The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action

Abstract

The International Bulletin of Missionary Research here presents the full text of the Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action, issued by the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, October 16–25, 2010, held in Cape Town, South Africa. Crafted over the course of three years by engaged evangelical theologians from all continents, the Cape Town Commitment is the third major evangelical statement on missionary belief and practice produced by the Lausanne movement. It—together with the other two texts, the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and the Manila Manifesto (1989)—is available online at www.lausanne.org . We are pleased to present three reflections on Cape Town 2010 and the Cape Town Commitment. Robert Hunt, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, offers a Protestant outsider's overview of the history of the Lausanne movement. C. René Padilla, of Buenos Aires, a contributing editor and currently president of the Micah Network, provides a Majority World insider perspective on the process and outcomes of Cape Town 2010. Finally, Roman Catholic missiologist Robert Schreiter, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, highlights developments in global evangelical theology and missiology over the last three and a half decades, as evident in the major documents of the Lausanne movement.