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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Lausanne: Part fantastic, part nauseous - with Mark Thompson and Chris Edwards
5,000 believers gathered from more than 200 nations last month in South Korea.
It is 50 years since Billy Graham and John Stott first launched the Lausanne movement in Switzerland.
Anglican Bishop of North Sydney Chris Edwards has described the congress as like an all you can eat buffet - where some parts tasted amazing / fantastic and I kept wanting more and yet other parts even a mouthful made me feel nauseous.
Principal of Sydney’s Moore Theological College Mark Thompson says there were some great highlights including a presentation by Vaughan Roberts on sexuality but also areas of concern.
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It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele. And it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet where some parts tasted amazing, fantastic. I kept wanting more and yet other parts even a mouthful made me feel nauseous. That is what Chris Edwards said to me when I asked him about his experience attending the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in South Korea a few weeks ago. The extraordinary beauty of gathering with more than 5,000 believers, representatives from more than 200 nations, in a single room to worship the true and living God. Wow, 50 years ago in 1974, billy Graham and John Stott first pulled together in Lausanne, switzerland, a conference that went on to become a movement bringing evangelicals together for the cause of world evangelisation. Now my social media feed has been full of pithy quotes, photos and excited statements the last few weeks. All about the thrill of gathering in Korea, the joy of meeting and networking with Christians from around the world.
Speaker 1:But there are critiques as well. Ed Stetzer has asked is there a problem of evangelistic mission drift? And he's called on the Lausanne movement for an increased focus on evangelism. Tin Tennant says the Lausanne movement has become so issues-driven that the central emphasis on world evangelization has been buried down to just one emphasis among many. And Jay Matenga writes, I perceive a focus shift from the issues and concern for God's glory to the Lassan institution and its glory. Today, on the Pastor's Heart, we review the Lhasaan Congress in South Korea with two of the delegates there the principal of Sydney's Moore Theological College, mark Thompson, and the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, chris Edwards. Well, chris Edwards, that was a stimulating quote from the all-you-can-eat buffet Some parts fantastic and some parts nauseous. Tell me more.
Speaker 2:Well, when you get 5,000 people together from all over the world, there's a buzz in the room and an excitement, as you mentioned and as you've read about. Then, when you sit down and start to receive the Bible studies, the talks, the discussions, the addresses, there's a range of people in the room and there's a range of opinions being shared and some of the material that we heard was breathtakingly good. It was so encouraging. Vaughan Roberts, I think, was probably one of the standouts. His piece on human identity, particularly around the area of sexuality, was so clear and so memorable that it was terrific to be there to hear that.
Speaker 2:There were other things that were talked about from the platform as well as from some of the small groups. Usually during the week you would have plenary sessions with speakers to everyone and then you have electives and workshops and things that you could go to and work on. In some of those workshops some of the material was so focused I think you quoted someone who was saying it was issues driven so focused on an issue that the gospel really didn't get much oxygen, and I guess that's part of the buffet that I wouldn't want to go back to. It's just, there's nothing savoury about that at all, and certainly nothing nutritious to be gained from it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Mark Thompson. Your first comment to me when you were off the plane back in Australia was how good that address by Vaughan Roberts was.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was one of the highlights, I agree, and what made it so good, I think, was that Vaughan spoke clearly from the Bible. It was obvious that he was teaching the Bible, addressing an issue, because he was addressing human identity and sexuality, but trying to do that theologically and in a way that was pastorally sensitive, so easily memorable. I just remember his four points going up on the board God is for sex, sex is for marriage, marriage is for life, life is for Christ. And that kind of clarity and simplicity was really very, very helpful, but even more so, I think, because it was contrasted with some of the other things that we heard which were rather convoluted, which weren't as theologically anchored, which weren't as pastorally oriented either, I think. And so when we got Vaughan's and I found also Patrick Fung from OMF yeah, patrick was really Patrick was speaking about the persecuted church and his address was very gripping.
Speaker 3:He reminded us that persecution does not harm the mission of Christ, but a compromised gospel will, and it was very clear and again he anchored it in Scripture. Well, he talked about those people who, scattered by persecution in the book of Acts, were unknown and unrecognised. But they were unknown so that Christ would be known, and let's draw attention to him, not to ourselves. So one of the comments that you mentioned a moment ago was is the movement talking more about itself than talking about Christ and the gospel? Well, I think Patrick's call was a call to come back to talking about Christ.
