2010 will mark several significant milestones in the globalization of Christianity. It is the hundredth anniversary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, in many ways the high-water mark of Euro-American Protestant missions. It is also the year that the Lausanne Movement, whose initial congress in 1974 solidified the worldwide evangelical movement, holds its third Congress, this time in Cape Town, South Africa.

Lausanne’s Cape Town 2010 Congress will be dramatically different from either Edinburgh 1910 or Lausanne 1974. At Edinburgh there were no representatives at all of non-Western Christianity (Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches were not present). Lausanne 1974 had an influential representation from what was then called the “Third World,” but they were decidedly in the minority. In Cape Town in 2010, the majority of the 4,500 delegates will be from the “majority world.” And the majority of those delegates will be paying their own way rather than relying on Western financial support. It’s a remarkable moment and worth celebrating.

Only a few hundred US citizens will be able to attend Cape Town 2010. For the rest of us, the Lausanne Movement is convening twelve conversations in twelve cities about major issues facing the global church. It’s an in-person version of the Global Conversation series I helped to launch at Christianity Today. I had the privilege of joining the conversation in Chicago in March, and on Wednesday 16 June I’ll be on the panel for the Orlando conversation. I’m not worthy to untie the sandals of my fellow panelists, who range from Catalyst director Brad Lomenick to Jesse Miranda from the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

You’ll have to be in Orlando to join that conversation, but tomorrow night (Thursday 10 June) the Global Conversation arrives at Saddleback Church in southern California, and it will be webcast live at 7 p.m. PDT. You can watch it here.

— Andy Crouch