Lausanne Movement

 

Ethnê Intiative: The Body of Christ Together Into the One-Fourth World

A “Least Reached Peoples” Intersection of The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization(Least Reached Peoples Special Interest Group) and the World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission 

A.  VISION:  Making the phrase “unreached people groups” a concept of the past in the realm of Christian missions. 

The Ethnê Initiative seeks to accelerate the momentum for ministry to unreached peoples of the world through creating an arena for on-going global relationships and strategy development.

Responding to the Cry of the One-Fourth World.  After more than 25 years of specific emphasis on the unreached, over 27.9% of the world still has almost no access to hear or experience the Good News of Christ. Though much progress was made in world evangelization over the previous generation, today many Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and other unreached peoples still number in the millions. Unless major strategic changes are brought about soon, mission researchers are predicting that in 2050, there still will likely remain hundreds of ethnic groups (representing hundreds of millions of people) with little or no access to the Gospel and no pioneering work among them. Some people have described these areas as the church-forsaken places of the world. 

Collaboration, prayer and effective strategy are the very tools God has given the Body of Christ to address the urgent challenges of these church-forsaken places. If we can step beyond old practices and harness new international energy sources for mission, we can clarify the task, mobilize new resources, and catalyze partnering initiatives among the unreached – until there are no more unreached cultures. It’s the vision of God’s bountiful harvest in our day beyond what we can imagine or even ask for.

B. IDEA:  Ethnê ’06 – a global strategy planning meeting in March 2006 of the major regional or country unreached people group (UPG) networks.

The purpose of Ethnê06 was to understand the final task of evangelizing the unreached, celebrate the successes and best practices, identify key materials and resources, and strategize about collaborative programs.

Ethnê 06 Outcomes.

The Ethnê 06 meeting was a strategy planning meeting.  All participants worked on development of tangible plans.  Even main speakers will come as working participants.  The following strategy groups were among the main results:

Development of a global Frontier Mission Rapid Response (FMRR) plan. This plan continues to be developed for crisis areas but will be comprehensive in scope. The FMRR will include how to develop coordinated collaboration among teams from each continent for not only disaster relief response but for long-term development and church planting movements. In conjunction with the FMRR will be the exploration of coordinated trans-national pilot projects among some of the most difficult peoples of the world such as in Aceh or Sudan.

The stimulation of a twelve month Global Prayer Initiative. UPG-focused people and networks will join together to pray for the evangelization of all the UPGs in each of 12 regions around the world. Many global bodies have already committed to this effort including the Joshua Project and Global Prayer Digest.

The Ethnê initiative reflects a new pattern of leadership as a decentralized movement built on the strength of various global, regional, national and UPG-focused networks.  The movement will be ongoing but the core leadership will change each time to another network on another continent. Frankly, this decision is also an effort to make sure that this emerging initiative be truly global and not dominated by any one region. 

For Ethnê 06, the Southeast Asia UPG network – SEALINK – was the core of the Convening Group. The SEALINK Steering Committee invited key leaders from around the world to join as a part of the larger Ethnê Convening Group. At the Ethnê 06 meeting, the responsibility will be passed to one of the other regional networks who will become the core of the next planning group for the next meeting. Thus, the leadership of each meeting will be varied.

Some of the Networks helping lead the Ethnê Initiative:

• Philippines Mission Association
• India Mission Association
• Malaysian Center for Global Ministry
• Nigerian Evangelical Missions Association
• Indonesian Evangelical Alliance
• Indonesian Research Network
• US Center for World Mission
• COMIBAM ( Latin America Missions Network)
• Central Asia Consultation
• CRAF (Francophone Africa Partnership)
• Arabian Peninsula Partnership
• China Source
• SEANET Buddhist World Network
• SW China Peoples Partnership
• YWAM Global Strategy Coordinator

On-Going Plans:

The Ethnê Steering Committee is in the final stages of completing an intentional re-formation process.  Several members from SEALINK (the SEAsia UPG network) have stepped off of the Steering Committee.  COMIBAM, the Ibero-American Mission Moblization network has added about 6 members to the Steering Committee.  The first meeting of the re-formed Steering Committee will take place September 2-4, 2007.