(CP) Ahead of his speech Saturday on the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, Rick Warren, founding father of Saddleback Church in California, warned believers must re-evangelise nominal Christians to satisfy the Great Commission, adding that some Christians have traded “spiritual power for political influence.”
Speaking to a select group of delegates concerning the obstacles impeding Christians from fulfilling the Great Commission, the 70-year-old Warren said the Great Commission will be fulfilled, but it surely first requires “the good collaboration.” And there are two obstacles faithful believers must overcome to complete the duty.
Christians, said Warren, are great at fellowshipping and networking, but they’re terrible at collaboration and unity — a word that has been at the guts of Lausanne 4 this week.
“The purpose of unity shouldn’t be for unity’s sake. The purpose of unity is for evangelism,” said Warren, who retired from Saddleback in 2022 and has committed to focusing the subsequent 10 years of his life on helping younger generations reach more people for Christ.
Warren emphatically stressed to the delegates gathered on the “Finishing the Task” breakout session on Tuesday afternoon that there “might be no Great Commission fulfilled until we actually get this unity thing discovered.”
Unity was immensely significant to Jesus as well, he added. In Jesus’ final prayer before He goes to the cross, do you realize what Jesus was most concerned about? That we be unified. Twice in his final prayer, John 17, He prays this: ‘Father, I pray that they might be one in order that the world may know.'”
Other than occasional collaborations on events, the structure currently in place for evangelism entails Christian denominations and organisations working independently of each other.
“Nobody’s ever going to have the option to do it on their very own,” he added. “You cannot do it on your personal. I am unable to do it. Your denomination, your agency cannot do it on their very own.”
Just because the Lausanne Movement Global Executive Director Michael Oh said in his message to the 5,000 delegates gathered Sunday night, the shortcoming or refusal to collaborate hurts the Christian witness and the success of the Great Commission.
The second reason why Christians aren’t collaborating with each other to urgently finish the duty, in keeping with Warren, is because they “really don’t think Jesus is coming back” of their lifetime.
Warren admonished one of these considering, noting that first century Christians believed Jesus could come back at “any moment,” and for this reason urgency, it spurred them to motion, and the Church witnessed exponential growth.
“If you actually thought that Jesus could come back in your lifetime, you could be collaborating with everybody,” Warren said, pointing to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, where He says thrice to “be ready.”
Imploring believers to get a conviction concerning the Second Coming of Christ, he warned, “If you are not ready now, you’re disobeying the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Another reason why the primary century Church quickly grew was because they were suffering persecution. But once Christianity became legal and popularised within the Roman Empire, then “political power replaced spiritual power,” he said.
“Christian churches actually grow faster under persecution,” Warren explained. “We were illegal through the fastest period of growth. The fastest period of growth of Christianity was the primary 330 years of the Church. We went from 120 people within the upper room to, by [the year] 360 AD, half of the Roman Empire had been saved — 30 million out of 60 million people.
Sharing an example of Christianity’s rise to prominence and what he described as a monumental cultural shift, Warren said the Roman denarius from the yr 87 had Caesar on the coin. By the yr 300, Chi Rho, the primary two letters of Christ in Greek, was on the coin. By 340, Jesus was on the denarius, and by 360, the cross of Jesus Christ was on the coin. “Now, that is culture change,” he said.
Reflecting on how, once “Christianity became an appropriate political power” within the Roman Empire, “miracles, signs and wonders” declined, Warren surmised that “the entire signs and wonders of the primary 300 years were because we had no political clout.”
“I wish I could say this to the people in my country, in America, because they’ve switched spiritual power for political influence,” he lamented, warning Christians to not “hitch their wagon” to any politician because that form of power is fleeting.
Re-evangelising the Church
Warren said one other highly significant a part of fulfilling the Great Commission is re-evangelising the Church. What this implies is reaching out to nominal Christians to get them on fire for God in order that they can, in turn, be prepared and prepared to succeed in and disciple others.
Listing statistics on the variety of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians worldwide, Warren underscored that there are some 2.6 billion people worldwide who discover as Christian, and plenty of of them should be re-evangelised.
“There are nominal Christians identical to there are nominal Muslims who do not know what they imagine,” he said. “But the underside line is it’s an entire lot easier to evangelise and reawaken a nominal Christian in name only than it’s to win a Hindu who you are attempting to persuade the guy who believes in 10,000 gods to simply imagine in a single.
“So a part of ending the duty, completing the Great Commission, is evangelising the Church. … If we were to evangelise and activate those people, if everybody who already claims to imagine within the Trinity and the cross of the resurrection shared their testimony with someone who’d never heard thrice in the subsequent 10 years […] we might cover your entire world. It’s not rocket science.”
Following Jesus’ model
Highlighting the many ministry success stories of Saddleback Church, which incorporates being the “only church in Christian history to plant a church in every nation (197 countries),” Warren said he didn’t follow an American model or a method of his own making, he followed Jesus’ model.
One thing Jesus does, Warren said, is He meets people where they’re, not where He wants them to be. But He also doesn’t “leave them there.” He added that Christians must first learn methods to “make friends” before they will share their faith and win people for Christ.
“So, as a pastor, as a frontrunner, you could have to show people methods to construct friendships before you teach them methods to share their faith,” continued Warren, who said it has been the “privilege” of his lifetime to “train over 1 million pastors in 165 nations.”
“My definition of evangelism is you construct a bridge of affection between your heart and theirs, after which Jesus walks across. […] Before people trust Jesus, they have to trust you. And if I am unable to trust you, why should I trust your Savior.”
Using himself for instance of gaining people’s trust through actions and character, Warren stated earlier in his talk that he’s among the many pastors who’ve “never had a scandal” in his life. He shared that he was capable of stay scandal-free by doing three things: living life with integrity, humility and generosity. “Those three things, he said, have been the “antidotes to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.”
Following Jesus’ model, he continued, is solely following 2 Timothy 2:2, which is about teaching and passing down what was learned to successive generations of faithful men and girls who’re obedient to sharing the Gospel.
Another crucial aspect of modeling Jesus is prayer. As the disciples watched Jesus, “they realized that the key to His power was His prayer life,” Warren explained. “They never said, ‘Lord, teach us methods to heal people.’ They said, ‘Lord, teach us to wish.’ Why? Because they recognized that is where the ability got here from.”
Warren added that it’s about “moving from member of the Body of Christ to maturity within the Body of Christ to ministry within the Body of Christ to mission on the planet.”
