Budapest

.
.

.

.

.
.
::: By God's grace and many prayers, I have returned in good health from a busy week's worth of listening and learning in Budapest, Hungary. Along with Sue, good friend and colleague from the Osaka area, and 360 evangelical Christians from over 60 nations, I participated in Lausanne's Bi-Annual International Leadership Meetings. These meetings reflected the bold initiatives and the broadening intersections represented by the welcomed collaboration between the Lausanne movement (www.lausanne.org) and the World Evangelical Alliance (www.worldevangelicalalliance.com).
.
.
These meetings were constructive in every sense. With the exception of a free afternoon on Wednesday, our daily schedule reflected the program planners' desire to create a fluid learning environment. Morning plenary sessions, consisting of worship, teaching, and prayer, streamed into smaller working groups which continued through lunch and into late afternoon. These smaller work sessions, in turn, fed into the evening plenary sessions, each of which punctuated the day's happenings with progress reports from working groups. The week-long process added clarity and conviction to Lausanne/WEC's vision for its third congress in Cape Town, South Africa (2010). My wholehearted thanks to the everyone on the Lausanne team.
.
.
Happily back home with my sweetheart Claire (who had a rich and rewarding week of ministry in Kobe), I am continuing to process the value and vision of Lausanne -- and what God has in store for us in all this. Taking walks together is our modus operandi. Like unpacking my bags (empty first, sort as I go, dispose later), with Claire's help I am reviewing and reframing my thoughts from Budapest. What has emerged as a clear and present priority is the need to pray in 4-D: along the dimensions of the personal, the local, the national, and the global. Not simply that God would keep me on the 'mountaintop', as it were, and bless me with spiritual goosebumps. Rather, I sense from these meetings a greater need for me to get down from the mountain and get down on my knees and pray, as in Daniel 9.17, for God's face to shine upon our desolations. I am also thrilled to serve Dr. Christopher Wright and others on the Theology Working Group.
.

.

* * *

.

.

...

.

.
This afternoon was quiet, full of study, reflecting on a gallery of images and words. I remembered my breakfast conversation with Steven (above), a former murderous Black Shadows child fighter who has become one of Africa's leading evangelists and a powerful agent for tribal reconciliation. Being moved by a Sri Lankan's hope for his nation -- a hope that starts with the last and the least. Having a beer with my Romanian friend who wants to fight corruption in his nation's government. These testimonies of God's workmanship -- and many more -- form a fruitful hermeneutic to re-hear the lessons of Genesis 11.1-9 (the tower of Babel). I interacted with a handful of commentators, but I am particularly struck by Gordon Wenham's rather plain statement on verse 5 in his WBC volume.
.
.
'The confusion of languages,' Wenham observes, 'is a divine antidote to human arrogance.'
.
.
This stands in stunning contrast to the Enuma Elish, a Sumerian epic which boastfully trumps Babylonian culture and language as unparalleled on earth and unbounded by God.

.

.

* * *

.
.
On the connecting flight from Amsterdam, I felt discouraged. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the tensions and voices of dissent (even strong protest) that came from certain groups that make up the Lausanne/WEC coalition. Perhaps it was the dozen or so younger leaders who seemed always willing to speak, but unwilling to first listen and wait. Perhaps it was murmurs of a growing divide between those involved with theology, on one hand, and those involved with strategic praxis (a persistent issue not only in Lausanne but in any global-uniting effort).
.
.
These tensions helped curb my idealism in a healthy way, I believe. The picture of unity is grand, but it's process is gritty. But for some reason, in the days immediately following the Lausanne meetings, I felt like the process was discouraging.
.
.
In retrospect, I am wrong to immediately arrive at a place of discouragement. Like loose trash in my carry-on, I need to dispense with unfounded discouragement. As a sunny idealist, I wish everyone in the room could've seen eye to eye and march in perfect synch without having to voice concerns, resolve conflicts, and reach for unity among various constituencies. But Gen 11.1-9 reminds me that, perhaps, the fact that we cannot agree in one language forces us to listen and learn from each other in multiple languages. And this, ultimately, compels us to lean on God, the very lesson that went unheeded on the tower that day.

.

.

* * *

.
.
The verdict, then. Were the Budapest meetings worthwhile? Is there a continuing place for Lausanne and other global movements? As the Scottish business man who planted several churches among poor South Africans sitting next to me on the flight from Budapest to Amsterdam asked with a tinge of skepticism, 'Is there a point to a global movement like Lausanne -- and the related fatigue and waste of multiple meetings -- if God is simply interested in how you and I treat our neighbor on a daily basis?"
.
.
To these questions, I give a resounding yes. For on this side of God's narrative, we will continue to feel -- and even fuel -- the foolishness of Genesis 11.1-9. As individuals. As churches. As a global body. While we need to be faithful to God's mandate for unity on the ground level, we also need to extend it at the global scale (John 17). We need to meet. We need to listen and learn from each other. We need to disagree and question and even part ways.

.

.

Bridging our Babel realities will keep us from repeating them.
.
.

:::

.

.