By Munyaradzi Makoni
Religion News Service/ENInews
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (RNS/ENInews) The World Evangelical Alliance expressed disappointment after China prohibited a delegation of some 200 Christians from traveling to a major evangelical conference in South Africa.
“The presence and contribution of Chinese delegates would have enriched all the Congress participants and contributed to a more complete understanding of our common humanity and the diversity of ethnicity and cultural expression that enriches us all,” the World Evangelical Alliance said in a Sunday (Oct. 17) statement.
As many as 4,500 participants from around the globe are gathering in Cape Town through Oct. 25 for the Third Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization.
The first such congress was organized in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland, by evangelist Billy Graham; the second congress, in 1989, was held in the Philippines.
At least 200 Protestant Christians were barred from traveling to Cape Town, apparently because members did not belong to China’s Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the state-sanctioned Christian church.
Chinese officials warned Christians in China over the last two months not to attempt to attend the congress, according to AsiaNews, a Catholic-affiliated news agency. Delegates were prevented from leaving China even though they had visas for South Africa. Some were brought
back home from airports while others had their passports confiscated.
The Chinese government’s foreign ministry told reporters on Oct. 12 that Lausanne organizers did not invite representatives from the official China Christian Council to attend the congress.
It said that such an act was a disrespectful intervention in the religious affairs of China. The China Christian Council works closely with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
In a statement, Doug Birdsall, executive chair of the Lausanne Movement, said the planners for the Cape Town event had “no intention of challenging the Chinese government’s principle of independent, autonomous and self-governed churches …. We very much regret that our intentions and the decentralized invitation process to our Chinese brothers and sisters have been wrongly perceived.”
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Australia has an amazing travel-based tech startup scene.
It could be the fact that we’re so far away from everything (including other cities within Australia!) that travel is something we’re inherently familiar with. Or it could be that because we live in a wonderful country that so many other people want to visit we have great exposure to what foreign travellers want.
Either way, we can boast startups like semantic flight search engine Adioso, Innovative travel Q&A site, Travellr, Travel-partner search site Globetrooper and discount backpacker deal site BrokePacker.
The other thing that unites these startups is that they’re all founders or members of Travel Tribe, the travel industry phenomenon that started in Sydney and has since spread all over the world to places like London, San Francisco, New York and Toronto.
The latest initiative from the group is the Sydney Travel Tribe unconference, which will be held on October 26th from 6pm. You can find all the details about the event here.
I spoke to Ian Cumming, founder and CEO at Travellr and one of the chiefs of the travel tribe about the event and why he chose the unconference format:
The aim of the Sydney Travel Tribe Unconference is to tap the collective knowledge of the travel industry and provide a forum to share ideas and discussion about online travel in a fun and interactive way. An unconference is a self-organising event where everyone is a participant! We’ll be calling on everyone who turns up to discuss, share their thoughts, and contribute to the evening!
As for the format of the night, Cumming said:
The format of the event will be be 2 and half hours of brainstorming, discussion, and collaboration in an “unconvention” style, followed by networking and drinks. The broader topic of the unconference will be “online travel” – but it’s up to you to bring along the ideas and issues that you want to talk about, because you and your fellow participants will be voting on the conference panel and which streams to hold!
Seriously, if you’re involved in a travel startup and you can be in Sydney on the 26th October, you need to go to this.