Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.

In September, I had the honor of attending the 4th Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Seoul or Incheon, South Korea. The Lausanne movement celebrated its 50th anniversary with 5,000 people from over 200 nations. There were so many people!

The Lausanne Movement has significantly shaped Christianity since it was started by Billy Graham 50 years ago in 1974. And there are so many powerful moments that I want to share some of them with you in this and some upcoming episodes.

One of those powerful moments for me was on the Thursday night of the conference when we had a kind of musical presentation of the history of Christianity in Korea. It was really well done, top notch in quality. It was almost like a Broadway show with professional singers and choruses. They symbolically led us through every stage of the growth of the church in Korea, from its founding by missionary Presbyterian missionaries, and then to this wildfire that spread across the nation into the power giant that it is today. But also some of the current challenges it has. In fact, one of the most moving parts of it was toward the end when they talked about how, yes, the church is big and strong now, but that’s also led to some of its problems, that some of the struggles for power and the pride have led many young people today to see the church as irrelevant. And they were actually seeing a decline of young people in the church. And so we need to pray for Korea. And then a Japanese woman came up and prayed for the country. Now, most of you probably know about the oppression the Japanese people had over the Korean people for a long time, and that was actually part of the reason for the growth of the church. And so, at the very end, to have a Japanese woman praying for the country, that God would continue to work mightily in Korea was just such a fitting end to that time.

One of the biggest things I learned from that evening is how the spark of Christianity which spread across the nation started in Pyongyang, which is, you know, the capital of North Korea, where Christianity is now outlawed. So there we were not too far from North Korea where we were meeting for the conference. And we can’t go. No one can go to Pyongyang. And the center of where Christianity started on the Korean Peninsula is now outlawed for Christianity. And that pains us, right? So much has changed in the past 100 years.

Some of the best times for me at the conference were to meet with other artists. We had two artist gatherings at the Congress one was an artist breakout time where we all gathered around tables in a room, I guess there were probably 60 of us there, and discussed challenges facing us in the arts and missions today. Around our tables, we would talk about that and then share from each table. And you could tell from the comments that there was a lot of emotion behind what people were saying. Unfortunately, the time was only 45 minutes and I really wanted it to be longer. And then we all had to rush off to something else. Two days later, we gathered again with a smaller group of artists and talked more about it.

The arts were represented in the congress in a number of ways. First, the Broadway-like musical I told you about before with the presentation of Christianity in Korea. Also, there was an artist who was a virtual reality artist. I’ve actually never seen anything like it. He was standing up there with goggles on his eyes and painting in the air. And then we could see what he was painting on the digital screen behind him, which was a very tall screen. So it was pretty powerful in what he was doing. We also had a number of dramatic skits during the conference, and of course there was music.

What was especially fascinating to me were two artists who were working up front doing live painting during the plenary sessions. They would take the theme for that day and represent it visually for all of us. And then after that, that painting was moved out into the lobby area where people could see it. They did this every single day. Well, after that very last plenary evening, I was able to talk with them a little bit for this podcast about their experience at the conference and to share a little bit of their story.

Roger

So I’m standing here with Bryn and Alexis, who’ve been painting these amazing paintings up here in the front of this hall. And so I want them to kind of share a little bit with all of you about what they’ve been doing up here.

Bryn Gillette

Take it away, sister.

Alexis Newsom

Hi, everyone. Yeah, so I’m Alexis, and Bryn and I have been here. We have been brought into the Lausanne family per se, through different channels. And Bryn has been the artist here for 10 years, and I was invited in earlier this year. So we have now known each other for just a few months. And this has been such an unbelievable week and such an unbelievable picture of collaboration. Yeah, so Bryn and I, we’re both artists, but we are artists of such differing styles.

Bryn

On the spectrum of styles, they don’t really get a whole lot wider. I’m not hyper-realistic and representational, but I definitely err on the side of the representational figurative work.

Alexis

Yes. And I…

Bryn

Fairly small…

Alexis

…typically paint very large, very contemporary artwork. Abstract artwork.

Roger

Totally.

Bryn

You’re doing what I want to do.

Alexis

Well, you’re kind of doing what I want to do.

Bryn

I need more of your work in my work. That’s why I think the Lord brought us together.

Alexis

Absolutely. I think that has a big part of it.

Bryn

Well, we’ve been joking all week as we have experienced working together in real time, side by side for the first time. We’ve been collaborating up until now on the 50th anniversary painting. But it was only with us handing the work off to each other and then, but not in the studio at the same time. So this was the first real time together. And our kingdom math, our kingdom collaborative math, became one plus one equals seven. But we kept turning around and being like, oh, my goodness, what you’re doing just so enhanced this and feeling like the Holy Spirit was the third undeniable partner with us.

Alexis

Yes. We’d be standing there. It’s such a crazy dynamic of standing there side by side with another artist and even passing off brushes and passing off colors and switching sides or being like, that’s amazing.

Bryn

I’ve never seen it. Like, can I try that?

Alexis

I’d paint something and come back to the same section and there’s a new, better addition. And it’s…it’s beautiful.

Bryn

Well, we talked about that. Like, when you do artwork on your own, you’re the master of your own little universe. Like everything answers to you. And so a couple of the things we’ve debriefed and just realized made the collaboration easy because we were like, why does this feel so easy?

Alexis

Yes.

Bryn

And I think a big part of that is that when you’re already used to collaborating with the Holy Spirit, you’ve already learned to surrender control. Like, it’s not your universe, it’s his. And you’re trying to serve the work. You’re trying to serve the Lord as he prompts. So there’s that already, that call and response. Like, it’s a give and take dance with the Holy Spirit and coming alongside another master and another deep disciple of Jesus Christ who knows how to dance with the Spirit. Lexi’s already doing that with the Lord. And it’s so natural. And I’m drinking from the same well, and I’m doing it. So we’re both collaborating and uniting that way. So it’s not hard to turn and then be humble before her and be attentive to her and surrender control to her because there’s…I just feel like that that’s what we’ve been learning about collaboration. And the honor is really important. The fact that I honor her capacity.

