groups but we don’t celebrate enough our commonalities, especially our commonalities in Christ. I’m sure some of our younger people are longing for a mentor but don’t know where to begin or who to ask. I’m sure some of us who are older also appreciate a mentor who can offer us words of wisdom distilled from the longer years along the discipleship road.

Secondly, we all tend to privatize our faith too much resulting in the loss of accountability as well as the increased likelihood of God’s people (including leaders – yes, even senior leaders!) falling off their pedestals.  Being in mentoring relationship(s) help us lessen (if not remove) that risk and strengthen our inner life. This is so vital to keep all of us spiritually healthy in the long run. And furthermore, there is much to benefit from the mutual sharing of not just knowledge but wisdom that God has given each us as He molds us over the years.

Christians in the Marketplace

While not undermining the need and priorities of the traditional cross-cultural missions and the unreached people groups, there is already a vast pool of God’s people in the marketplace. In fact, the majority of us are in the marketplace, whether that be the office, school or businesses. A lot of people in the marketplace are outside the church and may not have the opportunity even to step into the church building or be invited to a church event. But we often forget that we, the people of God, are the church. We meet and see them at least 5 days a week and 8 hours or more each day. How may God’s people in the marketplace be made sharper and more effective for the Kingdom? How Kingdom conscious are God’s people in the marketplace? How is the local church affirming, preparing, nurturing and encouraging people who “serve” in the marketplace?

I am reminded at the YLG that we need to (a) affirm and nurture God’s people to be more effective in the marketplace; (b) challenge God’s people to live out the Gospel faithfully each day amidst our colleagues, business associates, bosses, subordinates, vendors, suppliers, teachers & students. The list goes on and so are the possibilities and opportunities.

At the Lausanne level, we need to continue to share, collaborate and work together towards strategising how we may develop and grow marketplace ‘missionaries’. On the regional, country and local church levels, there is a similar need to adopt the same approach but perhaps in a more contextualized manner until we fully unfreeze God’s frozen people to be salt and light wherever He sends us.

The Singapore YLG team having our own worship service on Sunday

The Singapore YLG team on the final night