Contact: Noel Foutz, Mission America Coalition, 760-861-0909
DENVER, Nov. 1, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ -- More than 300 evangelism leaders gathered in Denver this week for "Denver 2012: Make Love Your Aim." The event opened Monday with a prayer gathering focused around the "Cape Town Confession" - ten "We believe" statements from the Cape Town Commitment, which resulted from Cape Town 2010, The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization.
The Mission America Coalition (MAC), hosted Denver 2012. MAC Chairman Paul Cedar said opening with the 10 "We Believe" statements was "a call for the Church to believe in evangelism, to discuss evangelism, and to do evangelism. To give high priority to sharing Jesus Christ throughout the nation."
More than 20 affinity consultations met in the afternoons throughout the Denver 2012 Leadership Consultation. The City Impact Roundtable (CIR) affinity consultation, with more than 70 participants, discussed cityreaching models and heard best-practice stories from representatives from Branson, Mo., Denver, and other cities. Participants shared successes and challenges in their own city contexts and had an animated discussion of racial issues and how to reach and know the diaspora peoples in U.S. cities.
Reuben Gonzales, from Denver, said the CIR was transformational for him. "I had such a narrow view of the significance of culture," he said. "It took my blinders off and helped me reframe my approach to ministry."
MAC's facilitator for City Community ministries, Jarvis Ward, said one theme of this CIR was on creating more diversity in age, ethnicity, and gender among "cityreachers."
"Our impact is much stronger when we have engaged younger, browner, and female disciples," Ward said.
Another Affinity Consultation addressed orality -- the need for a spoken, story-centered gospel for more than 70% (5.7 billion) of the world's population who prefer oral learning.
Other affinity groups included Women in Ministry, Faith and Work, Children's Ministry, Mobilizing Churches for Global Missions, Church Planting, Denominational Leaders, Arts and Entertainment, Internet Evangelism, and more.
Affinity consultations and plenary sessions alike encouraged and challenged participants toward a "prayer-care-share" lifestyle.
Plenary speakers included Nick Hall, The Pulse Movement; Richard Coleman, The Mission Society; Kara Powell, The Fuller Youth Institute; Steve Moore, MissioNexus;
Bryan Loritts, Fellowship Memphis, and others.
The vision of the Mission America Coalition / U.S. Lausanne Committee, is to see "the whole Church taking the whole gospel to the whole nation and the world." Membership is free; a monthly e-newsletter of evangelism news, research, and trends is available online at www.missionamerica.org.
