Sunday Extra – June 4th, 2023
Compelled by Love
Today Doug Sauder from Calvary Chapel in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, shares our Sunday Extra message. Kevin Ford worked with their church in board development matters a few years ago. Doug’s text is from the well-known love chapter of I Corinthians 13. In this season of many wedding anniversaries, it’s good to hear again. But this passage is vital for all of us in our many relationships as we seek to let the world know we are Christ’s disciples by our love.
The Whole World
The Lausanne Movement, which Billy Graham and Leighton Ford helped form and shape, is committed to energizing the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.
Wonsuk Ma, dean and Distinguished Professor of Global Christianity at Oral Roberts University, explains “that only tiny fractions of today’s church are directly involved in mission.” She cites from the World Christian Encyclopedia that it takes “almost 6,000 Christians to send and support one missionary. If we zoom in on the picture, the challenge is even more serious: in the Global North (Europe and North America), it took slightly less than 4,000 believers to send one missionary, but it took more than 8,000 believers in the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania) to do the same.”
Let’s pray this week for God, the Holy Spirit, to stir in the lives of believers around the globe to involve ourselves in some way in the global task of the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.
See Ma’s article, ‘A Radical Vision of the Whole Church: Commissioning all God’s people for mission,’ at the Lausanne Global Analysis.
