Follow-up Resources for Lausanne Capetown 2010

by A. Scott Moreau and Mike O’Rear

 By the time you read this, the four celebrations of the centenary of Edinburgh 1910 will be behind us. Of the four, Tokyo 2010¹ (tokyo2010.org) and Capetown 2010 (lausanne.org/cape-town-2010) were most focused on the interests and ongoing passions of evangelicals. Tokyo 2010 issued a clarion call to keep evangelism and discipleship among every people group front and center in our agenda. Capetown 2010, while framed in terms of evangelization, is broader in scope and attention than was Tokyo 2010.

Lausanne has long held its commitment to the whole Church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world. It is appropriate, then, that Capetown 2010 planners used “whole gospel, whole Church, and whole world” as the organizing frame for the six major themes for the Congress: The whole gospel was explored under the themes (1) truth and (2) reconciliation. The whole world was explored under the themes (3) world faiths and (4) new mission priorities. Finally, the whole Church was explored under the themes (5) authenticity & integrity and (6) partnerships. During the Congress, each day focused on one of the themes. Each theme included three to four topics, and each day’s plenary presentations, multiplex meetings, and evening presentations focused on either the theme as a whole or one of the topics of that theme.

One of the wonderful things about a gathering such as Capetown 2010 is that the many people involved in the planning develop and gather significant resources to support the themes. Such resources will continue to be significant for churches, missionaries, agencies, and missiologists for years to come. In this edition of Missions on the Web we have gathered multiple Lausanne resources for each of the twenty-three topics of the Congress. Links to these resources are in our corresponding page on MisLinks (mislinks.org/topics/capetown.htm).

Overviews
Because many younger evangelicals are not familiar with the Lausanne Movement as a whole (even if they do know of the Lausanne Covenant or the Capetown 2010 Congress), at the top of our page we provide general Lausanne-related links. Those unfamiliar with Lausanne will appreciate the page discussing the Lausanne Movement (lausanne.org/about.html) and the lessons available through the Lausanne Movement Primer (lausanne.org/about/lausanne-online-primer.html).

The link to Lausanne Gatherings (lausanne.org/gatherings.html) lists all the meetings convened under the Lausanne umbrella, as well as the precursor meetings that led to the first Lausanne meeting in 1974, with links to documents and other resources for every major Congress, as well as many of the other gatherings. The link to Lausanne Documents (lausanne.org/documents.html) connects to a list of all major and many minor Lausanne statements and documents (including the Lausanne Covenant and the Manila Manifesto) developed over the decades.

Those wanting more background on Capetown 2010 will find the FAQ link (lausanne.org/cape-town-2010/faq.html) and the overview videos (lausanne.org/cape-town-2010/videos.html) especially helpful. Additional Capetown 2010 overview materials include advance papers (conversation.lausanne.org/en/advance_papers), conversation groups (conversation.lausanne.org/en/groups), and people who have joined in the conversations (conversation.lausanne.org/en/people). The conversation groups can number in the hundreds for each topic, as those who sign up for a free account on the site start new conversations and others join in the discussion.

Christianity Today Global Conversation
In October 2009, Christianity Today started a series called “The Global Conversation” (christianitytoday.com/globalconversation/october2009). Articles and video links ran in each issue from October 2009 until September 2010 as a collaborative partnership between Christianity Today and Lausanne. Framed in a series of meetings between Christianity Today and Lausanne leadership, the series was intended to establish a conversation on a global level that would lead up to Capetown 2010.

Christian academics, church leaders, and thoughtful practitioners were commissioned to write pieces that fit into the themes for Capetown 2010. For each piece, several additional Christian leaders from around the world were asked to comment and generate ongoing discussions. Several of the Global Conversation pieces include videos that supplement the discussions (you can see the initial overview video at vimeo.com/6689599; the entire series is available at vimeo.com/user2335876).

Because these were intended to energize discussion leading up to Capetown 2010, on the website we include links to all twelve discussions in a separate table. In each set of topic links we also provide access to the relevant Global Conversation pieces.

Capetown 2010 Themes and Topics
The sheer amount of resources available is overwhelming. To help readers sort through the maze, we organized our links in two ways. First, we list all themes and topics in a way that helps readers decide what they want to zoom in on without overwhelming them in the process. They are organized on our Web page and in Table 1 below. This layout enables us to see not only the topic, but what theme it is under, as well as its larger frame for the entire Congress.  

