Lausanne 4 Congress Reflection
I am thankful for the opportunity granted to me to be one of the 5000 delegates from 200 nations to attend the Fourth Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization (L4) in Incheon-Seoul past week. It was once-in-a-life-time type of experience where I got to spend a whole week with fellow Christian sisters and brothers from different parts of the world, worshipping, learning, collaborating and envisioning together for the global mission.
God showed and taught many things from various gatherings, including the plenary sessions, table groups, Collaborative Action Groups, special interest groups and informal meetings with new and old friends.
There have already been many reflections and reviews by others on the Lausanne Congress. Here are my personal take-aways from the L4 Congress:
1. Grow in prayer. Sammy, an evangelist and missionary to the U.S. from Kenya, who was in my table group, shared how he wakes up at 3 a.m. to have communion with God. He shared how sweet his time with the Lord is. An Iranian brother shared how his church starts a new year with six days of fasting and prayer. Then there have been city-wide 24-7 prayer movements across the globe. I was inspired and challenged to grow in prayer at personal, corporate and city levels.
2. Repent and pray. A session by Sarah Breuel, the Executive Director of Revive Europe, was one of the most powerful moments for me at the Congress, as she led us to repent and pray. “Repentance paves a way for revival and a time of refreshing,” she noted. We can do the following three in order to prepare ourselves for revival: 1) Hunger for God; 2) Travail in prayer (Gal 4:19); 3) Remove impediments with personal and corporate repentance. She also shared insight into God’s vision for each continent: For Latin America, God has turned missionary fields into a missionary force; for Europe, God is not done with them; Europe Is not post-Christian, but pre-revival. Asian churches are to teach others how to pray and persevere in persecution. There is a roar in the African church that the global church is yet to hear.
3. Prayer determines the direction of ministry. During the DPRK interest group gathering a missionary from Mongolia shared how he prayed for one nation per day with his wife and two nations stood out for them: China and DPRK. They were moved to tears when they prayed for those two nations and they ended up committing their lives to serve the people of DPRK. We must pray and be led by the Spirit for our ministry’s direction.
4. Fulfill the Great Commission (making disciples of all nations) in the spirit of the Great Commandment (love God and love your neighbours) through the Great Collaboration (pursue unity as the Father and the Son are one). The three great C’s we need to hold together for global mission are: 1) Great Commandment (Matthew 22); 2) Great Commission (Matthew 28); 3) Great Collaboration (John 17). The emphasis on collaboration for mission was the mantra throughout various L4 gatherings.
5. Collaborate! Collaboration is made possible when we are open to learning as well as willing to give and committed to getting the work done! The task at hand is beyond any one person or any one church or agency to fulfill. We need the whole church and the whole people of God to collaborate to fulfill the great commission. Michael Oh noted that “the four most dangerous words in the global church is I. DON’T. NEED. YOU.”
6. Invest in the next generation. I was part of the collaborative action group focused on the Next Generation. There were 25 collaborative action groups that tacked 25 different gaps in our contemporary context (like “the global aging population,” “Evangelism in a digital age,” “AI and transhumanism,” “Ethnicism & Racism,” etc.) I was delightfully surprised to learn that 1,000 out of 5,000 delegates chose “Next Generation.” It was the topic of discussion amongst the global church leaders. There were many ideas and action items in my group discussions. The big idea was for the church to be a place for children and youth where they grow and thrive as followers of Jesus. Here at New Hope, we are grateful for a good education department, but we need to consider how we can cultivate better discipleship for our children and youth, and how we can help our young people to have ownership of the church. Some of the action items may include: 1) disciple the parents so that they can disciple their children at home in partnership with the Sunday school. Home is the primary place for the discipleship of the next generation and it must begin with parents discipling their children; 2) learning from churches that have strong inter-generational discipleship. One of the most common traits is worshipping together more regularly. We will need to seriously consider our long-term practice of worshipping together with our children every Sunday, or at least begin with more regular “family worship” possibly doing it every Sunday for the summer months; 3) give young people more chance to lead and be part of the decision-making process, etc. This topic will need to be an ongoing conversation amongst the current leadership, especially as we go through a vision-framing process.
