Lausanne Movement

Green, Jay D. 1999. In E. Fahlbusch and G.W. Bromiley (eds), The encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 3:204-208. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

1. Background

2. Lausanne Congress and Covenant

3. Results

The Lausanne movement is an international, transdenominational movement of evangelicals associated with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and dedicated to the study, promotion, and fulfillment of cooperative evangelism worldwide. The movement derives its name and spirit from the International Congress on World Evangelization, held at Lausanne, Switzerland, in July 1974.

1. Background

The history of the Lausanne movement must be understood in the context of attempts to build a global strategy for evangelism before 1974. Since World War II the only remotely unified voice of international Christian action among Protestants had come from mainline moderates and liberals in the ecumenical or conciliar movement embodied in the World Council of Churches (WCC). From an evangelical perspective, the WCC is often perceived as upholding interchurch and interfaith unity at the expense of doctrine, social ministry to the detriment of the individual and spiritual claims of the gospel, and universalism over the exclusive demands of Christ. The disorganized and scattered voices of evangelicalism, however, could hardly muster a coherent perspective, let alone a strategy, for promoting their understanding of global Christianity and the practice of evangelism (Evangelical; Evangelical Movement).

The 1966 Berlin World Congress on Evangelism began to turn the tide for evangelicals. With the international recognition, financial support, and organizational acumen of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, congress participants joined the worldwide conversations about the nature and prospect of global evangelism. In an era of rapid cultural change, the cold war, and mass communications (Mass Media), evangelicals put forth a strong effort at Berlin to strike a confident note on behalf of biblical evangelism in a manner that seemed to take seriously at least some of what conciliar Christians had long argued about unity and even social ministry. The commitments of the Berlin congress, however, did not go far enough. In 1967 Carl F. H. Henry commented that the Berlin Congress had “brought the evangelical movement to a brink of decision over three major concerns that impinge upon its evangelistic task in the world … theological, socio-political and ecumenical” (p. 1). The 1974 Lausanne Congress clearly pushed evangelicals beyond this brink.

2. Lausanne Congress and Covenant

The Lausanne Congress drew roughly 2,700 participants (nearly 4,000 total, including guests, observers, and media) from 150 countries and 135 Protestant denominations who met to network, mutually encourage, pray, and plan a unified strategy for global evangelism. Appropriate in light of the congress theme, “Let the Earth Hear His Voice,” the gathering was heralded as the most globally distributed and representative conference on evangelism ever held to date.

The greatest single legacy of this ten-day event is the Lausanne Covenant. This 2,700-word, 15-point document asserts clearly that salvation is personal and only through faith in Jesus Christ. Unlike previous evangelical affirmations, however, the covenant carefully balances an uncompromising commitment to biblical authority and doctrinalorthodoxy with recognition of the need for interfaith dialogue, ecumenical cooperation, non-Western participation, and sociopolitical action on a global scale. It addresses honestly, and with genuine evangelical conviction, the cultural moment. The covenant, which contains a pledge of commitment to the task of world evangelization, was signed by a large majority of congress participants. It has been translated into many different languages and remains an indispensable guide for the movement nearly 30 years later. In several important respects, the Lausanne Congress and its covenant mark an important turning point for modern evangelicalism’s sense of Christian mission.

First, the Lausanne Congress broadened traditional evangelical ideas about evangelism to include a wider range of concerns than just “soul winning.” The opening paragraph of the covenant speaks of being “moved to penitence by our failures,” a reference to the general lack of social concern and responsibility emblematic of traditional evangelical notions of Christian mission. Past evangelical preaching that emphasized only spiritual aspects of salvation and that neglected social and political concerns were roundly criticized at the congress, especially by its non-Western participants. The Lausanne Covenant, in the words of René Padilla, shows that “biblical evangelism is inseparable from social responsibility, Christian discipleship, and church renewal” (p. 11). While the covenant did not reduce evangelism to social ministry, it questioned any suggestions that evangelists could effectively express the gospel without attending to social, economic, and political needs (par. 5).

Second, though organized and largely dominated by American and British evangelicals (notably Billy Graham and John Stott), the 1974 congress was attended by hundreds of Christian leaders from the Third World (nearly one-third of the participants), whose concerns were heard and heeded to an unprecedented degree. The Third World began to emerge less exclusively as objects of evangelism and much more as partners in ministry. Coming near the end of the age of decolonization (Colonialism and Mission), Lausanne importantly acknowledged the legitimacy and dignity of indigenous cultures and churches, giving credence to Third World Christian leaders. By affirming Third World Christians and acknowledging past failures, evangelicals at Lausanne opened the door to a kind of cross-cultural dialogue that would later attune Western ears to rethinking aspects of the gospel when seen in light of non-Western cultures.

