Lausanne Movement

Lausanne 1974 - "Let The Earth Hear His Voice"

In November 1971, Billy Graham convened a meeting at which he inquired about the advisability of holding another international congress on world evangelization as a follow-up to the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin. At a meeting four months later, it was agreed that another congress should be held. Graham made the announcement about the Congress in August 1972. The purpose of the meeting was to gather the leaders of evangelical Protestant Christians together for strategic planning, inspiration, and fellowship. In October of the same year, Lausanne, Switzerland, was named as the site of the Congress and Dr. Donald Hoke, an American missionary and educator who had worked in Japan, as its director.

The administrative structure of the Congress was made up of a Board of Conveners, Planning Committee, and an Administrative Committee, which was comprised of a number of subcommittees. The Board of Conveners, made up of 164 Christian leaders who had gathered at Graham's invitation, served as the formal governing authority of the Congress. The Planning Committee, consisting of thirty-one members, headed by Sydney Bishop A. Jack Dain, was charged with formulating the guidelines on what the Congress was going to do and whom it was going to invite. The eight-member Administrative Committee was formed to act between meetings and in emergencies; other subcommittees included the program committee, finance committee and film committee.

Funding for the Congress came from two sources: donations and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). The BGEA also provided support by allowing several of its employees to work full- or part-time as staff members or consultants.

Following several planning meetings and preliminary work by Harvey Thomas of the BGEA, Hoke arrived in Switzerland on March 21, 1973; the staff office was opened April 16. One of the staff's major tasks was to prepare lists of whom to invite based on suggestions submitted by members of the convening committee and others; the Planning Committee then made the final decisions on which individuals to invite. The Congress population of approximately 4,000 people consisted of individuals in categories such as participants, observers, and guests, as well as members of the news media. Associate Director Paul Little worked with the Program Committee and its chairman, Leighton Ford, in planning the events and speaking schedule of the meeting -- what topics would be addressed and by whom. Other members of the staff worked on the details of travel, housing, and news coverage.

The Congress met from July 15 to 25 in 1974 under the theme, "Let The Earth Hear His Voice." In addition to the major plenary addresses (including the open and closing addresses by Graham), the program consisted of Bible studies, demonstrations of evangelistic methods, small group discussions and reports on various aspects of the theology and strategy of evangelism, reports on the situation of the church in various geographic locations, debates by citizens and workers on the strategies necessary for particular nations, Laustade '74 (the evangelistic meeting for the general public held in the city's stadium), and the signing by a large number of the participants of the Lausanne Covenant. The Covenant was a statement intended to define the necessity, responsibilities, and goals of spreading the Gospel. In addition to the Covenant, a number of participants formulated an alternative covenant, "A Call to Radical Discipleship," which placed a greater emphasis on addressing social needs as a part of evangelism.

Following the Congress, the staff closed the Lausanne office. This process included sending out final news releases, closing of bank accounts, and preparing the papers and tapes delivered at the Congress for publication and sale. The office was officially closed October 30, 1974.

Contributing to the long-term impact of the Congress were the consultations held in 1973 on how best to continue the Congress's goals after the meeting. From these meetings came the first plans for the Lausanne Continuation Committee (LCC), which was established as the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE) in 1976. The process of selecting members to constitute the LCC began at the Congress, resulting in the selection of forty-eight people to plan for future consultations and congresses as needed; this number was later expanded to seventy-five. At its inception, Leighton Ford was chosen as LCWE's Chairman and Gottfried Osei-Mensah was designated its Executive Secretary.

The function of the LCWE was to serve as an international catalyst, clearing house, information center, and motivational source for evangelization throughout the world. Although not intended to be simply a reaction to the World Council of Churches (WCC), it did serve as an evangelical counterpart to the ecumenical WCC by establishing and fostering an international network of evangelical leaders, as well as periodically sponsoring conferences and consultations. During its history, a periodic topic of discussion was its relationship with the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), and whether or not to merge with the WEF, whose goals and function were similar.

The Committee had no centralized administrative headquarters, but functioned from the location of its officers: Leighton Ford in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Gottfried Osei-Mensah in Nairobi, Kenya. Its activities were therefore coordinated from Nairobi where Osei-Mensah was based, but were also carried out by regional committees and national or regional consultations. Its communication tools included its quarterly World Evangelization Information Bulletin and the Lausanne Occasional Papers (LOP's), reprints of reports from the various LCWE consultations. The Committee also regularly sponsored an annual Day of Prayer for World Evangelization to encourage local churches throughout the world to be involved in praying for the spread of the Gospel.

Four working groups, each headed by a LCWE Executive Committee member, oversaw and coordinated specific areas of strategy, planning, operation: the Intercession Working Group, chaired by Bishop John Reid of Australia, who was succeeded in 1981 by Vonette Bright; the Theology and Education Working Group, chaired by John Stott of England, who was succeeded by John Reid in 1981 (the working group was renamed the Theology Working Group); the Strategy Working Group, chaired by Peter Wagner of the United States, who was succeeded by Ed Dayton in 1981; and the Communications Working Group, chaired by Thomas Zimmerman of the United States, who was succeeded by Horst Marquardt in 1981.

