One year from now, should the Lord tarry, 5,000 participants from every region in the world will gather in Seoul, South Korea, for the Fourth International Congress on World Evangelization, hosted by the Lausanne Movement. (Thousands more will engage the Congress through satellite sites.)
The year 2024 will also mark the 50th anniversary of the First Lausanne Congress, which saw the release of The Lausanne Covenant, with John Stott as the chief architect. This is one of the most significant documents in modern church history, serving as a rallying cry and commitment for evangelicals around the world.
In recent weeks, I’ve been reading again through some of the documents from and following the First Lausanne Congress, and I’ve been struck by their clarity of vision and consistency of conviction—words as relevant today as they were five decades ago. No other document better sums up the heart of the worldwide evangelical movement for mission and evangelism.
The entire Covenant is worth reading, but I’ve selected 10 of my favorite quotes below.
1. ‘We affirm our belief in the one eternal God, Creator and Lord of the world, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who governs all things according to the purpose of his will. He has been calling out from the world a people for himself, and sending his people back into the world to be his servants and his witnesses, for the extension of his kingdom, the building up of Christ’s body, and the glory of his name.’
In his commentary on the Covenant, John Stott said, “We cannot talk about mission or evangelism without first talking about God.” I love the dual image of God calling us out and sending us back, as well as the emphasis on the kingdom being extended through our work as both servants and witnesses. All for his glory! (For more on the question of the church’s identity, see my lengthy response to a critique of the church’s missional understanding.)
2. ‘Through [the Bible] the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God.’
After a strong affirmation of the inspiration, truthfulness, and authority of God’s Word comes this important statement about the Spirit’s work in illuminating the Scriptures, and the importance of reading the Bible alongside believers across the world, so we can see afresh and with more clarity the truth of God revealed. (I’ve gathered some examples of how our connection to the global church enhances our Bible reading.)
3. ‘To proclaim Jesus as ‘the Saviour of the world’ is not to affirm that all people are either automatically or ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer salvation in Christ. Rather it is to proclaim God’s love for a world of sinners and to invite everyone to respond to him as Saviour and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith.’
Universalism and inclusivism sever the nerve of evangelism, cutting us off from the apostles who proclaimed the exclusivity of Jesus Christ for salvation and urged us to invite everyone everywhere to turn from sin and trust in him alone. It’s the universality of the gospel that drives the universal call to salvation.
4. ‘To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures, and that, as the reigning Lord, he now offers the forgiveness of sins and the liberating gifts of the Spirit to all who repent and believe. . . . The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his Church and responsible service in the world.’
Here is the heart of the First Lausanne Congress—a focus on the good news of Jesus that brings about both forgiveness of sins and the presence of the Spirit, resulting in personal obedience, a commitment to the church, and service to the world.
5. ‘Although reconciliation with other people is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and Man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ.’
Evangelicals have long debated the priorities of evangelism, social ministry, and political action (and continue to do so). The First Lausanne Congress insisted on holding together a commitment to evangelism with the responsibility of believers to express their love for God and neighbor through social action and political involvement.
6. ‘In the Church’s mission of sacrificial service, evangelism is primary. World evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. The Church is at the very centre of God’s cosmic purpose and is his appointed means of spreading the gospel.’
Evangelism must be primary because of the immensity of the task, the eternal stakes in accepting or rejecting the call to salvation, and God’s intention for the church to take the gospel to the nations. (The significance and interpretation of this part of the Covenant became a point of controversy between John Stott and Billy Graham, but their debate was over the focus and direction of Lausanne more than disagreement on the relationship between the Word and mercy ministry.)
7. ‘A church which preaches the cross must itself be marked by the cross. It becomes a stumbling block to evangelism when it betrays the gospel or lacks a living faith in God, a genuine love for people, or scrupulous honesty in all things including promotion and finance.’
Here is a clarion call for the church to pursue a cruciform life of holiness. We don’t care what the world thinks merely because we want to be popular. We care what the world thinks because we want Jesus to be glorified! Lesslie Newbigin was right: “The only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” We should care about the credibility of the church, not because we want to see approval from the world but because we want to see the salvation of the world.
8. ‘We believe that we are engaged in constant spiritual warfare with the principalities and powers of evil, who are seeking to overthrow the Church and frustrate its task of world evangelization. . . . We need both watchfulness and discernment to safeguard the biblical gospel.’
The previous quote enjoined us to watch our lives. This quote emphasizes the reality of spiritual warfare, especially in the context of guarding the good deposit, watching our doctrine. Is it possible that, even among people who take the Bible seriously and believe demons to be real, we have psychologized or downplayed the unseen realm to the point of losing any sense of real spiritual warfare? I believe so, which is why we need the reminder from the global church of the spiritual forces at work against world evangelization.
9. ‘The Holy Spirit is a missionary spirit; thus evangelism should arise spontaneously from a Spirit-filled church. A church that is not a missionary church is contradicting itself and quenching the Spirit.’
Here’s Stott again: “If we have resisted the missionary dimension of the church’s life, or dismissed it as if it were dispensable, or patronized it reluctantly with a few perfunctory prayers and grudging coins, or become preoccupied with our own narrow-minded, parochial concerns, we need to repent, that is, change our mind and attitude. Do we profess to believe in God? He’s a missionary God. Do we say we are committed to Christ? He’s a missionary Christ. Do we claim to be filled with the Spirit? He’s a missionary Spirit. Do we delight in belonging to the church? It’s a missionary society. Do we hope to go heaven when we die? It’s a heaven filled with the fruits of the missionary enterprise. It is not possible to avoid these things.”
10. ‘We reject as a proud, self-confident dream the notion that people can ever build a utopia on earth. Our Christian confidence is that God will perfect his kingdom, and we look forward with eager anticipation to that day, and to the new heaven and earth in which righteousness will dwell and God will reign forever.’
As much as we might work to see people come to faith and bear the fruit of righteousness, we recognize our hope is ultimately in the promise of God to bring about his kingdom on earth as in heaven. Our vision of the kingdom isn’t the same as a utopian fantasy; we participate in the work of God, yet with chastened expectations as to the good we might accomplish, while awaiting the full consummation of his plan. This is one aspect of eschatological discipleship, and it guards against an overrealized missiology, whether it comes in the form of social justice or Christian nationalism.
The Covenant ends with this call to prayer and dedication. May this be our heart today!
In the light of this our faith and our resolve, we enter into a solemn covenant with God and with each other, to pray, to plan and to work together for the evangelization of the whole world. We call upon others to join us. May God help us by his grace, and for his glory, to be faithful to this our covenant! Amen, Alleluia!
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