Lessons from the Global Church

I recently had the privilege of attending the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation in Seoul, South Korea, on behalf of FIEC.

The event brought together around 5,000 church leaders from every region of the world to advance the Lausanne Movement’s “fourfold vision”:

• The gospel for every person.
• Disciple-making churches for every people and place.
• Christ-like leaders for every church and sector.
• Kingdom impact in every sphere of society.

It was an opportunity to encounter the global church en masse and to listen to leaders from around the world, whether from the platform or in more personal conversation.

Below, I have tried to reflect accurately on what was taught and said, gathering together numerous insights and applications from the Congress.

Start with yourself

Like many British conservative evangelicals, I know my innate tendency is to be critical and spot weaknesses. Sometimes this is just personal preference. I like things a certain way!

But we (and I) can often zero in on certain failings or ‘direction of travel’ without affirming what is good in other settings and being prepared to listen and learn.

This is not easy for any of us, but Lausanne gave me a great opportunity to challenge myself in this area, and make sure I learnt from positives rather than finding myself critical of the negatives. A good start!

The gospel is huge…

It was hugely encouraging to hear story after story of gospel growth from around the world.

Our experience is so often the opposite. Thus we can lose confidence in the gospel.

I found it so helpful to hear about evangelism, conversions and church growth from every corner of the globe. People from all backgrounds and faiths are coming to Christ. Let’s not be downcast or pessimistic!

And much of this gospel work is going on amongst marginalised people and migrants - whether forcibly displaced or economic migrants. In contrast, the church seems more stagnant where there is national stability, security and prosperity.

More bluntly: national comfort and gospel growth don’t often go hand in hand.

…but the UK is small

It is mind-boggling to grasp the sheer size of the world and how small Europe is, let alone the UK. 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia. In some of the countries of the world, evangelical believers outnumber the entire population of the UK!

This got me wondering how easy it is to have an overblown sense of our own importance; either assuming a global role or pining for lost glory. In global Christian terms, we will almost inevitably diminish.

I don’t mean to sound defeatist. But we must open our eyes to what the Lord is (and is not) doing; I suspect we need to embrace our status with increased humility. We will need to partner much more with others.

And, like others, we may well discover that if we embrace humility and regain a commitment to our mission out of weakness, we will see both gospel growth and increased usefulness to the world church.

Don’t assume the gospel

As I observed everything that was done and taught at Lausanne, I felt there was something missing.

I’m certain that everything was underpinned by a faithful commitment to the gospel. But I saw how easy it was for this gospel centrality to be assumed rather than defended. All of us are in danger of making the same misstep.

At Lausanne, most of the content was about what we need to do to fulfil ‘the Great Commission’. However, there was no clear rallying call that stated afresh what the gospel is, why it is the basis of our identity, how it might be endangered in every generation (including the present one), and how we can hold onto it in the coming generation.

There was much talk about the power of God but little about the power of the gospel to save. There was plenty about working towards a better world, but little was explicit about a focus on eternal salvation as the supreme goal of mission and the eschatological future; creation but not new creation. There was recognition that Christianity would be offensive, but little direct exposition of the offence of the cross.

As we look to pass the baton onto the next generation in any setting - local church, fellowships like ours, and in the wider world - we have to keep remembering we’re only ever one step away from assuming the gospel.

Justice is on everyone’s lips

Lausanne is not without controversy for some of us here in the UK. In particular, the twin focus on evangelism and social action/justice is difficult to avoid.

It’s been helpful for me to listen to brothers and sisters around the world who live and minister in circumstances of great injustice. In that context, it is entirely understandable that they see the transformation of their societies and communities as an integral aspect of Christian faith.

The reality is that we don’t feel this in the West. This is because Christianity has shaped our societies for hundreds of years. We live in essentially prosperous and peaceful societies, with a relatively narrow inequality of income and excellent high-quality education and health care for all.

Unlike many of our sisters worldwide, women have rights, protection and equal status. There is significant environmental protection. Corruption is small-scale rather than endemic and crippling. This resulted from Christian influence and an insistence that Christians work for greater social justice in previous generations.

Most of our brothers and sisters around the world live in something more akin to the Roman Empire at the time of the early church. Western Christians can only afford to separate the gospel from social action because the gospel has already reshaped our societies.

Yet, in much of the world, there is a need to transform education, social care, health care, human rights, and more.

This is what the church has always done and is doing. We need to better appreciate our context before concluding that the gospel can be divorced from justice issues.

Abortion was not on anyone’s lips

There was a strange omission, however. It was noticeable (at least as I recall), that there was no mention of abortion as a significant justice issue at Lausanne. There was plenty of mention of other injustices, including the persecution of Christians and climate injustice. But not of the mass killing of children in the womb.

Open Doors says that some 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2023. In contrast, 73 million abortions take place every year.

The scale of this human tragedy is so much vaster than the other injustices we routinely recognise. It ought surely to be on the agenda.

Mission vocabulary is slippery

One of the challenges evangelicals face is that we lack a clear, agreed, and consistent terminology. People tend to use the same word differently, moulding it to suit their concerns and convictions. We can appear to agree but end up talking past each other.

I think ‘mission’ is such a term.