Third and closely related, the congress affirmed what might be legitimately described as a thick sense of culture, taking seriously at least some insights of modern-day cultural anthropology. A humble, even penitent, tone characterizes the Lausanne Covenant on the question of culture. “Missions have all too frequently exported with the Gospel an alien culture, and churches have sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to the Scripture” ( par. 10). The covenant declares that “a new missionary era has dawned,” conceding that “the dominant role of western missions is fast disappearing” ( par. 8). Prior conferences had generally taken the Western-oriented definition of Christian mission for granted. Lausanne would signal a new day for evangelicals, who would thereafter pursue strategies for evangelization that endeavored to speak the gospel in ways that were both transcultural and sensitive to local contexts (Evangelical Missions).

Finally, the congress affirmed that Christian unity and cooperation across denominational and (within some limits) theological boundaries would be imperative for world evangelization. The covenant went as far as to call on all Christians to “break out of our ecclesiastical ghettos and permeate non-Christian society” ( par. 6). It went on to proclaim “unity” as a necessary virtue rather than something to fear, admitting that past expressions of disunity ultimately weakened the church’s witness ( par. 7). Lausanne boldly answered any lingering question about whether mainstream evangelicals were moving to shed the separatism of their fundamentalist forebears.

3. Results

Missiologist Peter Beyerhaus has argued that the real significance of the Lausanne Congress has not been the concepts and strategies it endorsed but rather the energy it spawned and the missionary consciousness it raised. As he saw it, “Small rivers, some of which had been rather unnoted before [Lausanne,] became confluent, and by their union formed one mighty stream, which was deep enough to carry a fleet of evangelistic fisherboats, and which had water enough spiritually to fertilize the dried soil of latter 20th century christendom” (p. 170). In the months following Lausanne, this “stream” began to take shape as a group of 50 men and women — the Lausanne Continuation Committee for World Evangelizaion — convened to organize an assortment of conferences, symposia, and consultations. The group’s name was later changed to the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization (LCWE). Their charge was simple: to preserve the spirit of Lausanne by supporting all international and regional efforts consistent with the covenant. From these meetings and other less formal developments, the Lausanne movement was born.

Significantly, leaders of the Lausanne movement determined to maintain a decentralized, even nonlocalized, focus so as avoid becoming too closely tied to any particular culture or national identity (a feature of the WCC that some have criticized). The LCWE resisted a merger with the World Evangelical Fellowship (World Evangelical Alliance) for this reason, and the suggestion of building a center for world evangelization was also dismissed on similar grounds. As a result, the movement has been able to shape a wide-ranging, multidimensional ministry. Lausanne had a hand, directly or indirectly, in nearly every formal evangelistic initiative undertaken around the world during the last quarter of the 20th century, apart from those associated with the Roman Catholic Church, Pentecostalism (Pentecostal Churches), or the WCC. LCWE has acted as an umbrella agency, sounding board, and resource for countless churches, denominations, mission societies, theological seminaries, colleges, and parachurch organizations in support of many different tasks and issues related to evangelism.

Global missionary strategy has remained the central concern and area of expertise for the LCWE. In conjunction with the Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center, the Strategy Working Group of the LCWE annually publishes World Christianity, a presentation of social statistics on unreached or newly evangelized people groups as a way of tracking the growth of Christianity in countries around the world. LCWE has been especially sensitive to the ways that unique cultures and worldviews receive the gospel and how Christians might be more sensitive to working with these groups. At the Lausanne-sponsored Consultation on World Evangelization held at Pattaya, Thailand, in June 1980, participants identified 17,000 population groups with no indigenous core of Christian believers. At this consultation 17 miniconsultations also worked to develop evangelism strategies relevant to particular groups, including Marxists, Jews, Muslims, secularized peoples, Hindus, Buddhists, the urban poor, and Chinese.

In 1989 a second Lausanne congress convened in Manila, involving 3,500 people from 170 countries. Lausanne II sparked the AD 2000 Movement, which developed a series of specific strategies for completing world evangelization in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, plus several major initiatives in the areas of prayer (esp. in what has been called spiritual warfare), social concern, and Bible translation. The Lausanne Women’s International Network was formed soon after Lausanne II as a way to address the needs and problems faced by women around the world.

The congress produced the Manila Manifesto, a document similar to the Lausanne Covenant in tone and content, with a few exceptions. For instance, it addresses with greater bluntness “the failures in Christian consistency which we see in both Christians and churches” (§7), and it admits that non-Christian religions “sometimes contain elements of truth and beauty,” even while rejecting any sense that they might somehow constitute “alternative gospels” (§3). A third major world congress is being planned for the fall of 2004 in Thailand.

Since Lausanne has always been considered an idea-oriented movement, strategy has never been limited to mere tactical concerns. The Theological Committee of the LCWE, led for many years by John Stott, has consistently spoken to theological issues and problems in contemporary global ministry in an effort to maintain its doctrinal integrity, to address newly emergent issues, and to educate those serving. One matter the Theological Committee has faced, though not satisfactorily clarified, has been the doctrine of the church, an issue on which Lausanne 1974 and its covenant has been consistently criticized for being too vague and even undermining the authority of the institutional church. Furthermore, during the 1990s alone, LCWE sponsored international consultations on numerous theological matters, issuing substantial statements on topics ranging from Christian nominalism to the role of Scripture, spiritual warfare to the unique theological challenges of Jewish evangelism (Jewish Mission).

