Christian Leaders Preparing for 2004 Forum for World Evangelization
In preparation for the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization, hundreds of Christian leaders from around the world are exchanging information and ideas on crucial issues facing evangelism. The Forum, organized by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in partnership with the Great Commission Roundtable will be held this September in Thailand to focus on the task of global evangelism.
Over 2,000 Christian leaders are expected to attend the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization, the fourth comprehensive global gathering called by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in the past thirty years.
This year, the topics of discussion for the Forum will include the thirty-one specific issues that have been identified as roadblocks to evangelism following a comprehensive worldwide research effort. The effort, led by Christian Research (CR), a UK-based non-profit organization, involved the consultation of 4,000 senior Christian leaders across the world who suggested specific topics and indicated the average importance ranking of each topic, according to CR Executive Director Dr. Peter Brierley.
According to Brierley, a huge variety of topics were suggested. Those topics were in turn sorted into suitable groups by CR, and then presented to the Lausanne Administrative Committee. The Committee then chose topics that commanded the greatest numbers in responses as well as those that were deemed to be especially important even if only supported by a minority of respondents, Brierley explained.
The resulting thirty-one issues were then divided into three key categories labeled