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LAUSANNE REPORTS

New African Enterprise Centre for Urban Mission and Evangelism in South Africa

By John V. Tooke

If you were to take:

• The scholarly evangelical theological witness of John Stott, Edward Carnell and James Packer
   
• The strategic vision of Billy Graham for mass evangelism
  
  
• The apologetic tradition of Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis and E. Stanley Jones
  
  
• The search for justice of Martin Luther King
  
  
• The passion for peace of Albert Luthuli
  
  
• The reforming zeal of William Wilberforce
  
  
• The spirit of African ministry of Festo Kivengere

...and you brought those influences, in some measure, to fruition in one man, it might look very much like Michael Cassidy.

Michael Cassidy, founder of African Enterprise, had a vision for an evangelism training center.

Cassidy and the Lead-up to a New Urban Centre
Cassidy is an enduring source of leadership in the Lausanne Movement and has played a major part in the locating and early leadership of organising the Lausanne III World Congress on Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2010. On the African continent Cassidy’s influence has extended to many City Evangelism Missions conducted through the many African Enterprise (AE) teams that span the continent.

He has also profoundly impacted the way in which the Church in Africa, and more specifically South Africa, advances and applies the gospel in the two Pan African Christian Leadership Assemblies (PACLA) in 1976 and 1992, and the two South Africa Christian Leadership Assemblies (SACLA) in 1979 and 2003.

Cassidy is founder of African Enterprise (AE) and is recognised in Christian communities for his evangelistic preaching, teaching and his stand for ethical righteousness in society and his struggle for justice in the face of oppression. He has authored over a dozen books and is known for the way in which his message touches both the mind and heart. 

As Cassidy completes close to fifty years as a follower of Christ, he is passing the baton of international leadership to Stephen Lungu of Malawi, and of South African leadership to Greg Smerdon, the newly-appointed South African team leader of AE. A large part of Cassidy’s energies are now being directed toward the new Centre for Urban Mission and Evangelism in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.