Archive: Lausanne II: What Happened and Where Were The UMs?

Analysis By George G. Hunter III

More than 4,300 participants and observers from denominations and movements in nearly 190 countries assembled in Manila’s Philippine International Convention Center for the Lausanne II Congress on Evangelization, which met in July. Involvement in this first full conclave since the historic 1974 congress in Lausanne was intense due to the participants’ earnestness and the convention center’s welcome refuge from the city’s monsoon, humid heat. This congress called “The Whole Church” to take “The Whole Gospel” to “The Whole World.”

At the most serious level this congress was anticlimactic compared to the 1974 congress. For instance, the most influential 1974 paper and address came from Dr. Ralph Winter, who defined different levels of evangelism and challenged evangelicals across the earth to identify and reach the world’s approximately “16,750 unreached peoples.” The 1989 congress, by comparison, celebrated the influence of the first congress; its pageantry, stories, testimonies, speakers, music and dance from many Third World movements were moving, at times marvelous.

Still, some themes from this 1989 congress will probably influence world Christianity in the years ahead. First, Thomas Wang, the Lausanne Committee’s outgoing international director, is leading a movement to mobilize the world’s churches to reach all the earth’s unreached people groups by 2000 A.D. Several years ago Southern Baptists defined this convenient and visible goal; it now appears that many of the world’s churches and mission agencies will rally around it.

Second, Ray Bakke and others rang the bell for urban ministry, reminding the congress that by 2000 A.D. more than half of the earth’s population will be urban. The Christian mission faces an increasingly urban world and must redeploy much of its attention, prayer and human resources to serve and reach the struggling populations of cities.

Third, Jim Montgomery’s DAWN (Discipling A Whole Nation) strategy, pioneered in the Philippines, is now being implemented in several other nations. This congress in Manila stimulated much conversation, at least, between denominational leaders of a dozen or more nations.

Fourth, Os Guinness delineated the shape and impact of modernization upon the West and emphasized the need to re-evangelize the neo-pagan populations of Europe and North America. Although mission to the “post-Christian West” has been a topic of some conversation and advocacy since the early 1960s with interest amplified in the late 1980s by Lesslie Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks, this congress should advance this cause.

So Lausanne II in Manila will undoubtedly influence the future of world mission and evangelism. However, none of these themes were launched as movements in the 1989 congress, and none are as innovative and mind-changing as several 1974 themes.

The 1989 congress was significant for who was there and perhaps for who was not. The congress’ daily newspaper reported that participants came from several Protestant denominational traditions as follows: Baptist, 25 percent; Anglican, 20 percent; Reformed, 15 percent; Lutheran, 10 percent; Pentecostal, 10 percent; Methodist, 5 percent and other denominations, 15 percent.

World Methodism: It would be difficult to argue from that data that World Methodism is once again a serious apostolic movement, though Joe Hale, Maxie Dunnam and Eddie Fox were present representing The World Methodist Council’s evangelism concern.

Representation from United Methodism in the United States was scarce—no American UM bishops were present. However, four American Episcopal bishops came, and they reported signs of evangelical renewal in many churches and in their denomination’s world mission. Establishment leaders from other mainline American denominations, notably Presbyterians, Baptists and Lutherans, were present in significant numbers.

To be more specific, one staff person attended from the Board of Global Ministries, one from The Mission Society for United Methodists, and no one attended from the Board of Discipleship’s section on evangelism. From seminaries that essentially serve United Methodism, five were present from Asbury and one from United. In fairness, the delegate selection process may have overlooked many qualified United Methodists (though the leaders of other denominations found a way to make known their interest in attending).

However, the small number of United Methodist leaders in Manila fueled this writer’s anxiety that, when the history of this period is written, the United Methodist Church will be the last mainline American denomination to be set free from the wave of the immediate past to recover its apostolic heritage, vision and power.

Moving beyond those who attended to those who led, the totality of Lausanne II, from the makeup of Lausanne movement committees to the choices for plenary speakers and seminar leaders, presupposed that parachurch organization leaders have much more to contribute than denomination leaders. Lausanne II also relied much less on committees and on insight from theology and mission professors than had Lausanne I. This is the major reason why this congress produced fewer influential ideas than the first.

Hijacking the agenda: As one attends or reads about major international meetings on mission and evangelization (the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) May event in San Antonio, Lausanne II and other major international events of the 1970s and 1980s), a trio of special causes—social justice, universalism, and signs and wonders—is often introduced from the floor by people who sometimes seem bent on “hijacking” the meeting’s main agenda. In San Antonio the WCC decided by a narrow vote against a version of universalism, and its Commission on Mission and Evangelism remains at least as passionately involved in justice issues as in evangelism. Perhaps 25 percent of the Lausanne II agenda, discussion and energy was focused on signs and wonders. And justice was such a formidable concern that a Manila Manifesto evolved which forthrightly called for social justice while, in the full spirit of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, reasserting the primacy of evangelism within the Church’s total mission.

At one level it would be hard to identify three more dissimilar causes than universalism, social justice, and signs and wonders. But as ideological movements one can observe similarities: (1) Each cause has zealous advocates within its ranks who introduce their interest into any forum; (2) Each cause is intrinsically interesting and engaging; many Christians are primed at any moment to hear about any of the three and are favorably disposed to one or two; (3) The advocates for each cause frequently demand a hearing because they assume they speak from “higher ground” than the masses, though the place of the higher ground varies with the cause. The signs and wonders advocates are thought to speak from an inside spiritual track, the social justice advocates from a compassion ethic and the universalist advocates from an enlightenment idea, deeply ingrained in Western culture, about a universal religious consciousness in the hearts of all humans.

The persistent character of each of these causes, like the more perennial church renewal cause, is to negotiate being added to the evangelization agenda and then, once added, to co-opt the evangelization agenda. So evangelicals will often have to make the case for evangelization, even in “evangelism” gatherings!

Perhaps evangelicals are called to accept, consciously and cheerfully, this responsibility to champion the main business of the Church within the total business of the Church. The revealed Lord of the Scriptures, Who promised that through Abraham’s lineage all the peoples of the earth would one day be blessed and did entrust to the Church the Great Commission, does also desire peace upon the earth, justice for the poor and the renewal of His people.

Evangelicals are called to be full-team players who persistently and winsomely remind the whole Church of the indispensable role of evangelization within “holistic mission” and, when necessary, to insist on it.