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 (
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,”?
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
