The Fourth Lausanne Congress, September 2024, Memos from Incheon, Memo #10
Upon returning from my time in South Korea after attending the 2024 Lausanne Congress, I want to reflect on what was accomplished. Here are my ten take aways. Let me remind you that I don’t usually write so much about one conference. But the Lausanne Congress of 2010 and 2024 have been exceptions. In my ten memos from Incheon, the first of which you can find here, I have tried to give my readers a feel for the content and significance of this event. No one asked me to do this. I do not represent the Lausanne leadership. I write as a delegate, who represented my university at this event and with the eye of a church historian. So what was accomplished?
The big theme on everybody’s mind
The big question of this congress was: How do we reach our world for Christ now, given the unique opportunities and challenges of this moment in history. The theme of this congress was “Let the church declare and display Christ.” As Ed Stetzer said at one session, the mission of Lausanne has two big rocks—gospel proclamation and gospel demonstration, all to the end of accelerating the global Christian mission in fulfillment of Jesus’ Great Commission.
Most diverse missions gathering of global evangelical leaders yet
The Lausanne movement’s fourth global gathering was the largest, most diverse gathering of global evangelical leaders ever. There were 202 nations represented, with 5,200 leaders on site, and 5,000 on line. This was, according to the Lausanne movement’s leadership, “the first global missions conference in a polycentric era of global missions.” This point needs some explaining. The word polycentric is a reference to the fact that now there are many centers of the Christian church, not just one or a few. In this new era missions is no longer one directional. Now missions is from “everywhere to everywhere.”
Lausanne leaders identified three stages of the modern missionary movement. The first era was when missionaries were sent from the west to the rest of the world. The second era was when the indigenous churches arose and the gospel was contextualized. The third era is when these national, indigenous churches begin sending out missionaries. In other words, they they have changed from being a mission field to a missionary force.
Identifying and addressing twenty-five gap areas
The congress intentionally identified twenty-five “gaps” in accelerating and fulfilling the Great Commission in our current world. Members of the congress were assigned to a collaborative team for each of the gaps. Our teams were multi-national. Each gap group identified the current reality, imagined a preferred future, identified ways to close the gap, and talked about how we might join others to collaboratively do so. Gaps included: The global aging population, the new middle class, the next generation, Islam, secularism, least-reached peoples, urban communities, digital communities, etc. See my report here.
Networking with and being encouraged by the global church
A lot of networking took place at the Lausanne Congress. Besides the gap group gatherings, we also had table groups for the entire congress in which we had application discussions about each of the plenary presentations. For example, I had a fantastic group made up of Stephen who is from South Africa, Amil from Australia, Michelle from the Philippines, Madonna from Ghana, and Melissa from Great Britain. I kept asking myself, where else can you have such internationally diverse Christian table collaboration and fellowship? It was truly one of the best parts of the week. See my report here.
This is not to belittle the plenary sessions. They were, for the most part, good. I particularly enjoyed hearing Sarah Breuel, the director of Revive Europe, speak on revival, and Brazilian Presbyterian pastor and missionary Ronaldo Lidorio give an exposition from Acts 29 on courageously carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Exposure to Asian Christianity
All who attended got an exposure to the vibrancy of Asian Christianity and specifically the Korean Church. What a blessing this was. I have written about this in some of my previous postings on Lausanne. See my report here. We also had reports about mission efforts around the globe. This was so encouraging.
Hearing from the persecuted church
We heard directly from Christians who had been arrested, jailed, and in some cases tortured for their faith. We had reports from Iran, India, Nigeria, China and North Korea. These were both sobering and inspiring. We were motivated to pray. See my report here. And on North Korea, see my report here.
The State of the Great Commission Report
Another highlight was the release of The State of the Great Commission: A Report on the Current and Future State. The report helps us understand where we are at in Great Commission history. I wish the biggest conclusions of this report got more attention at the conference itself, giving attendees a big picture of where we are at and what we must do in the next 25 years. For more on the report, see my post here.
The Seoul Statement
The Seoul Statement was released right before the congress began. It helpfully addresses seven theological and mission concerns for the days ahead. I wish that they would have not released it in final form, but allowed delegates at least one chance to speak into it. I have written about its strengths and weaknesses in my blog post here.
Getting us to think of the future
Much of our time at Seoul/Incheon was focused on the future. Various target dates were given. The Chinese church is focused on 2030 as a goal for sending out a significant number of missionaries. Pentecostals are focused on 2033, the two-thousandth anniversary of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, with the goal of giving every person in the world the opportunity to know Christ. And many of the Lausanne speakers spoke of imagining the world in 2050 and what we hope to accomplish by then. There were no specific plans mentioned about a Lausanne V gathering, only a Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering already scheduled for 2026.
Shortcomings?
Were there any shortcomings of the gathering in Seoul? Two that come to mind. First of all, while the majority of delegates were from the non-western global church, North American delegates still way outnumbered all other national groups. And second, one of the speakers gave voice to what essentially was a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel statement in her speech. This came through in both her address and then in her letter of clarification that Lausanne sent out to all the delegates. This was extremely one-sided and extremely inappropriate, especially one week before the anniversary of October 7th. But as Stetzer noted, Lausanne does not endorse and cannot control everything that was said from the platform. He reminded us not to lose sight of “the big rocks” of the week and the many good things that did happen.
Time of recommitment
The week ended with a personal response to the Great Commission where delegates made a collaborative action commitment to fill the gaps, seize gospel opportunities, raise up new leaders, and pursue relationships and unity so that the gospel might flourish.
As former Lausanne CEO Doug Birdsall said on the evening that we celebrated the Lausanne movement’s fiftieth anniversary: Lausanne is about “a commitment to the gospel and the Great Commission that began with a spirit of humility, that continues with partnership, and ends with hope.” That is what the Fourth Lausanne Congress is largely about. And this is enough reason for the movement to keep going. It was a blessing to be a delegate.