NOTE: Foursquare Connection 2020 has been canceled due to COVID-19. Please visit FoursquareConnection.org for updates.
Recently, a few of our Los Angeles based team, including President-Elect Randy Remington, met in New England a few days for a retreat. On one of our days together, we traveled to the Boston Dream Center, led by Sheila Donegan. The “war room,” where we stood and prayed for the ministry there, was located feet from the Boston Common, as well as blocks from several significant freedom sites, where the early patriots of an emerging nation often paid the ultimate sacrifice. Many paid with their lives so that others could eventually live in freedom. Even today, the New Hampshire license plates read, “Live Free or Die.”
It wasn’t difficult for me to overlay those patriotic passions of long ago with the emerging and compelling passions of the church as it anticipates the return of Jesus. These stakes are about more than temporary personal freedoms, and more than a national identity. These stakes are about eternity. Our existence here is but a smidgeon of time compared to “forever.” That’s why people all over this globe are still compelled to sell everything, go anywhere and pay any price, so that some may hear the Good News that Jesus saves.
I recently heard Oral Roberts University President Billy Wilson describing the life of John Allen Chau, who had attempted to reach an unreached people group with the gospel and was slain by their arrows. It made international headlines. The outside world was not able to reach him, and bring him home, but there has been evidence of that remote Indian island tribespeople burying his body. Billy described a young man, who some criticized as being reckless, as living by a faith that compelled him to at least try. “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church,” said Tertullian. It was true then, and it is true now.
We are in the last year of my term as president. We finish by focusing on the fourth foundation of the message of our movement, our Soon-Coming King.
We have highlighted Jesus as:
- Savior (“Commissioned by Jesus,” 2017)
- Baptizer (“Transformed by Jesus,” 2018)
- Healer (“Restored by Jesus,” 2019)
- and now Soon-Coming King (“Compelled by Jesus,” 2020).
Our theme for the year will be marked by a call to prayer. Jesus told us to pray for “laborers.” There will be a call to join the global church (of most every denomination) into a sharing of our faith and encouraging others to do so: GO 2020. Visit Go 2020 for details. Our weekly devotions will feature resources and challenges to share our faith. Our annual gathering in the Denver area for Foursquare Connection 2020 will also celebrate and champion the mission of reaching everyone, everywhere. The whole year is dedicated to “making Him known” (Acts 20:22-24).
There is not a more noble cause or a greater need than to pull out all the stops to take the gospel everywhere to everyone. I hear it in every circle I’m in. Some examples:
- the Dream Center in Boston reaching the incarcerated
- the REMIX ministry on the streets of Claremont, N.H., reaching those imprisoned by addiction
- a street preacher named Robert Shaffer at Cornerstone Fellowship (Anderson Foursquare Church) in Anderson, Calif., compelling people hear the Good News
- Ken Pretty On Top reaching Native Americans on the Crow Reservation and beyond
- Ruben Reyna, invading the gang-controlled areas of Southern California and beyond with the liberating news of Jesus
- young missionaries going into the hardest places with the most powerful message ever
- national leaders and their missions pastors strategizing to reach the unreached
- 20,000 short-term missionaries descending on Los Angeles in July for 1 Day LA to give 1 million service hours to the city and share their faith. This event is being organized by missions.me.
This last Great Awakening just may be about everyone going everywhere with the Good News of the gospel. The apostle Paul was compelled to go to Rome, where he would be arrested, convicted and executed. But his mission was to “make God known.” And he did, by writing a few letters that get published some 80 million times a year. This is perhaps the “final” call to the church to focus everything on the message of the cross and its implications. We have global leaders coming together next May to pray for the first Global Summit since Phoenix (2012). Our goal is to strategize how we finish the Great Commission together. It crescendos with Foursquare Connection in Denver, May 25-28, at the Gaylord Rockies Resort + Convention Center. Don’t miss it.
Our existence here is but a smidgeon of time compared to “forever.” That’s why people all over this globe are still compelled to sell everything, go anywhere and pay any price, so that some may hear the Good News that Jesus saves.
I always sign my letters with these words: “Till all have heard.” That’s my commitment. I hope that it’s yours. Jesus may not call you to go across the oceans, or He may. He may call you across the street, or across the city, or across the nation. Wherever He’s calling you, go and share. We still have unfinished business, until everyone has heard the gospel at least once. If you remember only one theme that was the most important to me during these 11 years, please remember this one: “the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.” That was a prophetic word given to the Lausanne Committee several years ago, and a most relevant word to us right this very moment in time.
Till all have heard
