Cape Town commitment 2010.

The two themes highlighted in the conclusions of the new declaration from the Lausanne Movement are:

• The need for radical obedient discipleship, leading to maturity, to growth in depth as well as growth in numbers; 
• The need for radical cross-centred reconciliation, leading to unity, to growth in love as well as growth in faith and hope.

I sincerely hope and pray the impact of this Lausanne Commitment have as significant impact upon the evangelical world as previous ones. I recall when I first began in paid Ministry we were still grappling with the call to see evangelism and social action, which was a key theme from 1974, as two wings of the same bird, which I think was John Stott's description. It's hard now to believe there was such a gulf between them, but the assumptions new Christians today are able to have with confidence could not have been held in the 1980's.

There is little doubt in my own mind about the need for radical obedient discipleship. It's a huge generalisation, but in the Western world we have to grasp the facts - our converts are not always translating into disciples & yet you don't get disciples without them! the developign world is not having great problems with the conversion part of the equation, but depth is what I hear many crying out for. In WEBA we've put discipleship down as our key theme to invade all our gatherings for the next two years - just one attempt to re-root discipleship as our core activity.