Jewish Evangelism Leaders Meet in Jerusalem
Jerusalem, ISRAEL – August 23, 2015. Reaching Jews with the message of Jesus is truly a global enterprise, as evidenced by the tenth international conference of the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) held from August 16-21. More than 200 participants from six continents gathered together in Jerusalem to strategize, plan and encourage one another to carry out this effort that began in that same city 2,000 years ago. The conference theme was, “From Jerusalem and Back – An Unchanging Gospel.”
Joseph Steinberg, CEO of Christian Witness to Israel, and a first time attender to this gathering, commented: “The thing about LCJE is that it provides a great setting for organizations like ours to partner with others for the advancement of the gospel.”
Tuvya Zaretsky, LCJE President, said in one of the final sessions, “I urged our LCJE members to affirm initiatives for reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians. Our network members recognize the powerful testimony when former enemies are made one through forgiveness and grace in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). We appreciate statements about reconciliation ministry in the Cape Town Commitment Part II. B. 1, “Building the Peace of Christ in our Divided and Broken World.”
While at least one session was held that touched on this hot topic, which some called ’the elephant in the room,” many other equally important issues were discussed, such as dealing with opposition when bringing the Gospel to Jewish people. Local congregational leader Howard Bass described his religious services being broken up by local Orthodox Jewish anti-missionaries. Leah and David Ortiz described how they responded to the terrorist act by imprisoned Jewish terrorist Jack Teitel, who planted a bomb that exploded at their home – nearly taking the life of their young son, Ami. Josh Turnil, Paris director of Jews for Jesus, gave account of how his workers responded to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist acts on the Jewish community in Paris. Conference participants were encouraged to continue strongly despite opposition.
At the 35 year mark, the conference ended with a call to raise up the next generation of those who are called to bring the gospel to Jewish people. One of the younger participants, Simon Kruger of the Danish Israel Mission, put it this way: “The program honored pioneers in our field but also sounded a strrong note for the empowerment of younger leaders to lead LCJE into the future.”
The conference also produced a more comprehensive statement, available at lcje.net (see below).
For more information about LCJE, contact their International Coordinator, Jim Melnick, at lcje.int@gmail.com.
For interviews, please contact Susan Perlman at susan.perlman@jewsforjesus.org.
Read the statement from the conference.
Photos from the conference can be found here.
Papers and presentations from the conference can be downloaded here.
The conference survey results can be downloaded as a PDF file here.