(CP) In his 54th 12 months in ministry, Rick Warren, founding father of Saddleback Church, declared on the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that he would spend the subsequent 10 years of his life continuing to assist church leaders “finish their race” and fulfill the Great Commission of their lifetime.
Following an in-depth group discussion with delegates at Lausanne 4 earlier last week by which he detailed how pastors and church leaders can witness the exponential growth of believers like that seen by the primary century Church just by modeling Jesus, he shared with the hundreds of delegates on Saturday 10 motion steps from Acts Chapters 1 and a couple of to evangelize the lost.
Warren, who attended his first Lausanne when he was 20 years old, told those younger than 40 to look to those around them who’re 40 and older because they are going to need those individuals with experience to assist them as “mentors, models, partners and friends” with a purpose to finish their God-given assignments.
Here’s the list of the ten motion steps Warren shared at Lausanne 4:
1. Pray for God’s power
“Number one, we must pray for God’s power. … Prayer is mentioned again and again within the book of Acts. Friends, once we start praying like they prayed in Acts, we’ll start having the ability like they’d in Acts. There’s a direct connection between prayer and power. Much prayer, much power. Little prayer, little power. No prayer, no power,” said Warren, who retired from Saddleback Church in California in 2022.
2. Translate God’s Word for everybody
“Number two, we must translate God’s word for everybody,” said Warren, who shared that he’s devoted his life to fulfilling the Great Commission and training other church leaders to finish their calling well.
“God’s Word is alive. God’s Word is transforming. God’s Word changes lives. But now we have to place it in words that everyone understands. We must translate God’s Word for everybody. And sadly, there’s still hundreds, even thousands and thousands, of people that haven’t got a Bible of their translation. That’s a part of our next motion step.
“At Pentecost, God showed the importance of translation because he did a translation miracle with tongues. He reversed Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, at Pentecost. We must translate God’s word for everybody,” Warren reiterated.
3. Appreciate our diversity
“Number three, we must appreciate our diversity. Not tolerate it, not accept it, but be pleased with it. Love it, have a good time it.
“We need to do that because, primary, diversity is God’s idea. He made us all different. The one that doesn’t like diversity is essentially saying, ‘God, you made a mistake. Why didn’t you make everybody like me?’ That’s the hype of pride.
“We must have a good time and revel in and grow on our diversity because diversity in ministry is a strength of the Church, not a weakness. Why? It takes every kind of churches to achieve every kind of individuals,” he stressed.
“He (God) wants unity. He doesn’t want uniformity. The only way we’ll ever have unity is to like diversity.
4. Train every believer to evangelise the Good News
“Number 4, we must train every believer to evangelise the Good News. At Pentecost, Peter needed to quote Joel, the prophet, with a purpose to explain why women were preaching at Pentecost. And here’s what he says in Acts 2:14-18, ‘I’ll pour out my spirit on everyone, your little children will preach, your young men will see visions, and your old men can have dreams’ — that is intergenerational — ‘and all my servants,’ each men and girls, ‘I’ll pour out my spirit and they’re going to preach.’
He continued, “In 2003 at Saddleback Church, we launched an every member campaign that each member in our church would go to the mission field and plant a church. … We took the five things that Jesus did, and we called the Peace Plan: Proclaim the Good News, equip every believer and alleviate suffering — that is poverty, disease, illiteracy — and contend in prayer as we fight battles on our knees and establish churches.
“Over seven years, I sent out 26,869 of my members to plant a church in every nation of the world. We’re the one church in Christian history to plant a church in 197 nations. This was done by normal people.
“If you are a pastor, I can be honored to show you easy methods to do it. Your church can send missionaries all over the world. You could mobilize. My goal is to enable you to turn an audience into a military, to show spectators into participators, to show consumers into contributors, and to show members into missionaries and ministers.
5. Apply God’s Word to ourselves to complete the duty
“Number five, we must apply God’s Word to ourselves to complete the duty.”
“We’re going to need to practice what we preach,” Warren emphasized. “Jesus says, go and do likewise. James says, be a doer. The Word, the Great Commission, says, teach them to do every thing I command, not teach them to know the issue with the Church today. We know greater than we’re doing, and there is a certain type of preaching that can help people turn into doers of the Word.
He added that “we must apply God’s word for ourselves.”
“You want an example of this? Look at Peter’s message in Acts Chapter 2. He began responding to an issue of the people. They said, what does this mean? And his sermon ended by telling people what to do. When the people heard Peter’s words, they asked, ‘What we could do?’ That’s what your sermon must be. Start with what does it mean and end with what should I do from today?
“Numerous messages at the top, they’re still going, ‘What does it mean?’ Teach people to be doers of the Word, to coach people on easy methods to be a doer.”
6. Model like to the world
“Number six, we must model like to the world,” Warren said. “Love all the time attracts. My definition of evangelism is, you construct a bridge of affection between your heart and theirs, and Jesus walks across. Growing churches love, loving churches grow,” he added.
“If you’ve gotten a church that genuinely loves lost people, you’d need to lock the doors to maintain people out. Now, numerous people say, we love everybody we already know — that is not loving church.”
7. Return to using homes
“Number seven, we must return to using homes,” Warren advised, calling this the “fastest community growth movement of [the] Christian Church.” His own church, he said, grew 50% in a decade before it ever had a church constructing.
“We had no church buildings. I desired to prove you haven’t got to have a church constructing to grow a church, so Saddleback went 13 years with no constructing. We had over 10,000 people coming every week before we built our first constructing. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten to have a constructing to grow a church. The fastest growth was through homes. We [need to] return to that.”
8. Worship must turn into a joyful witness
“Number eight, our worship must turn into a joyful witness,” he said. “And all I’ll say about that is that worship, when celebrated, attracts unbelievers identical to they wish to go to live shows.”
9. Share every thing
“Number nine, we must share every thing to work together,” Warren said, citing Acts Chapter 2:44. “Verse 44 says all of the believers shared every thing with one another. All these items are teaching. … This is real collaboration, to co-labor.”
10. Make financial sacrifices
“Number 10, we must make financial sacrifices,” Warren said with conviction. “Verse 45 says they might sell their land and the things they owned with a purpose to give the cash to those that needed it.
“These are things that each certainly one of you may do tomorrow in your way home from Lausanne,” he told the delegates who gathered in-person on the last day of the week-long conference.
Lausanne 4 brought together over 5,000 Christians from over 200 countries to South Korea for per week of collaborating and strategizing for global missions.
Lausanne 4 was held across the theme of “Let the Church Declare and Display Christ Together.” It was supported by tons of of Korean churches and hundreds of individual Korean Christians who signed up to wish for or volunteer their time on the Songdo Convensia.
