Over 5,000 Christians have gathered in South Korea for the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization to strategise about the right way to fulfil the Great Commission.
The once in a generation congress is happening across seven days on the Songdo Convensia in Incheon, a city bordering the capital of Seoul. Thousands more are participating within the congress virtually.
Delegates from over 200 countries will hear from over 50 speakers and contributors on key issues affecting the worldwide church and missions today, including intergenerational ministry, emerging technology, and God’s mission in cities, areas of conflict and persecution, and the workplace. Other sessions will reflect on the state of Korean Christianity and the situation in neighbouring North Korea.
Speakers include Dr Patrick Fung, Global Ambassador of OMF International, Purpose Driven Life writer and pastor Rick Warren, Dr Billy Wilson, president of Oral Roberts University, and Egyptian professor Anne Zaki.
Lausanne 4 is happening under the banner of ‘Let the Church declare and display Christ together’, with an emphasis on collaborative reflection and motion.
Commenting on the Congress theme, Dr Fung, said, “A divided church has no message for a divided world. God has called us to a unity of the Spirit within the bond of peace.”
Sharing the vision for the congress on the opening ceremony on Sunday evening, Lausanne global executive director, Dr Michael Oh, said that as evil becomes “more vocal and visual on the planet”, now will not be the time for the Church to “cower” or retreat but relatively to declare and display Christ in faith.
“Not arrogantly but humbly. Not in competition but in collaboration,” he said.
Dr Oh laid bare the dimensions of the challenge as he told delegates that the duty of sharing the Gospel with the entire world stays “difficult” despite “an incredible amount of excellent Gospel work” within the half century because the first Lausanne Congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974.
He said, “In the last 50 years, over 9,000 unreached people groups have been reached with the Gospel. We’ve seen incredible growth within the Church in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We’ve seen latest evangelistic strategies and theologies and methodologies developed.
“But with the explosion of population growth in lots of these same areas of the world, the trajectory will not be an acceleration of the sharing of the Gospel but a deceleration.”
Later he added, “Eighty-six per cent of each Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu on the planet have no idea a single Christian.”
This Lausanne congress differs from previous ones in its emphasis on training and equipping Christians to be witnesses to the Gospel of their places of labor. Dr Oh said that the worldwide Church could be “ninety-nine times more practical” if Christians were properly supported for workplace ministry and evangelism.
“There are gloriously beautiful and effective parts of the body which were marvellously equipped and strategically sent to each sphere of society in every nation of the world. They are the ninety-nine per cent of the body [of Christ] who’re artists, technologists, athletes, lawyers, baristas and more,” he said.
“We have for too long neglected to commission and train and bless and equip the ninety-nine per cent of the Church who are literally side by side with the people on the planet we try to succeed in.”
He continued, “Too many workplace Christians have been told implicitly and even explicitly ‘we do not need you’. But we do.
“Can God really do His work through lawyers? Oh yes He can. Can God really do His work through domestic staff? Oh yes He can – and He is, through tons of of Filipino believers within the Muslim world. And can God really do His work through a mere carpenter? Oh yes, I feel everyone knows he can.”
He cited plenty of other challenges resulting in “ineffectiveness and ugliness” within the body of Christ, including a way of “isolation” and competition between ministries, “fighting” over financial resources, and highly publicised scandals involving Christians.
“The repute of the bride of Christ in lots of places world wide will not be good. Rather than people stumbling over the message of the Gospel as we see in Romans 9, too many are stumbling over the messengers,” he said.
“Too many scandals of pride, power and impurity have robbed the Church and compromised our witness.”
He called for repentance and humility over the Church’s “flawed witness on the planet” and “flawed mission to the world”.
“This will not be a moment of triumphalism but sober repentance and fresh resolve,” he said.
Elsewhere in his address, Dr Oh paid tribute to Korean Christianity, noting that the country is home to among the largest churches on the planet and that it’s the second biggest missionary-sending nation on the planet.
Also addressing delegates through the opening ceremony was Rev Jaehoon Lee, senior pastor of Onnuri Church and chair of the Lausanne movement’s Asia Co-Host Committee that helped to organise the congress.