Following the Lausanne Congress, the LCWE decided that an additional international working consultation should be convened to evaluate what had happened in world evangelization since the Lausanne meeting and to develop realistic strategies for the future. The LCWE therefore issued a call in 1977 for the Consultation on World Evangelization (COWE) under the theme, "How Shall They Hear?" David Howard was appointed as its Director, who set up the COWE office in Wheaton, Illinois. Osei-Mensah and John Howell, LCWE's Executive Assistant & COWE Director of Operations, were also involved in the planning and preparations for the meeting from their office in Nairobi. The Wheaton office was then moved to Pattaya in early 1980. The Consultation was held from June 16-27, 1980, in Pattaya, Thailand, which was selected as the site for COWE in a deliberate effort to identify with the church in the Third World.

With 650 participants from all areas of the world, the total population for the Consultation, including observers, guests, press, staff, and spouses, raised the total to 950. In contrast to the Lausanne meeting, the size of COWE was kept intentionally small to facilitate its task as a working and studying consultation. Attendence at the Consultation, like that at the Lausanne Congress, was in response to an invitation. Participants were selected through a process in which LCWE Executive Committee members submitted nominations to an anonymous Participant Selection Committee, after which invitations were made. Participants were selected on the basis of their contribution to world evangelization and their influence in their own national and/or church circles, both at the time and in the projected future.

Many participants were selected because of their in-depth involvement in the COWE study groups, which functioned during the two-year period prior to COWE.

Since COWE was intended to be a study consultation instead of a congress, a broad foundation of study groups was laid throughout the world before COWE. Their focus of study was directed on specific groups of people to be reached with the Gospel: Buddhists, Chinese, Hindus, Jews, Marxists, Muslims, Mystics and Cultists, Secularists, Traditional Religionists (in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania and among non-literates), City Dwellers (in urban areas and inner city areas), and Nominal Christians in the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox traditions. An International Coordinator was appointed to oversee each of these areas of study. This oversight consisted of: appointing local conveners throughout the world, who were then responsible to form a small group of people who were directly involved in reaching the people group to be studied; and preparing a preliminary study paper to serve as a catalyst for these groups. The fruit of the work of the study groups was set down in papers summarizing their findings. The International Coordinator then consolidated the information from these studies and produced a paper summarizing the findings on a worldwide basis. These papers formed the basis for the Mini-Consultations at the Thailand Consultation.

The meeting was divided into a number of sections: daily plenary sessions which consisted of Bible exposition and topical studies on such subjects as "The Place of Prayer in World Evangelization," or "The Place of the Local Church in World Evangelization"; seventeen Mini-Consultations, corresponding to the pre-selected people groups; sub-plenary sessions, in which the papers produced by the Mini-Consultations were studied (the results of these sessions were then returned to the Mini-Consultations for revision). Meetings for interest groups were coordinated to allow individuals with specialized ministries to gather; regional groups also met to facilitate united effort within a geographical region.

Simultaneous with the Consultation, the Commission on Cooperation in World Evangelization met to consider the biblical basis for working together in world evangelization, the theological implications of cooperation, and the strategic and methodological application of this. Billy Graham was the Commission's Chairman; A. Jack Dain served as Coordinator and Chua Wee Hian was the Secretary.

A number of products came out of the Consultation: the final papers developed by each of the Mini-Consultations and the resulting compendium of them; the recommendation of the Commission on Cooperation in World Evangelization; audio tapes of the plenary messages; and the ongoing work of the study groups organized prior to the Consultation.

In addition to COWE, a number of smaller consultations were also held following the Congress in Lausanne: the Homogeneous Unit Principle Consultation, in Pasadena, 1977; the Willowbank or Gospel and Culture Consultation, in the Bermuda, 1978; the North American Conference on Muslim Evangelization, in Glen Eyrie, Colorado, 1978; the U.S. Simple Lifestyle Consultation, in Ventnor, NJ, 1979 and the International Simple Lifestyle Consultation, in London, 1980; the Consultation on the Relationship between Evangelism and Social Responsibility (CRESR), in Grand Rapids, 1982; Consultation on the Work of the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization, in Oslo, 1985; Consultation on Jewish Evangelism, in Easneye, England, 1986. Other meetings were also held, such as national consultations in Brazil and Canada and the International Prayer Assembly for World Evangelization in Seoul in 1984.

The period following the Thailand Consultation included several administrative changes in the LCWE structure. In 1981 LCWE moved its international headquarters from Nairobi to London, where Osei-Mensah carried on his duties as Executive Secretary. In 1982 A.J. Dain was named LCWE's general co-ordinator, operating from the LCWE office in London with Osei-Mensah. When Gottfried Osei-Mensah announced his resignation in 1983, the Committee initiated a search to fill that position, although Osei-Mensah continued his responsiblities through 1984. Carl Johansson replaced him as Executive Director and served in that capacity during 1985. Also during 1985, LCWE began the process of establishing regional offices around the world with the appointment of Fred Magbanua for Asia. In mid-1986, LCWE announced its appointment of Thomas Wang as International Director, effective the beginning of 1987, with an initial focus to be on preparation for the 1989 International Congress in Lausanne. The theme of the 1989 meeting was "Christ the Lord: Hope of the World." Several conferences were also slated to precede the second Lausanne meeting: Singapore '87, the International Conference for Younger/Emerging Christian Leaders; and Leadership '88, the U.S. Conference for Emerging/Younger Leaders.