9) Antoine Rutayisire Impacted us —

He pointed out that, in his native Rwanda, 1  million Tutsi tribal people were killed in less than 100 days. It was the worst genocide of the 20th century. Yet here’s the shocker: This happened at a time when over 90% of the people were said to be Christians. Yikes. His talk analyzed how that could happen. It was extremely telling. He postulated that there was a lack of contextualization of biblical truth, ineffective gospel presentation, some poor examples of the messengers themselves (infighting), and a poor relationship between the church and politics. (The church had benefited from political leadership and this apparently kept them from seeing the problems from a critical distance.) In the end, however, he pointed out that Jesus takes away both sin and pain. He rescues the heartache of the victim while he sorts out the guilt of the perpetrator. Without him, there can be no true healing. The conclusion: The world wants us to water down the message. But if we don’t preach Christ and Him crucified, we’re cheating them. And the results will out us.