Lausanne World Pulse – LAUSANNE REPORTS – Third Lausanne Congress Closes with Ringing Call to Action

December 2010

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization closed in Cape Town with a ringing call to the Church. The Congress, perhaps the widest and most diverse gathering of Christians ever held in the history of the Church, drew 4,000 selected participants from 198 nations. Organizers extended its reach into over 650 GlobaLink sites in 91 countries and drew 100,000 unique visits to its website from 185 countries during the week of the Congress.

Lindsay Brown, Lausanne international director, shared this in his closing address:

Our vision and hope was firstly for a ringing affirmation of the uniqueness of Christ and the truth of the biblical gospel; and a clear statement on evangelism and the mission of the Church—all rooted in Scripture…. The evangelical Church has rightly put an emphasis on bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to every people group, but we have perhaps been a little weaker in our attempts to apply biblical principles to every area of society, and to public policy: to the media, to business, to government. We need to engage deeply with all human endeavour—and with the ideas which shape it.

The Congress included an Executive Leadership Forum and a Think Tank for leaders in government, business, and academia. “There is a groundswell of conviction,” said Brown, “that greater concerted effort is needed to apply biblical truth in these arenas.”

The Cape Town Commitment, a declaration of belief and a call to action, will stand in the historic tradition of The Lausanne Covenant, which issued from the 1974 Congress. The Lausanne Covenant has become one of the most significant documents in recent church history.

Since its founding by Billy Graham, Lausanne has worked to strengthen evangelical belief, and to reawaken the evangelical Church’s responsibility in God’s world. The Cape Town Commitment is therefore in two parts. The first part, a Trinitarian statement, fashioned in the language of love, is the fruit of discussion by senior evangelical theologians drawn from all continents. It is available on the Lausanne website, www.lausanne.org.

The consequent call to action, shaped from discussion at the Congress around critical issues facing the Church over the next ten years, will be completed this month. Chris Wright, international director of Langham Partnership International (John Stott Ministries / USA) is chief architect.