CAPE TOWN, South Africa – The mood was light Tuesday evening – thanks to leg-swinging praise music – when Lausanne III participants wrestled with the difficult topics of reconciliation in the Middle East, HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking.

Speakers gave hopeful messages of how God is moving and bringing hope despite addressing some of the darkest and seemingly most hopeless situations in the world today.

The Middle East, which has become almost synonymous with violence and Islam, is experiencing an unprecedented level of Muslims becoming followers of Jesus Christ, said Sam Yeghnazar, founder of Iran-focused Elam Ministries. There were only about 500 Iranian Christians from a Muslim background at the time of Lausanne I in 1974, he said. But over the past 30 years, more Muslims have come to Christ than in the past 1,300 years. more >>

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – In an emotional evening, participants of the Lausanne Congress heard the song that the travel-blocked Chinese had planned to sing at the conference and the Scripture verses that they picked out for their situation.

Doug Birdsall, executive chair of The Lausanne Movement, expressed disappointment that China – which has the second largest evangelical population in the world behind Africa – was not well-represented at the Congress. China and Africa were scheduled to engage in a much-anticipated dialogue Monday evening that was canceled after members of the house church were prevented from leaving the country to attend Lausanne III.

In their greeting, the house church leaders chose verses from Philippians 1:29, about suffering for Christ, and James 1:19, about being slow to anger. They also sent the translated lyrics and the Chinese song, “Lord’s Love for China,” that they had planned to sing Monday night. more >>

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – To lively African drumbeats and against the lighted backdrop of the trademark African red sunrise, over 4,000 Christian leaders from over 190 nations gathered at the Cape Town International Convention Center to open the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization Sunday.

It was the first time in over 20 years that the Lausanne Movement, a global network of evangelical leaders who work together for world evangelization, held a global conference. The third Lausanne Congress, also known as Cape Town 2010, is described as the most diverse Christian gathering – in terms of ethnicity, denomination, profession, and gender – in the 2,000 year history of Christianity.

Congress participants represent 198 nations, nearly every stream of Christianity, a diverse age range (40 percent of participants are from 20 to 40 years old), and diverse professions (1,200 participants are pastors, 1,200 are scholars and in the academic field, and 1,200 are from the medical, business, and media fields). more >>

The Lausanne Movement, which came out of one of the most important Christian conferences in modern history, is only as important as people think it is, said the movement’s executive chair.

“Lausanne as an organization is very, very small. We have no members, we have no permanent office anywhere,” explained the Rev. Doug Birdsall, executive chair of The Lausanne Movement, during a Lausanne/Cape Town 2010 global conference call Wednesday. “Lausanne really is only validated to the degree that people buy into the importance of the issues and add value to relationships they are able to make through Lausanne connections.”

For nearly four decades, the Lausanne organization has served to bring Christian leaders worldwide together to strategize on how to evangelize the world. Billy Graham convened the first Lausanne Congress in 1974 and drew some 2,700 participants from over 150 countries. From that conference came the Lausanne Covenant, an evangelical manifesto that called for active worldwide Christian evangelism. The covenant is one of the most influential documents in modern evangelical Christianity. more >>

To mark the 100-day countdown until a historic world evangelization summit, organizers launched a global chat room in eight languages.

Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, which is a follow-up of Lausanne II in 1989, now offers The Lausanne Global Conversation in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

The online conversation invites mission-minded Christians and leaders worldwide to discuss and debate pressing issues facing the global church – such as increasing hostility to Christianity, the threat of terrorism, and HIV/AIDS – in the months leading up to the event. more >>

The Edinburgh 2010 conference will open on Wednesday with the aim of providing direction for Christian mission in the 21st century.

Hundreds of leaders from around the world will gather in Edinburgh, Scotland, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first-ever global mission conference, Edinburgh 1910.

From June 2 to 6, mission experts will convene to discuss nine major themes, including Christian mission among other faiths, mission and post-modernities, and Christian communities in contemporary contexts. more >>