Spiritual Nuggets from Cape Town 2010

Phil Jenkins | 14:15, Wednesday, 27 October 2010

I'm sitting in the airport in Cape Town waiting for my flight back to the UK. I'm surrounded by the many messages competing for my attention.
"Welcome to Cape Town. Underneath the jerseys basically we're all the same."  So reads one of the slogans left over from the World Cup earlier this year.

"Express your heart," says an advertisement for a South African mobile phone network.

It's too early to say what the lasting messages from Lausanne 3 will be but here's a mixture of one-liners from my jottings during the congress, which are worth considering:

• "We need to be geared to the times and anchored to the rock."
• "The day I became a Christian my life was over; I said goodbye to my life."
• "The problem is not poverty, it's greed."
• "25% of converts today come to faith through videos on cell phones."
• "Our lives are a pilgrimage between two moments of nakedness, let's travel light."
• "Quite rightly we hear a lot about the 10/40 window. Sadly we don't hear much about, pray for, or equip people for mission in the 9/5 window."
• "We must always listen to the voices from the margins. It is these voices that God often uses to renew the centre."
• "Any partnership we enter into for the sake of the gospel will mean something in us must die."
• "People come to Christ to meet a need but they stay in Christ because they realize he is the truth."
• "Is your church the sort of church about which people in your city might say, "We don't agree with them, but this city couldn't do without them"?

And so on.

As you leave through the departure lounge of the airport there's a stunning photo of the famous mountain that dominates this beautiful city.  Underneath it simply says, "Remember you're always welcome at our Table." Amongst the thousands of words we've heard this week, that's an approach to life and mission in the name of Jesus that we would all do well to adopt.