(Note: There were 40 plus participants and program staff from Malaysia, including Methodists from four of our Annual Conferences. You can actually access much of the programme in videos at: http://www.lausanne.org/cape-town-2010. The writer is a member of the Congress Management Team.)

There were also official observers from the Vatican, World Council of Churches (WCC), the Orthodox Churches, and other international Christian bodies. Participation in the Congress was also extended to tens of thousands of others through over 650 GlobaLink sites in 91 countries, via the internet. During the week of the Congress the Cape Town 2010 website also drew 100,000 unique visits from 185 countries.

 

What was all the hype about? Perhaps a bit of history will help. In the 1960s and early 70s, the WCC was still the dominant voice in the Protestant world. Under the influence of liberal theology and other secular forces of the time, there was an increasingly reluctance on the part of many within the WCC to clearly affirm the central importance of evangelism and the proclamation of the gospel of salvation in Christ. Under the leadership of Billy Graham, the 1^st Congress on World Evangelization was held in Lausanne. Some 2700 evangelical leaders from all over the world gathered to reaffirm the urgency of world evangelisation under the theme, ‘Let the Whole Earth Hears His Voice.’ The congress statement, called ‘The Lausanne Covenant,’ drafted under the leadership of John Stott, has shaped much of the global evangelical movement since.

 

With hindsight it is now recognised that the Lausanne I made two great contributions to Christian mission. First, it reaffirmed the central importance of evangelism in the mission of the church, whilst at the same time clearly stated that socio-political involvement is a Christian duty. Second, the whole Christian world was suddenly awakened to the fact that there were thousands of Unreached People Groups (UPGs) in the world where hardly any within the group have heard of Christ! Through this clarification of mission theology and agenda, the congress succeeded in galvanising Christians from all over the world into a renewed effort in world missions! It also gave rise to numerous other mission initiatives, including CCCOWE which is the Chinese wing of the Lausanne worldwide.

 

The movement spawned by Lausanne I became known as the Lausanne movement. The first congress was followed by a second congress in Manila in 1989, commonly called ‘Lausanne II in Manila.’ The theme was essentially a development of that of Lausanne I: ‘Calling the Whole Church to Proclaim the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.’ After another 21 years, Lausanne III or Cape Town 2010 was held. The message remained the same in essence, just as ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Heb 13: 8). But the context now had changed much since 1974! What are the differences?

 

For much of the 20^th century, the churches in the western world were dominant. But sometime around 1980, the number of Christian in Africa, Asia and Latin America outgrew those in the western world. Secondly, whereas cross-cultural missionaries in the past were predominantly western, today tens of thousands of missionaries are being sent out from the non-western or the Majority World, with countries like China, India, South Korea and Nigeria in the forefront. Thirdly, increasingly it is now recognised that much of the growth of the church in the Majority world in the 20^th century was the fruits of the labours of sacrificial western missionaries as well as many gifted indigenous leaders. The latter includes names such as Prophet Harris, Simon Kimbangu andGottfried Osei-Mensah from Africa, Pandita Ramabai and Sadhu Sundar from India, John Sung and Watchman Nee from China, and Cho Yong-Gi from Korea. Finally, there is a growing awareness of the gradual decline of Christianity in North America and Europe. Any Christian congress that purports to be speaking on behalf of, as well as to, the global church had to take these changes into account!

 

Thus right from the start of the planning, the leadership for Cape Town 2010 was determined to make it a truly international or global congress in as many ways as possible. The concern was to position Cape Town 2010 at where the global church is in the beginning of the 21^st century. The result was that fully 62% of the participants, who were mostly chosen by their respective national leadership, came from the Majority World, with only some 38% coming from the West. Fully 28% were women, although we had hoped for one-third. Because we were concerned that the congress will empower the next generation of global Christian leadership, 60% of the participants were 50 and under. The result is that this may be, in the words of the official Congress communiqué, ‘perhaps the widest and most diverse gathering of Christians ever held in the history of the Church.’

 

The one major setback was that the Chinese government stopped a majority of the 230 or so participants from the House churches from attending. This is unfortunate, to say the least, because there were no negative intentions of any kind in our invitation to the House church leaders. Nevertheless, the Lausanne leadership decided that it will not react but continue to explore positive efforts at developing a better understanding between the Lausanne movement and the Chinese government.

 

But the global emphasis of Cape Town 2010 was restricted not just to the people who came. It applied equally to the programme as well. Participants were generally very pleased that the speakers and presenters were a truly international mix. For example, for the daily bible expositions, we had seven different preachers: Ajith Fernando from Sri Lanka, Ruth Padilla from Costa Rica, John Piper from USA, Vaughan Roberts from Britain, Calisto Odede from Kenya, and Ramez and Rebecca Atallah from Egypt.

 

The same mix applied across the board in other programmes as well. For example, the two testimonies, which were probably the most reverting of those given at the Congress, were from an 18-year old Korean girl and an American woman. Soo Kyung-Joo’s family had escaped from North Korea, yet her father had voluntarily gone back there to bring the gospel to others, and almost certainly has since paid the price of martyrdom. Libby Little’s husband was the ophthalmologist, who was killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan with nine other medical workers about 3 months ago, in the process of bringing healing sacrificially to thousands in desperate need.

 

Although nothing is perfect, almost all the responses from those who came were overwhelmingly positive. Cape Town 2010 inspired the participants to a renewed commitment to bring God’s message of reconciliation in Christ to the whole world. The further challenge was to reject any sense of triumphalism in our lives and mission, but rather to bring Christ’s love and salvation to the world through ‘integrity, humility and simplicity.’

The World Missionary Conference was held in Edinburgh in 1910. It was called to bring missionaries and missions agencies together for a renewed partnership and commitment to bring the gospel of Christ to the whole world. Cape Town 2010 was held on the 100^th Anniversary of that pivotal conference. It is our prayer and hope that Cape Town 2010 will indeed be the effective spiritual heir of Edinburgh 1910, challenging and spurring the global church onwards to live out fully the theme of the congress: ‘God in Christ, Reconciling the World to Himself’!