Speaker 1:Let's put the whole conversation into some historical context, because we're 2024. It was 1974 that Billy Graham and John Stott pulled things together, so give us some of that background.
Speaker 2:Well, I wasn't there in 1974,.
Speaker 2:Dominic Mark probably was. Yeah, sure, I understand that. Coming out of the following on from the Billy Graham Crusade in Sydney in 59, there were a number of people excited by what had happened in Sydney and whose vision for taking the gospel to the world was driving them. One of them was Bishop Jack Dane, and Bishop Jack Dane was the first executive chair of the Congress, so he is actually the one who pulled together what happened in Lausanne from the executive chair point of view, so he's an assistant bishop in Sydney, that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:He had been a CMS missionary and I think that that influence and that impact had given him a vision and a view of what we could do for mission and for evangelism beyond our borders and the need, in fact, for Sydney to be sending ascending church, sending missionaries overseas, being involved in what's happening overseas and not just in what's happening locally.
Speaker 1:I think you were telling me, Mark, that at a final picture on the last day of the conference this week at the Lausanne career conference, they got Jack Dane's picture and John Stott's picture mixed up. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Well, right through the conference they regularly showed this iconic picture of Billy Graham leaning over a desk and a man was signing the Lausanne Covenant. And the man signing the Lausanne Covenant was Jack Dane. And at the end of the week that picture was included in a painting that was meant to sum up the whole Congress. And when it was described and people pointed out you'll see in the bottom right-hand corner there's John Stott and Billy Graham. Except it wasn't. It was Jack Dane and Billy Graham.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, yeah, and so Sorry, keep going. Yeah, well, historically, Sydney had a significant part to play Absolutely in getting this going and Billy Graham's fondness for Sydney was evident as well, because the Billy Graham organisation were the ones who were driving this. And I think that when it got to Lausanne, jack Dane's part in pulling it together and Jack Dane's part in wanting to come out of the conference with something more than just a statement or a comment from the conference but to have the covenant that really grew from that group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there was this very important, very significant document that came out of the 1974. Mark. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 3:It's the Lausanne Covenant. It's put together by a theological working group that John Stott headed, but again, another Sydney man played a significant role in that David Clayton, in putting that document together. But it's a document which set out the priorities that are needed if we're going to prosecute the Great Commission through the 20th century into the 21st, and it's a document that stood the test of time. People keep referring back to it.
Speaker 1:We were lectured on it in history of mission classes at Theological College.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it is clause four that talks about the nature of the gospel and there's a clear focus on Christ crucified and proclaiming him. The next clause talks about social justice and those sorts of issues. I think one of the things that may well have happened in years, since those two things have been drawn together so closely that one's been collapsed into the other sometimes and there's been that confusion about what the gospel really is. Is the gospel about proclaiming Christ or is the gospel proclaiming Christ and doing social action? So I think that's happened, but it wasn't there in the Lausanne Covenant because they were distinct clauses the nature of the gospel, the nature of the consequences of the gospel in loving your neighbour and bringing about social justice.
Speaker 2:And historically, that tension was identified by Billy Graham in 74 and that spilled into 75. There was a continuation committee put together that was chaired by John Stott, and those tensions gave rise to a bit of a difference between Billy Graham and John Stott, to the point where they really well, there was a public apology from Billy Graham to John Stott and an agreement from John Stott to Billy Graham that they wouldn't compromise on the nature of evangelism and the outworking of evangelism. So that was a pretty significant moment back in 75.
Speaker 3:And you could still feel that tension, even in Saul, and so the expression the whole gospel for the whole world was in a sense being used to say don't just stick to proclamation, but realise the whole gospel involves climate care, involves social justice, involves the fight for equality, all of those things as well as proclaiming Christ, and that's what the whole world needs. So you can still feel that tension there, although I think it's fair to say that on a number of very significant occasions during the week, we were reminded that we must keep the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen central. A key one of those was Will Graham, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, will Graham wasn't there in person, but it provided a video statement and it was so powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was, and even though it wasn't in person, so powerful in what he said or powerful in how it landed in the conference floor.
Speaker 2:Both. I don't think it was deliberately timed to happen when this tension was becoming more obvious, but it came at a time when there was obvious. There were conversations over meals about this tension between the two and then they played his video, and a video presentation received a standing ovation.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So 5,000 people standing up to applaud, that was pretty powerful.
Speaker 1:What provoked the controversy beforehand that he then spoke into?
