On the cover of each issue of Outreach magazine, you’ll see the same three words emblazoned above the Outreach logo: Evangelism. Discipleship. Service.
Those three words are the guiding principles of the magazine and the animating force of every story you read in the print issue or on outreachmagazine.com. These principles, of course, are not unique to the magazine. They are core to the shared faith of Christians around the world and are grounded in the Great Commission and Great Commandment of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
With that in mind, each year Outreach magazine partners with the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center to co-host the Amplify Conference. It’s a conference animated by those same three principles and geared to forward-focused pastors and church teams.
Andy Cook, the co-director of Lausanne North America and executive director of the Graham Center opened the conference with his testimony. As a small boy he was invited to evangelism events through a local church and gave his life to Christ. Now Andy is leading the Graham Center’s efforts to mobilize and equip the church to share the gospel globally with every person. The pastor who invited Andy was in attendance, and it was a moving full-circle moment that illustrated the power of an invitation.
This year the Amplify Conference comes on the heels of the 4th Lausanne global congress in Seoul, South Korea, and you can feel a wave of evangelistic momentum being carried forward in the opening sessions. Outreach magazine Editor-in-Chief Ed Stetzer shared four visions that he had upon returning to the states from his time at the Lausanne Congress.
First was an eschatological vision inspired by the convening of over 10,000 delegates from all over the world, worshiping together in a foreshadowing of Revelation 7:9–12. “There’s a beautiful picture that around throne forever we can have a foretaste of kingdom and that escatalogical vision should capture our hearts; it captured my heart,” he shared.
Second was a missional vision to join Jesus in his mission around the world (John 20:21). Just as Jesus was sent, he now sends us to declare (Luke 19:10) and display (Luke 4:18–19) his gospel. Stetzer shared his own testimony of coming to faith because his late sister was invited to church via an evangelistic bus ministry, which through a chain of events led to him hearing and accepting the gospel.
Third was a collaborative vision. He asserted that the Great Commission which was given to the church calls us to a Great Collaboration. No single Christian or church can reach the world alone. We as the global church must be united in our shared mission if we are to fulfill Christ’s commission to make disciples.
Finally, he spoke of an evangelistic vision. He acknowledged the challenge that it is to get Christians to affirm that they should share their faith. “The path to losing evangelistic focus is a well-trod one,” he lamented. “The evangelism path is the one less trod.” Evangelism is primary to the Lausanne committee and has been since the first Lausanne congress in 1974 when John Stott proclaimed and Billy Graham affirmed in the Lausanne Covenant, “I think we should agree that in the church’s mission of sacrificial service, evangelism is primary.” Stetzer added, “World evangelism requires that the whole church carries the whole gospel to the whole world,” and left attendees with a charge to align our own lives with the charge to proclaim the gospel.