7. Belonging before believing. That’s the mindset and the reality of Gen Z. To reach the younger generation and meet where they are, we need to reconsider how we do the baptism and membership process. We also need to consider doing regular altar calls on Sundays so that those who belong to New Hope are given opportunities to believe in Christ and move forward in their spiritual journey.
8. We must have the kingdom mindset—to see the churches in the city as one church of Christ and work together towards closing the gaps of the next generation ministry. I plan to work more intentionally with the theological institutions, and other churches within our denomination and in the GTA—to envision a new model of doing church that invests in and empowers the next generation.
9. Seek God’s kingdom first. In my meeting with a director of a missionary agency I was challenged to seek God’s kingdom first—and not our own ministry. He shared how we can be a “wicked steward” who busy ourselves doing lots of ministries while not necessarily seeking God’s kingdom first. Fundamental to seeking God’s kingdom first is repentance, prayer and worship in community. We must reset our lives and community through corporate prayer, repentance and worship.
10. Activate and empower people who are gifted in arts. It was great to see a drama team doing the Scripture readings and incorporating action and singing as a part of the Scripture reading. We can be creative in our corporate gatherings and use arts and media.
11. Creation care and social justice are issues that call the global church toward faithfulness in word and deed. God’s mission is to restore the whole creation and as such, the church is to participate in God’s mission by taking greater responsibility for “climate justice” (the first time for me to hear that term) as well as social justice.
12. When it comes to the topic of sexuality we must prioritize not Christian morality but relationship with Christ. Dr. Vaughan Roberts's session on human identity and sexuality brought clarity to the mind and compassion for the heart in approaching the sensitive topic of sexuality. His three main points were: 1) We must delight in God’s design of sex (in creation); 2) We must be humble and compassionate (in our fallen state), for all of us are sexual sinners and we are to invite strugglers to be open and vulnerable; 3) We must embrace Christ’s revolution by embracing both inclusion and repentance. We offer to struggling sinners not just Christian morality, but a relationship with Christ who said “Come as you are” (but also did not say “Stay as you are”). May our church be a place where broken people come and be restored to Christ.
13. We need to restore and rediscover the lost art of church discussion. A plenary session by Anne Zaki from Egypt expounded from Acts 15—how Peter broke the silence to re-orient the missional community in its pivotal moment of crisis and conflict. When we are silent about issues at church, the future of the church is at stake. The process of church discussion should be 1) talking WITH each other, not ABOUT or TO others; 2) expected to take long hours (hence, inevitable long meetings, fellow leaders!); 3) out of daily prayer, learning from the Bible, remarkable generosity and breaking of bread (as seen in Acts 2). May we rediscover the lost art of church discussion for the sake of God’s mission!
14. A message from Efraim Tendero, Executive Director of Galilean Movement, noted how we need 5 reformations in our day: 1) Reform from clergy-dominated to every-believer ministry (That’s the value and vision of my Basics of Biblical Counseling class!); 2) repent from the mindset of ‘mine’ rather than of ‘Jesus’s authority’; 3) Reiterate radical instead of nominal discipleship; 4) Realign leadership to intentionally engage the younger generation (another emphasis on the younger generation); 5) Revise the view of God’s presence from mere security to inculcate accountability. Reformations we need!
15. Discipleship and disciple-making include pre-faith stage in Christ and post-faith stage in Christ. Discipling happens when we engage a non-believer towards faith in Christ; it also happens when we engage a believer to grow faith in Christ. This is at the heart of the Great Commission from the Lord, so the heart of our ministry should be discipleship that engages believers and non-believers. Lord, help us to do that well!
16. Michael Oh, the CEO of the Lausanne Movement noted 3D focus for the next 50 years: 1) Disciple-making; 2) Disciple-maturing; 3) Digital tools. The third D—Digital tools—was something that was new to many of us and we wondered what implications digital tools would have for discipleship in the present and future generations. We need to establish a philosophy and methodology of discipleship in the digital age.