Speaker 2:I think it's that whole issue of. I think the other expression we heard a lot was the holistic gospel.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2:And the question being asked. Particularly the people I spoke to anyway, who were asking me what is the holistic gospel, were coming from places like India, Myanmar and Africa and saying what is a holistic gospel?
Speaker 1:Can I just ask you, Chris, what is a holistic gospel? My understanding of the holistic gospel Is it? God is the creator and we rebel against him.
Speaker 2:No, no, I wish no. The idea of the holistic gospel and holistic evangelism is that you have proclamation alongside the works that would follow, in my opinion. So me doing work and the way I do my work can be evangelism. Wait a minute. That's the holistic gospel. Now, I'm not advocating that, I'm saying that was the I think I'm wrong on that.
Speaker 1:So who was saying that?
Speaker 3:There were some people from the platform who spoke about holistic mission and the holistic gospel and holistic mission was saying actually you are by doing your work, whatever your work might be, I'm doing effective gardening.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a holy calling, architecture or something like that. That's a holy calling and therefore this is how you are honouring Christ, which I think we'd all want to say. There are opportunities to honour Christ in whatever work you do, but this was being put down as being holistic mission. This is how we prosecute the mission by doing these things. Now, that had come earlier in the day, and then we had Will Graham reminding us that, whatever else you might want to say, you must keep Christ, crucified, risen forgiveness through his blood, at the centre of what you're doing.
Speaker 1:You're the principal of the Theological College. What was your critique? Of the conferences I've gone to, well, no, of that particular line as it was being said. You must have been sitting there thinking I mean, what if it was one of your staff in a lecture saying that? What would you be saying?
Speaker 3:I'd be having a quiet cup of coffee somewhere.
Speaker 1:And role play with this. Just imagine I'm a staff member.
Speaker 3:I think what happened was that the gospel and the consequences of the gospel were being merged in a way that, in the end, made the gospel less clear. So our concern for people.
Speaker 1:That's a fairly serious charge. It is, it is.
Speaker 3:I think, but it wasn't universal to the conference no it's not universal Right.
Speaker 3:It did happen and it was said repeatedly by some of the plenary speakers, but it wasn't only Will Graham, it was Patrick Fung, there were a couple of other people. Throughout seminars and even on the last day, michael O, the chairman, was talking about the importance of proclamation, and you need to remember that the banner of the conference was let the church declare and display Christ together. That was the banner of the conference, so what Michael did at the end was emphasise the declare.
Speaker 1:And so that was a helpful thing to do.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't universal, but it was there significantly enough for people, as Chris was saying, to be talking about it all over meals. What's going on? Has there been mission drift, which is a phrase that kept being used, or is this going to be corrected somehow? I found that it wasn't as present as I thought it would be, but it certainly was present.
Speaker 1:Tell us about Michael O, the executive director of the conference, and his contribution.
Speaker 2:I certainly thought that his first address was inspiring. Right, he was setting the conference into a context and I think he made people sit up and pay attention to using the week to make sure that we would come out with something that would be fruitful for the gospel, fruitful for the kingdom, and I thought he did that very well. I think where we missed was along the way. There was a couple of statements made from the platform that needed to be corrected and they apologised and corrected the statements that were made.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll ask Mark about Michael O and then I'll come back to you on those apologies and corrections. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think Michael's addresses were strong on rhetoric and strong on vision. They weren't strong on theological anchoring of what we were doing, I thought. And so in the end he was playing the role of geeing us up and getting us moving along in the conference, and he did that well, but I didn't think that he kept bringing us back to the things we needed to hear. That is why we are doing this and how this flows out of the gospel. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's what I would say about him.
Speaker 1:Now there were apologies and corrections on two issues, as I understand.
Speaker 2:Well, there was one on, a comment was made about dispensational theology and views on that, and then an apology which was made the next day saying we don't mean to be critical of anybody's views. Well, I don't think the apology I don't think should have been made, and if there was going to be an apology, it shouldn't have been made that we're sorry that we said anything about somebody's views. It was one of those things that happens when I imagine a conference is underway and you're not sure what to do, but it just lacked clarity. I don't know, Mark, what did you think? I thought that the apology itself left me thinking why are we revisiting this?
Speaker 3:Yes, I thought when the comment was made. It was made alongside comments about the Palestine-Israeli conflict, and that was obviously going to raise the temperature of people.
Speaker 3:So I think they were trying to dampen that down as much as anything else, and eschatological dispensationalism was the phrase used that some people used to justify their support of one side or the other in that conflict. So with you, chris, I think I'm not sure whether the apology needed to be given, because people are going to say things that you don't agree with from the stage, and it did give the impression that everything has been tightly controlled when the centre has to apologise for what one of its speakers says. So that was there. I think there was an apology given for the statements, the sole statement being given to people when they arrived rather than later on.