He said that in an increasingly polarised world, the congress offered a vital moment to think critically about among the changes affecting the Church, like technology, the shift within the centre of Christianity to the Global South and East, and the challenges of raising up a latest generation of young leaders.
“The world looks as if it’s getting more torn apart than ever before … Can it’s that God can deliver peace and healing through our prayers? Could it’s that God can bring about hope and transformation through our partnerships?” he said.
The city of Incheon is critical to the spread of Christianity in Korea as the primary foreign missionaries to the country arrived at its port within the nineteenth century to spread the Gospel.
Congress delegates were welcomed to Korea by the Mayor of Incheon, who paid tribute to the Lausanne Movement’s “50-year legacy of world evangelisation”.
Underpinning the congress are two documents, The Seoul Statement and The State of the Great Commission report, each published to coincide with the gathering.
The Seoul Statement is the work of the Lausanne Theological Working Group and draws on feedback from regional gatherings over the past 18 months.
Co-author Dr David Bennett called the document an “exciting milestone” that can construct on previous Lausanne statements, notably the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, the 1989 Manila Manifesto, and the 2010 Cape Town Commitment.
The Seoul Statement identifies seven key areas that the worldwide Church must collaborate on with a purpose to fulfil the Great Commission: the Gospel, the Bible, the Church, the human person, discipleship, technology, and the ‘family of countries’, which focuses on people living in areas of conflict.
It rejoices in what God has already done through the Church to proclaim the excellent news of Jesus Christ, but says that the duty of evangelisation “stays urgent as billions remain outside the reach of the message of God’s love and beauty in Christ”.
“Moreover, within the face of this expansive growth, the church in lots of parts of the world has struggled to effectively nurture the religion and discipleship of tens of millions of first-generation Christians,” it reads.
The statement expresses “regret” that “through the last 50 years of evangelistic harvest, the worldwide church has not adequately provided the teaching needed to assist latest believers develop a really biblical worldview”.
“The church has often didn’t nurture latest believers to obey Christ’s call to radical discipleship at home, in school, within the church, in our neighbourhoods, and within the marketplace,” it reads.
“It has also struggled to equip its leaders to reply to trending social values and to distortions of the gospel, which have threatened to erode the sincere faith of Christians and to destroy the unity and fellowship of the church of the Lord Jesus.”
The statement expresses alarm on the “rise of false teachings and pseudo-Christian lifestyles”, each of which it says are “leading quite a few believers away from the essential values of the gospel”.
The statement calls Christians to renew their commitment to the centrality of the Gospel and the faithful reading of Scripture.
“Only in this fashion can we meet the precise challenges that now face the worldwide church as we seek to bear faithful witness to our crucified and risen Lord — from all over the place, to all over the place, for the sake of generations to return,” it says.
Dr Bennett said the document was each “strategic” and “action-oriented”, and would address key theological “gaps” identified as needed for strengthening global mission today.
“What do we’d like to do together? … Are there areas of the fulness of God’s desire for the nations [and] His desire for His Church where we have now not listened fastidiously enough or where our changing world is raising latest questions that weren’t answered fully enough in our three foundational documents?” he said.
The State of the Great Commission report considers 10 key questions that the worldwide Church must consider because it looks ahead to the yr 2050.
These include questions across the impact of artificial intelligence, changing societal attitudes towards gender and sexuality, the world’s aging population, radical politics, Islam and secularism, and the expansion of Christianity across the Majority World.
“Sub-Saharan Africa’s youthful Christian population ensures the region’s centrality to global Christian growth for many years to return,” the report says.
“Christianity will increasingly be a faith of the aged in Europe and North America,” it reads, adding that “mission is now from every continent to each continent”.
“With the exception of Europe, every region on the planet each sends and receives more missionaries than fifty years ago. Mission is increasingly decoupled from its Western colonial legacy, with more missionaries coming from countries that lack Christian majorities.”
The report further notes that “aside from Africa, all regions will witness a rise within the proportion of the population that’s unevangelized in the approaching many years”.
“This is a stark reversal of a century of growing gospel access world wide,” it states.
During Lausanne 4, group sessions shall be held to debate 25 of essentially the most pressing issues raised by the report.
The congress is being held in close partnership with tons of of Korean churches. Some 4,000 Christians across the country have committed to praying for its success.
