This week 1,000 delegates from 125 nations have been meeting together in Korea, for the General Assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance, for a wonderful time of worship, fellowship, listening, discussion, and praying together. This inspiring event takes place every six years.
SaRang Church, a vibrant Korean Presbyterian church drawing over 60,000 worshippers each week, hosted the assembly in close partnership with Yoido Full Gospel Church, the Pentecostal church once led by Yonggi Cho. For the first two days the WEA Assembly was joined on site by 5,000 Korean pastors, with many shared sessions which were extraordinary for the worship, fervour, unity, and prayer.
The central theme of the General Assembly was ‘The Gospel for everyone by 2033’: encouraging a massive new worldwide emphasis on evangelism, reaching many more people for Christ in the lead-up to the 2,000 year anniversary of the birthday of the Church on the day of Pentecost, 2033.
We also heard from Christians in many nations where there is horrific persecution of Christians, and many other major problems. Many of those countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is obviously a concerted and intensifying campaign of terror by Islamic groups such as Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, systematically kidnapping, killing, and destroying Christian populations. But none of this is adequately exposed by international media, or effectively combated by governments. In many countries there is also famine, political instability, deep corruption, civil war, massive displacements, and overwhelming public health crises.
In the mix of nations there were 25 people from the South Pacific region. These included people from the evangelical alliances in New Zealand (ten of us, connected with NZCN), Papua New Guinea, and Australia, and also from the emerging new evangelical alliances in Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Solomon Islands, and Marshall Islands. The South Pacific region met together, with a great sense of unity.
The WEA welcomed a new General Secretary, Butros Mansour. Born and raised in Nazareth, and an Israeli citizen, Butros is an Arab Christian, and clearly a man who puts faith in Christ and the unity of believers above all else. He speaks with grace and humility, and with a global perspective, and will no doubt give good leadership.
– Stuart Lange and Malcolm Falloon
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