Speaker 3:Although that's been a habit, that's been a practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's been the way that these conferences run actually.
Speaker 1:Let's just talk about the statement because I mean the conference. The big international conferences that the three of us have been to have been the GAFCON ones, and at the GAFCON ones the experience has been that there's a little group during the conference that writes a statement and takes sounding from the delegates, gets feedback, that kind of thing, and so when it's published at the end it actually does feel like the mind of the group, whereas that wasn't what happened here.
Speaker 3:Yes, but that's as Chris reminded me. That's not been the case in any of the Lausanne conferences. The practice of Lausanne has been to provide a statement at the beginning. That frames the meeting Right, but it did not give the same feeling that you have at GAFCON that you have some ownership of the statement. So the GAFCON statements at the end of the day, when the final version is read, which takes into account feedback from each of the regional groups, you feel that somehow this is our statement. When the statement's given to you at the very beginning, when you arrive before you've even met for the first session, you don't really feel that it's your statement.
Speaker 1:It's their statement. I read one group compiled an open petition of 250 signatures who were delegates? Saying we disagree, we disagree and annoyed that there was no feedback channels for engaging with the statement.
Speaker 3:It didn't reach my desk.
Speaker 2:No, it didn't come to me I mean 250 out of 5,000,. Maybe that's why I wasn't surprised by it. I guess because I was half expecting it and also because I really appreciate the GAFCON approach. I was there in 2008 when there was literally a blank sheet of paper and everybody in Jerusalem was told we need to. Well, we may not come up with anything, but we're here, what are we going to do? And the Jerusalem Declaration was the fruit of that meeting. But that's a different style of thing.
Speaker 2:I wasn't really offended that the statement the sole statement was made before the conference, and not surprised that there were things in it that people would find that they could comment on or not agree with. That's been lasagna since the beginning. What I think is probably more significant is that it did seem, as Mark was saying, that a lot of what was being said was being controlled and the way it was being said was being controlled and the way it was being said was being controlled. So another apology that was made was for a pastor from India whose church had been destroyed, burnt to the ground by Hindu extremists. He himself had been attacked mercilessly several times and he stood before us holding his Bible, which was burnt. The fire that destroyed the building and burned him, had ruined half his Bible. It was only half a book and he held it before us and pleaded with all of us to maintain the gospel focus and the proclamation of Christ Time up. He's whisked off the stage so they then came back to apologise. Yeah, he hadn't finished. He hadn't finished.
Speaker 1:This happened at our synod. We were debating an important topic and we've got to go and watch a presentation on an organisation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's a little different.
Speaker 3:But the thing was, he was an older. Indian gentleman. And was showing disrespect Was showing disrespect, amongst other things, so they did apologise for that. The interesting thing was then you ended up you left the week with three apologies. The funny thing about the sole statement was that they apologised. They could have just said this is what we always do, but we got an email apologising.
Speaker 2:And they could have opened channels for feedback. Yeah, but they didn't do that, then you had the Indian man.
Speaker 3:Then you had the lady who talked about. You know eschatological dispensationalism. You think they are controlling things from the centre and when it doesn't go well, they're forced into an apology.
Speaker 1:What did you make of the statement Mark?
Speaker 3:I haven't given the statement as much attention as I should at this point. There are very good parts of it, I think, and it does want to speak about the authority of scripture and the place of evangelism. It's not the Lausanne Covenant. I'm not entirely sure what it was trying to do and how it reflected the Congress as a whole. There were two other big themes in the Congress besides the holistic gospel thing. There was the talk about the importance of workplace ministry and evangelism, which we've spoken about, which was really very interesting because it gave opportunity for some rather, let's just say, interesting use of the Bible. So we were reminded.
Speaker 1:Come on, come on.
Speaker 3:We were reminded that Jesus endorsed the fishing industry because he'd called Peter, who was a fisherman, and the finance industry because he called Matthew, who's a tax collector. And so there's Jesus saying you know, these things are good things, except no mention was made of the fact that Peter left the nets and followed Jesus, or that Matthew left his tax table. So there were things like that that were just left out. The other element in the conference was the need to pass on to the next generation, and so there's a very clear message that kept coming this is the time to hand over to the next generation, who will finish the Great Commission and those things. I didn't you know how that fitted with the soul statement. I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1:The gospel going forward through the church or through business, Chris? Well, that's an interesting comment.
