This is an unusual season of grace. In May of 1995, nearly 4000 of the world's evangelical leaders met in Seoul, Korea. Delegates from 186 countries and numerous denominations experienced brokenness, repentance and reconciliation. Delegates from Turkey and Armenia reconciled and embraced one another. Japanese leaders knelt and asked forgiveness from other South East Asians...and so it goes on, this being one event among hundreds like it that have taken place world wide.
As the founder of the International Reconciliation Coalition, I have been asked to sponsor a reconciliation office for the huge AD2000 and BEYOND network. Beginning in 1990 the Coalition has become a rapidly growing fellowship of Christians attempting to deal with conflict in a Christian way. We are a world wide network of like-minded but culturally diverse praying servants from all the streams within God's Church. There are intercessors, prophetic ministries, researchers, strategic planners, training ministries and ambassadors of reconciliation who lead the way in public confession, repentance and reconciliation at Solemn Assemblies and other special occasions.
Like Promise Keepers, the reconciliation prayer movement seems to have a God-breathed momentum far beyond human promotion and we are scrambling to find the leadership needed to cope with the large number of volunteers. We have joined forces with Dr. Peter Wagner and the United Prayer Track to assist intercessors all over the world with various reconciliation initiatives.
The initiatives fall into four categories or series dealing with the future, the present and the past. The Forerunner series responds to trends likely to result in conflict or injustice. The Contemporary Issues series responds to current group conflicts. The 20th Century series responds to the antagonisms rooted in the events of the 20th Century and the Ancient Gates series deals with the catalytic events and seasons of human history that lie at the root of ongoing hostility between civilizations, cultures, peoples and institutions.
Our Coalition office in Southern California helps with research, training and the networking of experts and materials for the growing number of prayer journeys to volatile parts of the world. An initiative is launched when people who trust each other form an alliance around a major reconciliation issue and take action together. The I.R.C. helps such people to find each other and to learn from other intercessors within the network. There are now 42 major initiatives gaining momentum, one of the most significant being the "Reconciliation Walk" a response to the 900th anniversary of the Crusades. European Intercessors have begun to walk the routes of the crusades from west to east, carrying proclamations of repentance to Muslim and Jewish communities for the slaughter done in Christ's name. The response has been mind boggling. Identificational Repentance is proving to be the key to doors closed to the gospel for centuries.
(For more information on other initiatives see the initiative section on this web site).
There is much more to this than can be articulated on this website, particularly about the long term follow through that is the essential fruit of these efforts. For my family and me that has meant moving to the African American community in Los Angeles, fully identifying with its struggles and finding the foundational gifts of friendship that give meaning to our lives. Your journey as a reconciler may be very different from mine but perhaps no less radical. Abandon yourself to Gods purpose, get connected to the prayer movements, listen to the Holy Spirit and take the next step of obedience.
One of my friends is organizing a prayer journey to the historic slave ports of West Africa where black and white Americans will no doubt weep together, learn together and find an intimacy that has alluded less radical believers.
I would like to see several hundred thousand believers take this trip in the next 10 years. What a difference that would make. Why? Because radical steps like this are needed to break through the wall of cynicism and ignorance now hedging us in.
As a white Anglo I recently took the opportunity to ask forgiveness for the sins of my people to an African American grandmother sitting next to me on a plane. I learned that her own great grandmother was once sold as an 8 year old at the slave auction in Richmond, Virginia. She was cool to me at first but then suddenly opened up. It was not the fact that I write books or address politicians that opened her heart, is was when she heard that I had lived for 20 years in her community that she saw an authenticity beyond kind words.
You probably can't live as I have lived but you could spend 6 days in Ghana and Togo on a prayer journey and that, believe me would say something to your African American neighbors that words alone will never communicate.
This is a very exciting time in Christian history. I don't know why we waited 900 years to repent for the
Crusades but I'm glad the breakthrough among Islamic peoples is coming in our lifetime. Listen....stadiums
filled with Christian men are singing a new prayer. At the Promise Keepers rally's, they sing a cry to God
inspired by God. There are tears; there is yearning and hope, every face is turned upwards....."...let this be
the generation of reconciliation...." they sing.
O Heavenly Father, may it be so.