Lausanne World Pulse – Building a Solid Theological Foundation for Mission Policy and Praxis

May 2008

By Samuel Escobar

The Lausanne Movement started at a momentous point of evangelical convergence in the twentieth century.

It had been preceded by the amazing growth of evangelical missionary activity after World War II and the surge of the United States as a dominant nation in both world politics and Christian mission sending. Protestant missionary enterprise and missiological reflection had entered a critical period, a time of radical criticism of traditional missionary activity, within the framework of wars and movements against European colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, and the ideological battles of the Cold War period.

The genius of Lausanne was the ability to keep the motivation and momentum of missionary activism and at the same time to be self-critical in a mature way. This kind of balance characterizes the tone of the Lausanne Covenant: “We are deeply stirred by what God is doing in our day, moved to penitence by our failures, and challenged by the unfinished task of evangelization” (Introduction). Such balance made the Covenant a source and inspiration of commitment to action but also a proposal for a renewal in missionary policy and practice. Correction and reform of missionary practice was to come from theological conviction as the Covenant offers a solid theological frame for its proposals.

During the three and a half decades in which the Lausanne Movement has developed (from 1974 to present), there has been intensive growth in missionary activity. Using David Barrett´s data, we see that by 1970 there were 2,200 foreign mission sending agencies, by mid-1998 that figure had grown to 4,650, and by mid-2008 the number had slightly declined to 4,550. The income of global foreign missions was estimated at three billion US dollars by 1970, growing to 11.2 billion by mid-1998 and to an estimated twenty-three billion by mid-2008.¹

This growth of activity and income includes missionary initiative now coming from churches in the Majority World of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. What is more difficult, if not impossible, to trace or measure is the quality of the missionary activity in relation to what degree the proposals of the Lausanne Covenant were put into practice.

I am of the conviction that the Lausanne Covenant, and the documents that registered the reflection on action that followed the 1974 Congress, are a good evangelical basis for developing missionary policies and shaping missionary practice in the twenty-first century. As I pointed out in a previous article, John Stott edited documents in the book Making Christ Known² that record the process of action and reflection that took place in the twenty-five years between 1974 and 1989. These documents strike a balance between theological foundations and pragmatic consequences. Let me point to four areas in which the Lausanne Covenant exerted self-criticism and which are still points that those developing mission policies and shaping missionary practice would do well to pay attention to today.

Samuel Escobar was born in Peru and ministered in Latin America under the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. He was chair of missiology at Palmer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, USA. He spoke at Lausanne 1974 and was a member of the committee that drafted the Lausanne Covenant. Presently he lives and teaches in Spain.