Speaker 2:I think that there's a definite feeling on my part that the church was not represented as much as businesses were represented. Now, let me explain that, because….
Speaker 1:You mean on the platform or as delegates? No, as delegates. As delegates.
Speaker 2:I bumped into a lot of people who were there as people who are business people and representing their businesses, not representing necessarily a Christian organisation, but these are people who are involved in commercial enterprise as Christians, which I think it's terrific to have people gathering like that, but this is at the exclusion of people from churches and it seems to me that there may be a shift happening that Marx has picked on those two sub-themes of the conference which I think were evident in the people that they'd invited, that is, people who are younger, which I'm all for, but people who are in business. So, for example, I met a man whose business is in the technology sector and he was there to work out how to promote his particular apps and programs as evangelism apps and programs as evangelism. And I said to him what part of proclamation would the app do? And he said, well, no, no app doesn't proclaim anything but it's evangelism.
Speaker 3:That's the confusion that I think there's a danger around there. Yes, and we were repeatedly told 99% of Christians will do their work, will do their ministry in the workplace and they'll do evangelism in the workplace, but what evangelism was was clouded by that kind of definition. I think, yeah, it was a little vague.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, though, that one of the things that was good that came out of that one of the workshops I was involved in was reaching the middle class. Now, I don't say anything about being Bishop of North Sydney and middle class I wasn't pigeonholed but the beginning of that session was let's define what the middle class is, and they said, basically, if you don't have to think about what food you've got and you don't have to think about where you're going to sleep tonight, you're middle class. So that was our working definition, and then they explained that, by 2050, the majority of the world will be in the middle class, and therefore, what are we doing to reach that group of people? And that's where I think the lines began to blur. It's a compelling statistic when you think how churches particularly a parish-based system like we have we can actually be well-positioned to reach people as that group grows, and what a gift of God that is.
Speaker 2:However, this seemed to be more let's set up businesses. Let's set up people in businesses, rather than let's use the church. Let's get people to join in fellowship together. Let's get people to gather together to worship God, understand him, be discipled and go out. It was more, probably, an emphasis on business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was also interesting, wasn't it? I think most of the businesses that we heard about were businesses that people were starting up or that they ran, and 99% of Christians aren't going to be going to work in a business that they own, run or have started, but they're going to work in whatever company or whatever place they are, and how to be a Christian in that setting was not addressed anywhere near as much as well. I can use this business as a way of extolling the glory of God, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:But before we sound too negative.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:Before we sound too negative. I think there are some profound lessons for us in all this. One of them was I know that you presented at Synod some diagrams of the decline in church attendance. We were presented with charts on church attendance which were done internationally, which tracked almost an identical trajectory, and there was a clear call from the platform of what do we do in response to this. I think I was sending texts to Mark saying does this sound familiar?
Speaker 1:You've flown straight out of our synod too, exactly.
Speaker 2:We left your speech ringing in our ears to be presented with very similar stuff. The response we need to repent, we need to pray and we need to collaborate. And I think if you're not at something like this, where you've got people literally from all over the world who really do want to do evangelism, then I think we will miss, we will be poorer for it. So I don't want to be too negative.
Speaker 3:No, and I would have thought that at the tables where we met, the people that met around the tables were able to encourage each other to think seriously about that and about how we might address that. And though the questions I think the discussion questions were quite convoluted and hard to understand sometimes, but they actually did drive us to think about how might we see the churches grow, how might we Well, they didn't use the term church all that often how might we see the Christian cause grow? Because I think it might be a legitimate negative to say that the church was not highlighted as much as it could have been as an agent of God's purposes in the world.
Speaker 1:Well, you'd want to say the central agent of God's purposes in the world. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:God is gathering people around himself and around his word, and that was not really highlighted much.
Speaker 2:It's the church that will prevail.
Speaker 1:Not the start-up company, not the start-up company, not the start-ups.
Speaker 3:But that was another one of the great Patrick Fung statements, something like you know, persecution is part of the story, but it's not the end of the story. We know the end of the story. Not even the gates of hell will prevail against it.
Speaker 1:It's been a fascinating discussion. Thank you very much for coming in. Mark Thompson is the principal of Sydney's Moore Theological College and Chris Edwards the Bishop of North Sydney. Both of them have just been delegates at the Lausanne Congress in South Korea. My name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart and we will look forward to your company next tuesday afternoon.
