Leader's Insight: Preventing the End of the World

From the Leadership Journal: Leader's Insight: Preventing the End of the World by Gordon McDonald (HT Neil Craigan)

I was recently invited to the Clinton Global Initiative Conference in New York City by the former president. As far as I know only a handful of evangelicals were present among approximately 1,000 political, business, and cultural leaders.

The CGI Conference is a crossroads of ideas and networking to reduce cultural and political barriers that separate human beings and create the grounds for conflict and disaster. Panel topics included (1) Energy and Climate Challenge; (2) Global Health Issues; (3) Poverty Alleviation; and (4) Mitigating Religious and Ethnic Conflict. They were populated by people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Farmer, Kofi Annan, Hamid Karzai, Pervez Musharraf, Bill Gates, and Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda). And I have named only a few.

Amazingly, there was little energy spent on politics. Rather there was an incredibly serious tone, a clear awareness that the world is in greater trouble today than it has ever been.

Comments

[Dana Ames]

Good of you to point this out. This stands in stark contrast to some Christians who want to bring on the end of the world by making sure that Israel exists long enough to start building the temple again so the Antichrist will arise, defile the temple and instigate Armageddon so Jesus will come back and wipe 'em all out.

End of rant. Yes, I feel a little steamed at the dichotomy here, and frustrated over all the apathetic Christians, including myself.
Dana

[Michael Kruse]

This article just shows to me what can happen when you can get people oriented toward achieving a vision instead of defeating an opponent.

[L.L. Barkat]

I wonder why only a handful of evangelicals were invited... space considerations... or, the apathy Dana points out... ?

[Michael Kruse]

Good question. But even more to the point, why wasn't I invited? *grin*

Seriously, I seem to recall that the program trys to achieve a balance of people from a variety of walks in life. Maybe there aren't enough evangelicals in those roles.