Here are some memorable quotes from the speakers of the WEF 11th General Assembly.
Rev. Joel Edwards
“Leadership”
“As Peter Kusmic, theologian and former President of the Croatian Evangelical Alliance, once put it: “Charisma without character leads to catastrophe.” Good quality or character is more than being a nice person. It shows up in personal disciplines… Someone once said, “You can delegate everything in leadership apart from your personal devotion.”
The Great Commission has always been global. Leadership which fails to see the “big picture” of God’s activity in the world will hardly understand what Wesley meant by the world being his parish and will certainly fail to make any real sense of their own work. For what we do as leaders ultimately only makes sense against the context of what God is doing everywhere else.”
Dr John Edmund Haggai
“The Unstressed Elements of Christian Leadership”
“Love is the only leadership that holds out any hope. You have a wide-open opportunity to help set the course of this changing world in the right direction if you can lead with love.
To the Christian mind, poverty comes from hanging onto things. Those who understand the principle of investment have an abundance mentality. The effective leader devotes his life to bringing his group into the joy of giving. He leads by his own example.”
Rev. Datuk Dr Prince Guneratnam
“The Church—Pentecost”
“We are to live our Christian life, in season and out of season, whether we like it or not…consistently.”
Our priority…the passion to reach the lost for Jesus Christ. Our witness…to glorify Jesus, to be the salt and light of the earth.”
Cathy Ross
“The Cross & Resurrection”
“I believe Jesus calls us to make him recognisable as Son of God in his weakness and his suffering—not to hide Him behind the respectability of the establishment, behind the big, expensive, exquisitely managed programmes, behind the hierarchy and the bureaucracy—but to allow His glory to be seen and recognised in weakness, servanthood and humility.”
Who are the insignificant and marginalised in our worlds? Do we have the courage and the humility to listen and learn from them? Might it be our children? Our ill neighbour? Our friend dying of AIDS? Who has eyes to see in our world? To which voices does WEF listen? To the big names, to the powerful and successful, to the religious elite? What might be some other voices we in WEF could listen to who might give us the perspective of the poor, the marginalised, the insignificant in our world?”
Rev. Dr Jun Vencer
“Exiles in Your Land”
“There is a need to embrace the social and political reality of your own situation and time. One may just be a migrant in a city or a refugee but where God has placed you, embrace that reality. Look at the land that God has placed you at that time, enjoy and acknowledge the opportunity God has given you to help transform the land. As exiles, one must also engage reality in its totality. Become productive and enjoy the blessings of what you have planted.
God expects us to bless the nations of the world by sharing those resources as well. Additionally, increase, not decrease and grow in numbers. God wants us to grow regardless of the situation we find ourselves (in).”
Elizabeth Kendall
“Commitment to Service”
“…a servant of Christ must be willing to die to self. He must be emptied of all personal ambition, even of his own great ideas and be prepared to come to God empty—seeking to be filled, submissive—seeking to be led, and humble—seeking merely to be used. So, I believe the challenge for Christian leaders today must therefore be to exalt and glorify Jesus Christ so that Christians have no doubts in their minds that He who sacrificed Himself for them is worthy of their living sacrifice.”
Rev. Bertil Ekstrom
“The Kingdom of God”
“The Church is not merely an instrument but an agent of transformation of the Kingdom, having the responsibility to make the Kingdom visible. People looking at the Church must see the Kingdom in action and the Church… How can we expect to be respected, trusted and believed if we do not present a message, based on the Bible, that has to do with the needs of the Bible?
We have, in these last years, focused very much the ecclesiology in our local communities and in our denominations and organisations. We need to see the bigger picture, the Kingdom of God. Only when we realise that we belong to the same kingdom will we have conditions for real partnership and collaboration.”
Stuart McAllister
“Perspective on Globalisation”
“As evangelicals, we need to look at the process (of globalisation) through the eyes of Scripture and faith, with particular concerns for idolatry, injustice and exclusion and the massive effects of de-personalisation as it affects individuals and communities.
The Church is already strategically placed and dispersed. The local Church progressively networked, linked and resourced can be a major factor in strategies of hope… At all levels, we can be salt and light, so the “one size fits all” approach must give way to multiple approaches and diversity.”
Dr Mirsoslav Volf
“The Nature of the Church”
“Jesus did not come proclaiming the church; Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God… The church is what came about after the proclamation of the kingdom had failed. Is the church therefore simply the result of the failure of a grander plan? Certainly not. Why did Jesus call the 12 apostles?… The people of God is inseparable from the kingdom of God.
The Church, it is said, is like the moon. The moon has no light of its own. All the light by which it makes our nights so beautiful is reflected light, light borrowed from the sun.
The Church has no power of its own and no goals of its own. Like the moon, all the light that the Church possesses is the light of Christ shining by the power of the Spirit. And of all the things that the Church may have—beautiful buildings, successful
programmes, political power, or economic wealth—none of them ultimately matters and all may even be detrimental. The only thing that truly matters is that the Church be reflection of Christ’s own light in that it continues his mission anointed by the Spirit.”
Dr Ian Provan
“Wholistic Ministry—Creation”
“We all know, or we think that we do, what it is that we are redeemed from; but what are we redeemed for?
We are redeemed from sin: from the darkness that has entered into this world of right relationships and has produced such catastrophic disruption, as human beings have sought to be God rather than to be the image of God, and in turning away from God have brought disaster on themselves, their neighbours and their environment. We are redeemed from sin.
Redemption is…the restoration of the divine image in human beings, and the intrinsically connected reconstitution of the right relationships that we were created to have with God, neighbour and creation. That is what we are redeemed for. It is a redemption in respect of God’s creation purposes for us, which are closely connected with God’s purposes for us also in the new creation in which we are caught up in Christ.”
George Verwer
“A Call for Balance, Grace, Reality, Integrity and Action”
“…God wants to give you greater vision during these days. You already are people of vision but He wants to increase your vision. He wants to maybe add some countries to your prayer list that are not there yet.
It is the burden that the whole body of Christ throughout the world respond to the challenge of the HIV and Aids epidemic.”
Dr Isaac Zokoue
“Babel and Tribalism”
The story of the tower of Babel presents God as a God of all languages, all cultures, all skin colours—the God of diversity. Creation is a mosaic of colours and beauty and shows what God alone can do… What we now deplore tribalism, ethnocentrism, racism is a perversion by man of what in the beginning was a good thing by God.
Our tower of Babel today is then called globalisation and what the people intended to do in the plain of Shinar was the first form of globalisation. They wanted one nation with one language, willing to build one city, one tower in order to make one name for themselves.”
Dr Clive Calver
“Wholistic Ministry”
“Jesus was always willing to the poor…He’s always been God of the poor. That’s why the hallmark of His people at the end of the day should not just be right theology but
right living.
An evangelicalism that doesn’t touch the poor is not evangelicalism in its purest form at all. It never has been and never can be.” |