Finally, the LCWE has been active in aiding, financing, and encouraging national churches in the Third World, as well as Third World missionaries, whose numbers have grown more than 15-fold since 1974. While the Lausanne Covenant had taken important steps toward dealing with the knotty questions of Christianity and culture, much further work needed to be done. A theological consultation, “Gospel and Culture,” held at Willowbank, Bermuda, in January 1978 drew together dozens of the world’s leading missiologists, anthropologists, church leaders, and theologians to think more carefully and deliberatively about the transmission of the gospel and the relationship between faith and culture.

One of the most substantial and concentrated efforts in this vein has been the Chinese Coordination Center of World Evangelization (CCCWE), an initiative begun in 1976 and devoted to organizing Chinese Christians around the world as a way of aiding the evangelization of China. In the summer of 2001 CCCWE sponsored a congress on evangelization in Malaysia where 1,600 Chinese delegates from around the world identified practical problems in China and strategies for more effective transmission of the gospel.

The Lausanne Movement has not lacked for critics. From the Left, it is no surprise that mainline Protestants (esp. those associated with the WCC) have found Lausanne’s theologically conservative sense of mission too narrow, and its refusal to conflate evangelism with social concern, inadequate and unholistic (see H. Berkhof). Criticisms from the Right have been perhaps even more pointed. In 1978 evangelical missiologist Arthur Johnston argued that the Lausanne vision for world evangelization was theologically soft, overly concerned with social and political issues, and fraught with compromise in the name of cooperation. What others recognized as long-overdue changes for the better, Johnston feared as an evangelical forfeiting of the essence of the Great Commission (pp. 358–60). While ultimately more affirming, Peter Beyerhaus has voiced other concerns about Lausanne. He has criticized the Lausanne movement for its lack of developed theologies of non-Christian religions. Like Johnston, he has also warned that the Lausanne vision can easily lapse into a new form of social gospel. Finally, Beyerhaus wonders if Lausanne’s continual projections of a progressive, almost unstoppable movement toward world evangelization represents a dangerously naive optimism. Rather than emphasizing only confidence, he cautions that the path of gospel obedience will inevitably provoke resistance, hatred, and persecution (pp. 182–83).

While hardly perfect, the Lausanne movement has been providing a guiding light for millions on countless issues that have arisen in the course of pursuing world evangelization. It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the Lausanne movement for setting a global agenda for evangelical Christian ministry during the last quarter of the 20th century. One would be hard pressed to locate an evangelical seminary curriculum, a Christian world relief organization, a denominational missions agency, or even an inner-city ministry that has been untouched by the vision, instruction, or far-reaching spirit of Lausanne. Well into the 21st century, it seems, the Lausanne movement will continue to play a defining role in the endeavors of global Christianity.

Ecumenism, Ecumenical Movement; Missionary Conferences 3

Bibliography: H. Berkhof, “Berlin versus Geneva: Our Relationship with the ‘Evangelicals,’” ER28 (1976) 80–86 ∙ P. Beyerhaus, “Evangelicals, Evangelism, and Theology: A Missiological Assessment of the Lausanne Movement,” ERT 11 (1987) 169–85 ∙ K. Bockmuehl, Evangelicals and Social Ethics: A Commentary on Article 5 of the Lausanne Covenant (trans. D. T. Priestley; Downers Grove, Ill., 1975) ∙ R. T. Coote and J. Stott, eds., Down to Earth: Studies in Christianity and Culture. The Papers of the Lausanne Consultation on Gospel and Culture (Grand Rapids, 1980) ∙ J. D. Douglas, ed.,Let the Earth Hear His Voice: International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne, Switzerland (Minneapolis, 1975) ∙ C. F. H. Henry, Evangelicals at the Brink of Crisis: Significance of the World Congress on Evangelism (Waco, Tex., 1967) ∙ A. P. Johnston, The Battle for World Evangelism (Wheaton, Ill. , 1978) ∙ A. Kirk, The Good News of the Kingdom Coming: The Marriage of Evangelism and Social Concern (Downers Grove, Ill. , 1983) ∙ “Lausanne ’74-an Overview,” EMQ10 (1974) 259–320 ∙ J. Matthey, “Milestones in Ecumenical Missionary Thinking from the 1970s to the 1990s,” IRM88 (1999) 291–303 ∙ C. R. Padilla, The New Face of Evangelicalism: An International Symposium on the Lausanne Covenant (Downers Grove, Ill. , 1976) ∙ J. Stott, “The Significance of Lausanne,” IRM 64 (1975) 288–94; idem, “Twenty Years after Lausanne: Some Personal Reflections,” IBMR 19 (1995) 50–55; idem, ed. , Making Christ Known: Historic Mission Documents from the Lausanne Movement, 1974–1989 (Grand Rapids, 1997) ∙ E. S. Utuk, “From Wheaton to Lausanne: The Road to Modification of Contemporary Evangelical Mission Theology,” Miss.14 (1986) 205–20.