INTERNATIONAL EVANGELICAL LEADERS WANT CLOSER COOPERATION IN WORLD EVANGELIZATION

Abstract

From March 21st to 25th, 1999, about ninety leading evangelical mission representatives coming from more than thirty countries and five continents met in Norway to discuss possible means of coordinating the involvement of their organisations in world evangelization. The author of these lines had been invited to participate in that meeting as an observer from the Council of Churches. The official public statement issued by the meeting is attached to this personal report which gives some information on the meeting without entering into the debate on the missiological or ecclesiological questions involved, with the exception of very general first personal remarks. The necessary theological dialogue will be pursued in future issues of the IRM or through other means. Three main worldwide evangelical networks participated in the meeting: the Committee for Evangelization (Lausanne), the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF) and 2000 and Beyond (AD 2000). The chairmen or directors as well as members of the international committees of all three organisations were present, together with other theologians or missionaries coming also from other national or international networks. The meeting was not meant to take decisions, but only to make proposals to be submitted to the respective decision-making bodies of the participating organisations. The initiative for this important gathering came from the Norwegian Missionary Council (NMC) which started process in 1997 of merging itself with the Norwegian committees of Lausanne, WEF and AD After contacts, invitations signed by Jun Vencer for WEF, Thomas Wang for AD 2000, Paul Cedar for Lausanne and Torbjorn Lied for the NMC and the local working committee, were sent out to hundred persons. Nearly all responded positively. The meeting was hosted by the Norwegian Santal Mission in its beautiful Bible College and Missionary Training Centre in Hurdal, north of Oslo. Before summarizing some important points about that meeting, it might be good to point to the specificity of the concerns of the three main organisations represented in the Norway meeting: The three main partners Lausanne has its origin in the world congress of 1974, called forth by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The meeting issued the well-known Covenant and gave birth to the Lausanne Committee. Two other major missionary meetings have been organised by Lausanne: Pattaya in 1980 and Manilla in 1989, producing the Manilla There are many national Lausanne committees, where people gather who have special interest for world evangelization, while being members of churches which can be linked to the evangelical or the ecumenical networks. It is out of leaders of the Lausanne movement that in the end of the eighties, the AD 2000 and Beyond Movement was created in consultation in Singapore in early 1989, producing Great Commission Manifesto. AD 2000 sets itself very specific quantitative objectives that are at times summarized with the catch-phrase a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000. The movement will close down as an overall movement on December 31, With roots going back to the last century, the WEF is different kind of organisation, having corporate and not individual membership. It counts 112 evangelical alliances as members and more than 90 associate member bodies. It has more ecclesial representativeness than the other two networks, and also has larger agenda than only the focus on world evangelization, even if that is the major aim. …