The second day of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative has been wrestling with ‘What is the Gospel?’. This is a particularly challenging question in the ‘hard places’ of our contemporary world.
During the afternoon participants heard from Salim S. (name withheld) from Allepo, Syria, who joined the consultation by Skype because he had been unable to obtain a visa to enter Finland. He spoke of the desire of many Christian families in his devastated city to ‘stay put’ and to maintain there a witness of reconciliation and peace. Even in that hard place his church continues to train young leaders, bring children to the knowledge of Jesus Christ and serve the broken hearted.
The consultation also heard from two participants who bridge the Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Christian divide in Israel/Palestine and Fr. Gregory Edwards who ministers in Greece and the USA. Fr. Gregory challenged us not to forget that places such as the USA can be as ‘hard’ spiritually as the war zones of our world.
Earlier in the day Dr. Bradley Nassif and Dr. Rosalee Ewell, speaking from Orthodox and Evangelical perspectives, had helped us consider the content and meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not only as written word but also as oral story, lived lives and the Incarnate Word of God ever present in Christian communities.