Example Topic: Diaspora
As Table 1 shows, each of the six themes has three to four topics. The Capetown 2010 website and the larger Lausanne websites offer multiple resources for each topic, but they are scattered. Our second organizational help was to collect the links for each topic into a single location. Clicking on one of the topics in our table brings you to another table focused on that topic. For example, clicking on “Diaspora” brings you to its list of resources, seen in Table 2 (below). We’ll focus on Diaspora as an example that illustrates the resources available for each topic.

Table 2: Topic: Diaspora

The advance paper for Diaspora is “Ministering to the Scattered Peoples” (conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/10540). At the time we checked, the paper had been viewed almost five thousand times, and had nine comments. Capetown 2010 planners invited comments on all advance papers, intending that these would give the presenters and conference planners an opportunity to modify their sessions based on the feedback.

The CT Global Conversation piece that best fits Diaspora is “Mission Fields on the Move” (christianitytoday.com/globalconversation/may2010), focusing on the ways global migration offers opportunities for ministry. The corresponding CT video piece (vimeo.com/8904000) is an excerpt from the movie “As We Forgive” (asweforgivemovie.com/), a powerful exploration of reconciliation after the Rwandan genocide. Our “Join the Conversation” links connect you to conversation groups identified with Diaspora, RSS feeds for the groups, and the people who have joined the discussions.

On the Lausanne and Lausanne-related sites we connect to three more sets of resources. The first is from Lausanne Connect (lausanne.org/connect.html), which groups resources on the Lausanne site in a variety of ways, giving people the chance to dig more deeply into thinking produced from multiple Lausanne gatherings and publications. On the “Connect by Issue” section (lausanne.org/connect/issues.html), three topics in particular relate to Diaspora: Chinese People (lausanne.org/issues/chinese.html), Diasporas (lausanne.org/issue-diasporas/overview.html), and Refugees (lausanne.org/issues/refugees.html). Each has links to significant resources, ranging from the Seoul Declaration on Diaspora Missiology (lausanne.org/documents/seoul-declaration-on-diaspora-missiology.html) to the Lausanne Diaspora Leadership Team (LDLT) website (gatheredscattered.com).

The second set is comprised of relevant Lausanne Occasional Papers (LOPs). The LOPs have been developed over the past several decades to give significant reflection on issues of concern or even contention among evangelicals. Four LOPs offer reflection on issues of importance for understanding today’s Diasporas. The oldest, LOP #5: Christian Witness to Refugees (lausanne.org/all-documents/lop-5.html), was developed at the Pattaya Consultation in 1980 and reflects on issues ranging from biblical mandates on the poor and oppressed to a set of guidelines for responsible Christian action. The most recent, LOP #64: The Whole Church (lausanne.org/documents/TWG/LOP64-2009Panama.pdf), is the entire January 2010 issue of Evangelical Review of Theology, and contains Charles Van Engen’s “Biblical Perspectives on the Role of Immigrants in God’s Mission.”

The third set comes from Lausanne World Pulse (LWP; lausanneworldpulse.com). This monthly online magazine is a collaborative partnership between Lausanne and the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. Each issue of LWP has several themed articles focusing on an issue. Since 2007, at least five issues were themed around topics that are part of Diaspora studies. They are (from oldest to newest):

• Unto the Least of These (September 2007);
• Proclaiming Christ in an Era of War, Trauma, and Genocide (January 2008);
• The Effect of Migration and the Growing Diaspora on Evangelism Efforts (July 2008); 
• Migration, Diaspora, and Displaced People (March 2009); and
• The Church in Exile (August 2009).

Conclusion
Our hope in providing these links is to give (1) educators resources for their students, (2) agencies resources for their missionaries and administrators who need valuable input to make decisions, and (3) church leaders help in bringing alive the many challenges and opportunities the Church faces today. We anticipate that by the time you read this, we’ll have additional links as a result of the Congress and post-Congress enhancements given by Lausanne itself. Send us an email if you find more Lausanne resources that we have overlooked.

Endnote  
1 All links are start with http:// unless otherwise noted. 

….

A. Scott Moreau is editor of EMQ and a professor in the Intercultural Studies department at Wheaton College Graduate School (Wheaton, Ill.). His email address is A.S.Moreau@wheaton.edu, and the Wheaton Intercultural Studies Department web address is wheaton.edu/intr.

Mike O’Rear is the president of Global Mapping International (Colorado Springs, Colo.), which is dedicated to providing access to information for church and mission leaders, especially in the Majority World. His email address is mike@gmi.org, and the GMI web address is gmi.org.

EMQ, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 110-114. Copyright  © 2011 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS).  All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

Comments are closed.