A Hungry World Needs the Radical Love of Christ

The 2021 Amplify Outreach conference is taking place October 19th and 20th on the Wheaton College campus in Wheaton, Illinois. The conference, co-hosted by Outreach magazine and the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center brings together church leaders from all over the country to be encouraged and inspired to reach their communities and the world together, by hearing from the foremost thinkers in the evangelism and missiology field.

Day 1 of the conference ended with a call to pursue the adventurous life. Mindy Caliguire opened Day 2 with a refreshing reminder that care of others must begin with self-care. The ministry life is difficult and we must remain connected to the vine from which our life flows.

Dhati Lewis followed with the principles that have animated Blueprint Church in Atlanta from its outset and helped them combat the passive consumer culture that so easily sneaks into the life of the church. He encouraged conferencegoers to treat the church not like a family, but to operate as if it is a family, sacrificially serving one another. Then he gave a reminder that the church’s primary mission is to make disciples and embrace a holistic form of ministry that speaks to people’s core identity. He continued by laying out principles for creating a disciple-making culture that is marked by radical hospitality through being authentic, vulnerable, communal, relational and present.

Michelle Sanchez followed up with a case study from Acts 6 that gives us a way forward to dismantle the systemic racism of our day. The story of the Hebraic Jews paving a way for the Hellenistic Jews’ widows to stop being overlooked offers principles for giving a voice to the voiceless in a way that speaks volumes to the culture around us. Ann Voskamp unpacked the biblical concept of hospitality as “stranger love” through powerful anecdotes of her travels to war-torn countries and the U.S. border. As we learn to love those who are other, look them in the eyes, hear their stories, embrace their humanity and reach out with sacrificial love, we are transformed by truly walking in the footsteps of Christ. Hard hearts are made soft and broken souls are made whole as we make the tangible gospel statement of welcoming the marginalized, vulnerable and the stranger. Derwin Gray closed the conference with a talk on how the multiethnic church can heal the fissures that divide us.

The essence of the 2021 Amplify Outreach Conference is a call to reach others with the radical, bold, adventurous, boundary-breaking, hospitable love of Christ that speaks to a world hungry for truth and something that can withstand the cultural convulsions that seek to divide us. The gospel is more relevant than ever, and our call is as always to make disciples of all nations—a call that echoed through the myriad presentations of both days.

For more information and to make plans to join us for the 2022 Amplify Outreach Conference, go to AmplifyOutreach.com.

Jonathan Sprowl
Jonathan Sprowl

Jonathan Sprowl is co-editor of Outreach magazine.