17. The reality of persecution in mission was highlighted by designating the whole Wednesday on the topic. Patrick Fung emphasized that “persecution never kills the church, but a compromised gospel will!” Farshid Fathi and Sara Akhavan from Elam Ministry in Iran shared powerful testimonies of the gospel breakthroughs under persecution. “Persecution is not the end of the story, but a part of the story” and “the greatest expression of love is suffering, or how far you would go for the one whom you love.” “Hope has two daughters. One is anger for the way things are; the other is the courage to change things as they are.” Their stories of suffering for Christ and the gospel were so inspiring and challenging.
18. Empower God’s people for mission in the workplace. There is no distinction between sacred and secular, clergy and laity in the Kingdom of God. There is no second-class citizen in the kingdom of God. So the message to all who are in the marketplace: You carry the priestly presence of God into the workplace. And your workplace is a holy place! Live a holy life in your workplace! The church exists to equip, care and send the 99% of the people in the marketplace. Pastors (who make up only 1% of the church) were especially charged to build the 99% (the rest of the people who are missionaries in the marketplace and the public square)! I would love for us to develop a training and liturgy to commission our people at church as missionaries to their workplaces. I also got to attend a meeting with BAM (Business As Mission) Canada which is growing to build a ‘thick network’ across Canada. I would love to have some of our members be part of BAM Canada.
19. Young leaders and intergenerational discipleship panel shared four values that will strengthen intergenerational discipleship: 1) Friendship; 2) Vulnerability; 3) Mutuality; 4) Collaboration (there is that word again!). “Friendship is not just a value to go alongside collaboration, but it is, in fact, the best foundation for fruitful collaboration.” So true. May there be many spiritual friendships fostered and nurtured at New Hope! How do we do that? A young leader answered, “Nothing builds friendships like gathering around God’s word and in prayer.” May that be so! That there will be groups of young and old gathered around God’s word and in prayer at New Hope! Elders can give wisdom accumulated from experience; the younger generation can give energy. What can we do to make intergenerational collaboration a reality at New Hope? This is a question to you, older brothers and sisters: “Who are the younger persons--20 years younger--whom you are investing in?” This is a question to you, younger brothers and sisters: “Who are the older persons—20 years older—whom you are investing in?” We need each other.
20. From the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Panel discussion on “7 Ways to use AI for evangelism and ministry—and 3 reasons why we should!” it was said that “AI will lead us to distinguish between what technology is and what humanity is.” If you are using AI as a tool, you are to ask the following two questions, said Joanna Ng: 1) Who is in charge? That is, is the technology in charge or is Jesus in charge? And where is the role of the Holy Spirit? 2) Who is your trust? If you trust AI, then it’s a man-made thing you trust in. Lausanne Seoul Statement point #94 notes the following: “We… call Christians to discern artificial intelligence technologies, which confront us in… significant ways. The development of digital systems that appear to reason, behave, and act in ways that we would consider distinctly human raises questions regarding the uniqueness of human creativity and rationality. Artificial intelligence raises other questions: Will it become an existential threat to humanity and the wider world? What will its effects be in the workplace and for human work? And how will governments and other actors use it in surveillance and security contexts? As innovation in artificial intelligence accelerates, we call for Christians, especially those who work in this industry, to engage both in the development and use of this technology that honours the Creator and human createdness by promoting safe, equitable, and dignifying applications.” This is an area that I would like us to learn and discern together as a church family.
21. On the final day of the Congress, a message by Ronaldo Lidorio challenged us, “we don’t preach enough, because we don’t pray enough.” When Paul preached the gospel “with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31), it was not a result of training, knowledge or experience, but prayer—his own and the churches’ (cf. Eph 6:18-20).
22. The congress gave the final urgent call to go and take the gospel to the ends of the earth where there is no gospel. Missionary movement comes out of brokenness (we are frail and weak clay jars) as seen throughout church history. As broken people with beautiful feet that carry the good news, we are sent to the ends of the earth.
23. “Let the church declare and display Christ together.” That was the theme of the fourth Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization. The final message by Michael Oh emphasized collaboration (yet again)! What if every Christian church and family felt collective responsibility for the Great Commission? Not an individual doing random acts of kindness here and there, but a collective coordinated effort for God’s kingdom. So we are to take our part in the whole body of Christ in the whole mission of God for the sake of the whole world.