Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization

Missionaries Changed the World Once – Can they do it again?

The Surprising Discovery About Those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries by Andrea Palpant Dilley on the cover of Christianity Today (January/Feburary 2014).

The topic of a recent cover story in Christianity Today is shaking up not only the world of missions, but also academia. The World the Missionaries Made is a report on the work of Robert Woodberry, a sociologist currently researching at the Political Science Department of the National University of Singapore. CT’s Executive Editor Andy Crouch calls it the CT cover story of which he is most proud. Its thesis and Woodberry’s work support a remarkable conclusion – that a generation of “conversionary protestant missionaries”[1] laid a foundation for democracy around the world. In effect, missions in the 19th and 20th centuries may be one of the most significant factors, and certainly one of the most overlooked, in what CT calls “the health of nations” today: [Read more…] about Missionaries Changed the World Once – Can they do it again?

The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 3): A Plea for Prayer

Thank-you to Care of Creation Inc. for providing permission to draw from their photo archives for this series! This picture is from Landscapes of Kenya.
To learn more about The Lausanne Movement click here.

The Jamaica Call to Action, based on two convictions and presenting 10 clear and actionable things that the church can do, nonetheless recognizes that even though we know what needs to be done, and we know how to do most of it, this is not enough. A problem that has eluded the best brains and that all of the powers of all of the governments on earth are unable to solve will not be solved with a to-do list, no matter how well thought out.

So the call to action ends with an urgent call to prayer:

Our call to prayer

Each of our calls to action rest on an even more urgent call to prayer, intentional and fervent, soberly aware that this is a spiritual struggle. Many of us must begin our praying with lamentation and repentance for our failure to care for creation, and for our failure to lead in transformation at a personal and corporate level. And then, having tasted of the grace and mercies of God in Christ Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, and with hope in the fullness of our redemption, we pray with confidence that the Triune God can and will heal our land and all who dwell in it, for the glory of his matchless name.

[Read more…] about The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 3): A Plea for Prayer

The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 2): Ten ‘Calls’

Much of the Consultation’s work in the Jamaica Call to Action was done around discussion tables. Thank-you to Care of Creation Inc. for providing this picture and the permission to post it.

The Jamaica Call to Action is unique not only in the two concise convictions on which the document is based (see the previous post), but also because of the comprehensive and specific ‘Calls’ that make up the core of the document. These cover everything from lifestyle to theology to economics to agriculture.

To learn more about The Lausanne Movement click here.

Here is a brief analysis of these calls and the fields of study to which they apply:

  1. For all of us: #1. A new commitment to a simple lifestyle. Lausanne actually called for a simple lifestyle in one of the early documents of the movement (Lausanne Occasional Paper #20), a call that we understand anecdotally was controversial even in 1980. This call leads the list as a recognition that nothing we attempt corporately will matter much if it does not come out of lives that are committed to action as well as words. Living “within the proper boundaries of God’s good gift in creation” is an implicit acknowledgement that we live in a limited, closed system, and that self-restraint is not only necessary but good.
  2. For theologians: #2. New and robust theological work. [Read more…] about The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 2): Ten ‘Calls’

The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 1): Two Convictions

A discussion of the final text of the Jamaica Call to Action. Thank-you to Care of Creation Inc. for providing this picture and the permission to post it.

Note from the Editor: The second post in a four part series on Creation Care & the Lausanne Movement by Ed Brown, Director/CEO of Care of Creation and the Senior Associate for Creation Care for the Lausanne Movement. A New Awakening? Creation Care & the Lausanne Movement is the first post in the series. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN.

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About 55 people from 40 countries gathered in Jamaica on Oct 29, 2012 for five days of meetings around the subject of Creation Care and the Gospel under the auspices of the Lausanne Movement in collaboration with the World Evangelical Alliance. The meeting was organized around three themes:

  1. God’s World (scientific examination of the nature of the environmental crisis)
  2. God’s Word (theological perspectives on creation and our responsibilities as seen in the Bible)
  3. God’s Work (how we are, can and should be responding to these needs in partnership with God).
To learn more about The Lausanne Movement click here.

By remarkable and symbolic coincidence, the Consultation went into session during the same hour that Hurricane Sandy made landfall just south of New York City, having already devastated portions of the Caribbean. A number of participants were delayed or were unable to attend at all because of the associated travel disruptions, and the storm provided an important, if unwanted, reminder of the urgency of our deliberations.

It was a valuable gathering and would have been worthwhile just for the five days we spent together. [Some of the content from the Consultation is available here with video of the main talks to be posted soon; a book is expected within the next year or so.] However, one of our early goals was to produce something that would serve as an immediate guide and point of focus for the evangelical community with regard to creation care. The resulting document is the Jamaica Call to Action. [Read more…] about The Jamaica Call to Action (Part 1): Two Convictions

A New Awakening? Creation Care & the Lausanne Movement

Thank-you to Care of Creation Inc. for providing permission to draw from their photo archives for this series! This picture is from Tanzania landscapes and wildlife (May 2013). To God be the glory!

The “whole gospel” includes caring for God’s creation.

To learn more about The Lausanne Movement click here.

That is one important conclusion that comes from reading the landmark Cape Town Commitment (CTC) the latest signature document of the Lausanne Movement. The CTC is historically important for the entire evangelical family, but particularly for those of us involved in the creation care movement.

The document has credibility and authority because of what it is, the latest “confessional statement” of the global church as represented by the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization, which significantly traces its own roots to John Stott and Billy Graham.

The first global meeting of Christian leaders under the Lausanne banner in 1974 gave us the Lausanne Covenant, a defacto statement of faith that gained immediate and widespread acceptance within the evangelical community.

Fifteen years later the Manila Manifesto was produced by the 1989 Lausanne World Congress meeting in Manila. This meeting was organized around the theme that has come to characterize Lausanne: “The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world” and the Manifesto laid the foundation for genuine partnership between the churches of the east and west, north and south, opening an era in which the “whole church” has participated in the missionary enterprise in ways unseen before. [Read more…] about A New Awakening? Creation Care & the Lausanne Movement