It gets used in multiple ways, all of which were in evidence at Lausanne. It is sometimes used to mean ‘going somewhere else’ to serve Christ, usually overseas or cross-culturally. It is used more narrowly to mean taking the gospel to ‘unreached people groups.’ It is used to mean doing evangelism (as in a Billy Graham/University ‘mission’). It is used for everything and anything that we do for God, from evangelism to church planting to creation care, etc.

It seems to me that we need to be very careful, therefore, in our use of terms.

I think there is a proper sense in which ‘mission’ is everything if by that it means what God ‘sends’ us into the world to do. The church’s ‘mission’ will always include teaching people to serve Jesus faithfully in all aspects of their lives.

However, there is a distinct command to the church to preach the gospel, which is a prerequisite to discipleship because response to the gospel is the beginning of discipleship. This is a verbal activity of declaration/proclamation.

Because we want to fulfil ‘the Great Commission’ in its entirety, I think we need especially to be asking what we are doing to advance evangelism. We must not allow a comprehensive understanding of mission, which is theologically accurate, to permit an absence of evangelism.

Ministry by women must be valued

I am a complementarian. The Lausanne Movement embraces egalitarians too, who I suspect are in the large majority. I am awed by the ministries of the women I met at the conference, many of whom are being used in remarkable ways by the Lord.

You might think that is a surprise, but I have no problem with recognising the spiritual gifting of women.

Pentecost makes clear that God pours out his Spirit on men and women alike. I am not in any way surprised, still less theologically wrong-footed or threatened in my convictions, to find women who are teachers, evangelists, prophets, and leaders in the community in various respects. This is exactly what we see in the New Testament church. It is also what we read in the history of missions.

I disagree in regard to the offices of the church that are open to women (leadership) but that is not a matter of gifting as such. Even though I might disagree on this matter of church office, I don’t regard it as a gospel issue. and would not break fellowship. Others must live out their conscience before the Lord, and I ask to be respected in return.

There is much that could be said at this point, but one thing is clear: I think it is important that we complementarians stop claiming that those who are egalitarian evangelicals will necessarily abandon biblical convictions on same-sex relationships.

I think this seemed a genuine fear when arguments were first being made for women’s ordination. But the landscape has changed. The arguments used to justify egalitarian views of ministry and to affirm same-sex relationships are now very different.

The evangelical egalitarian case is made by arguing about the interpretation of key texts, including 1 Timothy 2. Most commentators in favour of affirming same-sex relationships now accept that the Bible texts are universally negative about homosexual activity but claim that God is saying something different to the church today.

It is not an argument about interpretation but about the finality of revelation. They are utterly different arguments, one of which respects the authority of Scripture and the other of which finds that it does not need it at all.

This works both ways, of course. Yes, complementarians need to stop insinuating that evangelical egalitarianism is the inevitable slippery slope to affirming same-sex relationships. But egalitarians need to stop insinuating that complementarianism is intrinsically abusive of women and an inevitable slippery slope to an oppressive patriarchalism.

We will continue to disagree, but we should disagree well, with mutual understanding, appreciation, and graciousness towards each other.

Where are the prophets?

As the global church grows and diversifies, it is more difficult to find a genuinely prophetic voice speaking into the evangelical movement. Without this, we can only achieve unity by affirming everything and challenging nothing.

Perhaps Billy Graham and John Stott could speak in such a prophetic way in 1974 because the Western church was still dominant and largely spoke to challenge the West. Padilla and Escobar spoke at a time when the West was being rightly challenged for its imperialism, and there was a greater openness to hear.

Today, everyone demands the right not to be offended.

Lausanne could have done with a great evangelical statesman, or several of them, applying the word to us with prophetic insight for the moment. The closest we came to this was the presentation from the Korean church acknowledging its current challenges and failures and its need to repent of competitivity, moral failure, and arrogance.

Perhaps this is the only way a prophetic voice can be heard without causing offence and division. It needs to be an internal voice.

The Western church needs to be rebuked and called to repentance by a Western voice that will be respected and heard. The majority world church needs to be rebuked and called to repentance by a majority world voice that will be respected and heard. It helps all of us to overhear others' internal critiques.

The honest openness of the Korean church about its failings made me recognise similar traits in the church movements I know. We all benefit from such prophetic assessment.

Where’s the prayer?

The need to pray for spiritual power ran through Congress and emerged repeatedly. It was welcome.

Prayer was at the heart of the revivals we remembered. Prayer resulted from the desperation, weakness and brokenness of the church. Prayer will always be lacking when we feel we can succeed through our planning, strategies, and programmes. We basically ask God to bless what we want to do, and to action what we think is a good idea.

Neither the Western nor the majority world church will fulfil ‘the Great Commission’ without prayer. Weakness, dependence and faith are prerequisites for his power and strength. We need to recover this.

Famous Leicester City

Finally, I was surprised to discover how well-known Leicester is!

Coming from Birmingham, I expect that city to be better known. But no! When I told people I come from near Leicester they had almost immediate recognition. This is entirely due to Leicester City’s improbable victory in the Premier League in 2016. It has put us on the map!

The gospel of football is near universal. Lausanne is a vital reminder that we need to prayerfully ensure that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has a greater reach.