CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Hundreds of imams and mullahs from West Africa have been coming to Christ in the past decade and in turn sharing the Gospel with their peers, said a former Muslim who witnesses to Muslim scholars and clerics.

Brother Daniel (last name withheld for security reasons) said that the initiative he started has exposed over 10,000 scholars, clerics and mullahs to the knowledge of salvation through Jesus Christ over the past 10 years. From that number, some 1,000 have come to Christ with 500 of them having completed discipleship training. Currently, 58 former mullahs, imams, and scholars from the initiative are sharing their faith in Christ, exclaimed Daniel to applause from the Lausanne III crowd.

“The Muslims that are around us are good people; they are sincere in their beliefs,” said Daniel Friday morning. “[But] even though they are very sincere, they are sincerely wrong.” more >>

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – More than 25 percent of the ethnic groups (unreached people groups) in the world, or about two billion people, are not represented at the Lausanne Conference.

An unreached people group means that cross-cultural mission is necessary for a person in the group to hear the Gospel because they cannot find people within their ethnic group to share with them the good news.

Mission leaders on Wednesday said the hardest obstacle to overcome in reaching unreached people groups is the obedience of the church. They spoke at the Lausanne multiplex session titled “M*ss*ng People: The Unserved One-Fourth World.” more >>

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – New York pastor Tim Keller awed the crowd Wednesday evening with his well thought-out argument on why churches around the world need to move into cities.

Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan told attendees of Lausanne III that if Christians want human life to be shaped by Jesus Christ then churches need to go into cities.

Cities are where churches can reach the next generation (young adults want to live in the city); reach more unreachable people (people are far more open to the Gospel in the cosmopolitan city than in their hometown); reach people who have a big impact on the world (filmmakers, authors and businessmen); and reach the poor (about one-third of city dwellers live in shanty towns). more >>

There is a crisis in the church planting community. Many pastors have a horrible marriage and families are falling apart, said Mark Driscoll of Seattle megachurch Mars Hill on Thursday.

Not one to mince his words, Driscoll spoke explicitly of how the wives of church planters are at least as likely to betray the marriage covenant as their husbands. But Driscoll blames the husbands for the broken families. He blasted pastors for neglecting their wives and children and treating them as free staff rather than someone they should love and serve.

“I know thousands of pastors … maybe tens of thousands at this point,” said Driscoll at the Church Planter Acts 29 National Boot Camp in Seattle. “Very rarely do I get to know a pastor and his wife well and find a marriage that if he was married to my daughter I wouldn’t assault him.” more >>

Two influential pastors recently defended the multisite church strategy as a biblical and effective way of bringing more people to Christ.

Seattle Pastor Mark Driscoll and Chicago Pastor James MacDonald made their arguments in an informal debate with Mark Dever, a Southern Baptist pastor, who has some misgivings about the one church in multiple locations model.

"Are you concerned that it bills people too much into you particularly?" Dever, who leads Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., asked. more >>

The Southern Baptist Convention’s domestic mission agency elected Kentucky pastor Kevin Ezell as its new president on Tuesday.

A seven-member presidential search committee of the North American Mission Board unanimously voted for Ezell during a meeting in Atlanta.

"It has at times been discouraging and at times encouraging, but along the way God has been faithful to give us guidance," commented Tim Dowdy, chairman of the NAMB board of trustees, according to Baptist Press. "When He introduced us to Kevin, it was evident through the interview process that this was the man.” more >>