World faiths:
responding With love
Many evangelicals worldwide are looking
forward to the Lausanne Congress on World
evangelization this October in Cape Town,
South africa. Here’s part three in a Faith Today
series looking at seven of the major issues to
be discussed.
how to reach ot to the peoples of other faiths with the redemptive love of Christ has been a key focus of the Lausanne movement since Billy Graham, John Stott and 2,300 other evangelical
leaders from 150 countries met for its first congress in
1974.
That meeting has helped inspire many other conferences and symposiums to strategize about evangelizing
the three billion people who have not
yet heard the message of salvation even
once in their life time. Lausanne has also
published many “Occasional Papers”
discussing effective evangelism (www.
lausanne.org/documents.html).
At the same time, the world has been
witnessing an unprecedented receptiv-ity to the gospel among people of other
faiths over recent decades. One of the
great examples is among Muslims. For centuries, Muslims were not open to the message of salvation. Many
Muslims had unfairly negative images of Christians and
had confused perspectives on the Christian faith as a result of the long and complex history of Christian-Muslim
interactions. Most Muslims had never encountered the
biblical Christ or heard the gospel message clearly.
But the landscape of religion worldwide is changing
significantly in our lifetime. For the first time in history,
Christianity and Islam are dominating the global scene
with a total population of 3. 6 billion people ( 2. 2 billion
Christians and 1.4 billion Muslims). Christianity and
Islam are reshaping the social life of central Asia, southeast Asia and Africa. Christianity and Islam will mostly
likely dominate the world scene in the 21st century, and
both religions will gain converts from among other religious traditions.
Advancements in communication technology together
with unprecedented human mobility have enabled new
levels of interaction among world populations. Even
people in politically and religiously restrictive countries
have unprecedented access to information and various
media channels.
