Jason and Lisa Carter are missionaries to Equatorial Guinea. Currently, Jason is in Scotland working on a Ph.D., after which the Carters will return to West Africa where they had been serving for several years.
Jason was at the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town (October 16-25) and recently sent me an email with his highlights. His comments were interesting, helpful, and challenging. I asked if I could share them on my blog. Jason is a sharp thinker, a truly fine missionary, and a great friend. I’m happy to post his thoughts below.
*******
The First Lausanne Congress (1974/Switzerland) was paradigm-changing as Ralph Winter highlighted the biblical mandate to evangelize and disciple all the “unreached people groups”; John Stott chaired a committee which produced a statement known as the “Lausanne Covenant” which grounded the modern evangelical missionary movement theologically. The Second Lausanne Congress (1989/Manila) produced over 300 mission partnerships all over the globe. How will the Third Lausanne Congress (Oct. 16-25, 2010) celebrated in Cape Town, South Africa be remembered? Here are a few memorable moments that stood out to me:
Caste System = Slavery
Perhaps the strongest prophetic voice issuing from Cape Town came from Dr. Joseph D’Souza from India when he spoke out against the Indian Caste System as (a form of modern) slavery in its subjugation of 250 million Dalit peoples. D’Souza made the point that if apartheid was wrong, then so too the Caste System: “25% of India’s population — 250 million people — has no rights, dehumanized, segregated, and silently enduring an apartheid system in India. We, of course, in India hang our heads in shame…” D’Souza stated that there are more slaves in our world today than when William Wilberforce fought the Transatlantic slave trade and closed his rousing and prophetic message by calling forth the involvement of the global church: “I am here to say to you here at Cape Town that nothing but the concerted opinion and involvement of the global church will bring down human civilization’s longest lasting slave system.”
I think that D’Souza’s eight minutes on the Lausanne platform, 20 years from now, might be one of the defining hallmarks of Lausanne III if the global church – working with Dalit Christians – manages to prophetically speak out and live out Christ’s transforming power in the midst of this (unbelievably) large-scale injustice, reconstituting Indian society from the bottom-up for the glory of Christ.
Humility, Humility, Humility: Mission Success not tied to National Economic Prosperity
Patrick Fung (General Director of OMF International) made a desperate plea for humility and simplicity to the growing Chinese church. Although most of the 200 Lausanne delegates from China never made it to Cape Town (having been detained by the Chinese government), Fung warned the Chinese church to not fall into the temptation of linking missionary success with national economic prosperity. Perhaps the church in China can learn from the mistakes of the English and American church that too often thought (and still thinks) that missionary success goes hand-in-hand with economic power and might.
Maybe it is still not too late for the growing churches in the global south significantly missional in orientation – one thinks of China, Korea, Nigeria and Brazil – to return to the humble praxis of the first missionary who was born in a lowly manger.
Oral Bible Stories: Making Scriptures Available Now
By some estimates, only 458 of the world’s 7,299 languages have complete translations of the Bible, while approximately 4,723 languages are without a single word of scripture in their mother tongue. While Lausanne obviously wasn’t “throwing in the towel” with regards to the thousands of languages still without scriptures, I heard some segments of Lausanne saying: “Enough already. Let’s put 40-60 key biblical stories on CDs in languages that do not yet have the scriptures. Let’s not abandon the long process of scripture translation, but waiting for another 30-40 years while millions of people live and die without hearing the Bible in their own mother tongue is not acceptable. The modern church has never done a great job with oral learners, but we have a responsibility to reach the nearly 4 billion oral people on this planet. Let’s get going on this one.”
A New Day, One Old School Call from Piper
From my perspective, those were the potentially historic and prophetic moments of the Third Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. In many respects, the Congress was a passing of the baton to a new generation of mission leaders as the two names most closely associated with the Lausanne movement in Billy Graham and John Stott could only participate “in spirit” via letters due to their advanced ages. Yet, perhaps it was a pastor, theologian and writer who did the very best Billy Graham impersonation during the entire Congress. John Piper, in his exposition of Ephesians 3 during the third morning session, passionately urged the Lausanne Congress not to forget the priority of world evangelization – an important moment within the Congress. Piper asked if the Congress might affirm the following statement: “We Christians care about all human suffering but especially eternal suffering.” Piper’s charge/confrontation was characteristically an old school call for a new day of mission in the midst of new challenges for the global church. It was a call for the global church to continue to be bold in making evangelism the center of the church’s work and witness. And, I’m sure, Billy was smiling.