The concern that church leaders have shown for Christians suffering for his or her faith for the reason that first Lausanne Congress in 1974 has grown a lot that the majority of a day and night was dedicated to persecution on the fourth Congress in South Korea on Wednesday.
The connection between evangelization and persecution was clear. Consistent with the emphasis that other Christian leaders have expressed on the Lausanne 4 Congress happening in Incheon, South Korea, speakers addressing persecution highlighted the importance of discipleship for and by those suffering for his or her faith.
A Christian leader based in Nigeria told the congress on world evangelization, where 5,200 Christians from across the globe gathered, that one challenge of persecution is the temptation to fall into syncretic faith marked by corruption and false idols. The Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, executive director of the Para-Malam Peace Foundation in Jos, cited an earlier warning sounded by the Rev. Dr. Patrick Fung, global ambassador of OMF International.
“Like Dr. Patrick Fung shared this morning, persecution won’t ever kill the church, but a compromised gospel will,” Para-Mallam told the congress. “So that is an actual challenge for Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa – lack of a united, continental biblical response to persecution, and it is important that the worldwide church is aware of those challenges and so they can pray for us.”
Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel are seeing mass killings which might be largely hidden: “Human beings are actually slaughtered” because the financial infrastructure of Islamic extremist forces look like greatly enhanced, Para-Mallam said.
“The consequences are devastating, and it has resulted in increased persecution and terrorist attacks against Christians,” he said. “There are different nuances to persecution as experienced by Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the tip goal is similar: Islamism in Africa.”
Non-state actors comparable to Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and the Islamic State have turn out to be sub-states, with the complicity of some state officials complicating the fight against terrorism in some countries, he said. Christians are uprooted from their ancestral homelands, with tens of millions living as internally displaced or as refugees.
“In some countries there’s gender-based violence, which has turn out to be a weapon of persecution by terrorist groups in countries like Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Mozambique,” Para-Mallam said.
Persecution becomes a method of discipleship as Christians endure suffering, including girls kidnapped in Nigeria who’ve turn out to be women in captivity, comparable to Leah Sharibu, abducted by Boko Haram in 2018, he said.
“God is at work amongst Christian girls in captivity – you will not imagine this, but in Boko Haram captivity, a few of these girls are involved in praying,” Para-Mallam said. “In Bible studies, even fasting, one among the ladies told a Boko Haram commander, ‘I don’t belong on this place. I’m praying, I’m trusting God.’ And exactly three years later, God brought her out. She’s free today despite increasing prosecution.”
Christians in Africa are reliving the Book of Acts as they learn to put down their lives for Christ as an affidavit of their resilience, he said.
“God can be winning back to himself converts from among the many persecutors,” Para-Mallam said. “May God proceed to do His work, and will God be glorified despite persecution.”
A Christian leader from Lebanon also spoke of the importance of discipleship, highlighting the necessity to proactively prepare to face persecution.
“This would occur by having discipleship programmes and curriculum that might address issues like theology of minorities,” said the leader, whose name is withheld for security reasons. “How are you able to as a minority be effective in your society? How are you able to be a citizen accountable for your individual society?”
Half-Lebanese and half-Syrian, he said the Islamic State invasion of Syria and Iraq in 2014 showed how little prepared Christians within the region were for persecution.
“Syrian Christians were really not prepared to face persecution,” he said. “I believe theological institutions now, churches are preparing and more ready than before, educate, inform and equip sisters and brothers, face persecution, especially those that are coming from Muslim background and can face pressures from governments in addition to communities.”
Those suffering for his or her faith have much to show Christians who must hear the voices of the persecuted through books and other media as a part of their discipleship, he said.
“It’s good to have a powerful biblical foundation that the church has all the time been persecuted, and that the church has all the time been a minority,” he said. “It’s really crucial that we hear the voice of the martyrs before they turn out to be martyrs. We also actually need to listen to the voice of the bulk world and, hand-in-hand with a world church, support and advocate for the suffering Christians.”
Christian leaders in Iran also spoke of suffering as a method of growth, each personally and for the church. One speaker, whose name is withheld, said that despite persecution, the variety of Christians in Iran has grown from 500 at most before the 1979 Islamic Revolution to at the very least 1 million converts from Islam.
“That’s why we’re training more people, more leaders, printing more Bibles and resources for discipleship, because we’re waiting for rather more than this,” he said.
History has shown that persecution is just not the “end of the story,” firstly since it’s a part of any Christian story; when he accepted Christ, he knew that persecution would come, he said.
“The second reason that persecution is just not the tip of the story because we all know the tip of the story,” he said, citing the biblical guarantees that the gates of hell shall not overcome church and the ultimate victory of God’s people in Revelations.
The last reason persecution is just not the tip of the story is “because we’re all a part of the story – the entire Body of Christ,” he said. “I’m talking from the bleeding a part of the body. [But] we’re all a part of the story.”
The speakers’ emphasis on discipleship for and thru persecution aligned with a paper produced by an Issue Group on the subject on the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization hosted by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in Pattaya, Thailand, in 2004.
The paper noted that despite the autumn of the Iron Curtain, oppression and persecution of Christians was on the rise attributable to globalization, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, economic disparity, post-modernism and secularism.
“But since 1989, the important context for Christian persecution has turn out to be the Islamic world,” the paper noted. “The ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and the West has intensified since Sept. 11, 2001 and is contributing to anti-Christian violence in Muslim contexts.”
Other causes identified were Hinduism, communism and post-communist contexts, and secularism.
“The Church’s existing theology of suffering must be supplemented by developing a theology of persecution, and possibly even a theology of spiritual freedom,” the paper stated, noting a necessity for capability constructing inside and for the persecuted Church by the use of training, “each spiritual training for ministry and enduring persecution and practical/vocational training to strengthen the Church economically.”
