(CP) In his 54th year in ministry, Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church, declared at the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization that he would spend the next 10 years of his life continuing to help church leaders "finish their race" and fulfill the Great Commission in their lifetime.
Following an in-depth group discussion with delegates at Lausanne 4 earlier last week in which he detailed how pastors and church leaders can witness the exponential growth of believers like that seen by the first century Church simply by modeling Jesus, he shared with the thousands of delegates on Saturday 10 action steps from Acts Chapters 1 and 2 to evangelize the lost.
Warren, who attended his first Lausanne when he was 20 years old, told those younger than 40 to look to those around them who are 40 and older because they're going to need those individuals with experience to help them as "mentors, models, partners and friends" in order to finish their God-given assignments.
Here's the list of the 10 action steps Warren shared at Lausanne 4:
1. Pray for God's power
"Number one, we must pray for God's power. ... Prayer is mentioned many times in the book of Acts. Friends, when we start praying like they prayed in Acts, we'll start having the power like they had in Acts. There's a direct connection between prayer and power. Much prayer, much power. Little prayer, little power. No prayer, no power," said Warren, who retired from Saddleback Church in California in 2022.
2. Translate God's Word for everyone
"Number two, we must translate God's word for everyone," said Warren, who shared that he's devoted his life to fulfilling the Great Commission and training other church leaders to complete their calling well.
"God's Word is alive. God's Word is transforming. God's Word changes lives. But we have to put it in words that everybody understands. We must translate God's Word for everyone. And sadly, there's still thousands, even millions, of people who don't have a Bible in their translation. That's part of our next action step.
"At Pentecost, God showed the importance of translation because he did a translation miracle with tongues. He reversed Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, at Pentecost. We must translate God's word for everyone," Warren reiterated.
3. Appreciate our diversity
"Number three, we must appreciate our diversity. Not tolerate it, not accept it, but be proud of it. Love it, celebrate it.
"We need to do this because, number one, diversity is God's idea. He made us all different. The person who doesn't like diversity is basically saying, 'God, you made a mistake. Why didn't you make everybody like me?' That's the hype of pride.
"We must celebrate and enjoy and grow on our diversity because diversity in ministry is a strength of the Church, not a weakness. Why? It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people," he stressed.
"He (God) wants unity. He doesn't want uniformity. The only way we'll ever have unity is to love diversity.
4. Train every believer to preach the Good News
"Number four, we must train every believer to preach the Good News. At Pentecost, Peter had to quote Joel, the prophet, in order to explain why women were preaching at Pentecost. And here's what he says in Acts 2:14-18, 'I will pour out my spirit on everyone, your sons and daughters will preach, your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams' — that's intergenerational — 'and all my servants,' both men and women, 'I will pour out my spirit and they will preach.'
He continued, "In 2003 at Saddleback Church, we launched an every member campaign that every member in our church would go to the mission field and plant a church. ... We took the five things that Jesus did, and we called the Peace Plan: Proclaim the Good News, equip every believer and alleviate suffering — that's poverty, disease, illiteracy — and contend in prayer as we fight battles on our knees and establish churches.
"Over seven years, I sent out 26,869 of my members to plant a church in every nation of the world. We're the only church in Christian history to plant a church in 197 nations. This was done by normal people.
"If you're a pastor, I would be honored to teach you how to do it. Your church can send missionaries around the world. You could mobilize. My goal is to help you turn an audience into an army, to turn spectators into participators, to turn consumers into contributors, and to turn members into missionaries and ministers.
5. Apply God's Word to ourselves to finish the task
"Number five, we must apply God's Word to ourselves to finish the task."
"We're going to have to practice what we preach," Warren emphasized. "Jesus says, go and do likewise. James says, be a doer. The Word, the Great Commission, says, teach them to do everything I command, not teach them to know the problem with the Church today. We know more than we're doing, and there's a certain kind of preaching that will help people become doers of the Word.
He added that "we must apply God's word for ourselves."
"You want an example of this? Look at Peter's message in Acts Chapter 2. He started responding to a question of the people. They said, what does this mean? And his sermon ended by telling people what to do. When the people heard Peter's words, they asked, 'What shall we do?' That's what your sermon should be. Start with what does it mean and end with what should I do from today?
"A lot of messages at the end, they're still going, 'What does it mean?' Teach people to be doers of the Word, to train people on how to be a doer."
6. Model love to the world
"Number six, we must model love to the world," Warren said. "Love always attracts. My definition of evangelism is, you build a bridge of love between your heart and theirs, and Jesus walks across. Growing churches love, loving churches grow," he added.
"If you have a church that genuinely loves lost people, you'd have to lock the doors to keep people out. Now, a lot of people say, we love everybody we already know — that's not loving church."
7. Return to using homes
"Number seven, we must return to using homes," Warren advised, calling this the "fastest community growth movement of [the] Christian Church." His own church, he said, grew 50% in a decade before it ever had a church building.
"We had no church buildings. I wanted to prove you don't have to have a church building to grow a church, so Saddleback went 13 years without a building. We had over 10,000 people coming every week before we built our first building. Don't tell me you have to have a building to grow a church. The fastest growth was through homes. We [need to] go back to that."
8. Worship must become a joyful witness
"Number eight, our worship must become a joyful witness," he said. "And all I'll say about this is that worship, when celebrated, attracts unbelievers just like they like to go to concerts."
9. Share everything
"Number nine, we must share everything to work together," Warren said, citing Acts Chapter 2:44. "Verse 44 says all the believers shared everything with each other. All these things are teaching. ... This is real collaboration, to co-labor."
10. Make financial sacrifices
"Number 10, we must make financial sacrifices," Warren said with conviction. "Verse 45 says they would sell their land and the things they owned in order to give the money to those who needed it.
"These are things that every one of you can do tomorrow on your way home from Lausanne," he told the delegates who gathered in-person on the last day of the week-long conference.
Lausanne 4 brought together over 5,000 Christians from over 200 countries to South Korea for a week of collaborating and strategizing for global missions.
Lausanne 4 was held around the theme of "Let the Church Declare and Display Christ Together." It was supported by hundreds of Korean churches and thousands of individual Korean Christians who signed up to pray for or volunteer their time at the Songdo Convensia.