Alexis

Respecting and coming into this and coming into the…whatever it may be, the situation, the painting, and coming in with a spirit of humility and as was spoken about earlier in the week, just saying I need you and understanding that you do need others and other people need you. And it’s absolutely a partnership between each other and with the Lord.

Bryn

Yeah, like if we’re going to reach seven in the kingdom math, like I can bring one…

Alexis

…and I can bring one..

Bryn

…but I need you if we’re going to reach seven because that’s the way the Lord designed it.

Alexis

Yep.

Roger

Thank you. That’s such a beautiful picture of what we all are hoping for in the movement here. So thank you so much. It’s been a blessing to us.

Alexis

Thank you so much, Roger.

Roger

On the next morning, the very last day of the conference, they did a beautiful display of what we’re all trying to accomplish through the Lausanne Movement. And that was they worked with this broken globe. We didn’t really know what it was till it was finished, but they ended up putting together this like 5-foot diameter globe of the earth together up on stage. It was broken in all these pieces. They put the pieces together, then they painted in the continents and the ocean, and then they painted over the cracks with gold. So that ancient Japanese art of kintsugi where you bring the broken together through gold to bring healing, to bring beauty into the brokenness. And to see that visual representation on stage in the last day was so powerful. I wish you all could have seen it.

Well, I wanted to end our time together in this first episode about the Lausanne Congress with a conversation with Victor Nakah. He and I were at a missions conference together in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of all places, right after our trip to Korea. And we were waiting for an event to begin in a park. So we sat down on a park bench and just talked a little bit about it.

Victor is the International Director for Mission to the World for Sub-Saharan Africa and has an important voice for what happens in Mission of the World around the globe. He is from Zimbabwe but currently lives in South Africa. During the missions conference in Tennessee on Sunday, he gave us an important reminder that all of us in the US and in Africa are among those foreign nations, those faraway gentile lands, that Israel constantly prayed for in the Old Testament. And his words really struck me because sometimes we in America think of the US as kind of a center for Christianity. But he powerfully reminded us of how we are brought into the family of God as outsiders, how we’ve been adopted as his children and invited into his family. In other words, we’ve already seen evidence of God’s desire to see the nations come to him. We’ve seen it in America. We’ve seen it in Africa. We see it across the globe. He will continue to make good on his promises. So Victor was on the theological committee for Lausanne, helping to form the Seoul Statement. The previous two congresses also had statements like the Manila Manifesto and the Cape Town Commitment. You gotta love the alliteration there. Victor was kind enough to sit down with me and interact a little bit about this statement and also his experience with Lausanne.

Roger

So I’m sitting here with Victor Naka in a park in Chattanooga. We are here for a missions conference at First Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to ask you some questions about the Lausanne Conference that we were both part of. Can you tell me just a little bit about your experience there? Yeah.

Victor

Thank you, Roger, for having me. I co-chair the Lausanne Theology Working group, and it’s a group of global theologians who were working on what then became the source statement over a period of four years. But I’ve been involved with the Lausanne movement for the last 20 years.

Roger

Wow.

Victor

And my first kind of active involvement was in 2010 when the Congress was held in Cape Town in South Africa. And I was in the theology working group with Chris Wright and others. Really, I was the youngest, so I was learning. I say to friends, I was carrying their bags when we went from one meeting to another.

Roger

So there have been various statements over the years: the Manila Manifesto and Cape Town Commitment, for this one, the Seoul Statement. What were you all trying to encompass? Was it building upon the past? Was it something new?

Victor

Well, obviously any document that Lausanne comes up with builds up on the previous documents so that there is consistency in terms of theology and the vision mission of the Lausanne movement. But the difference with the source statement is in the name. It’s not a commitment, it’s not a covenant, it’s a statement. And you can see how that is emphasized right throughout the statement itself, you know, beginning with the gospel.

Roger

Right.

Victor

So it’s a statement, a statement that tries to identify theological gaps that the global church needs to wrestle with as we work on the Great Commission. And these theological gaps were identified as part of the listening process in the Lausanne movement. You know, the same process that produced the state of the Great Commission is the same process that helped us identify these theological gaps, and then we started working on them. But it’s a statement. It’s not a covenant. It’s not a commitment.

Roger

Yeah. I was very impressed by how clearly the gospel was displayed in the opening pages of it. Can you summarize what the major gaps were that were identified?

Victor

Yeah, if I can remember all of them. So we obviously started with the Gospel because we realized that, you know, globally whether we’re talking about global north or global south, there are all these distortions of the gospel. There are many gospels. And that’s why we thought, if we are to talk about fidelity to the gospel, fidelity to the Scriptures, well, we must begin with answering the question, what is it? You know, what is the gospel? And so the gospel is the first one right at the top.

Another issue that is in this statement is to do with how we read, study, and interpret Scripture. And we’re asking the question, is there an evangelical hermeneutic that unites evangelicals? Because we feel like, you know, all our different differences are really to do with how we read and study Scripture. So there is a section on evangelical hermeneutics. And then we have all these very hot issues around identity, sexuality, and technology. And the theology working group was very much aware of the fact that what we were going to end up with in this statement are conversation starters, as opposed to this is the final. Because how can you get the global evangelical body agreeing on anything, right? Especially on these issues, you know, that have divided churches, issues that have resulted in splits in denominations. So they’re conversation starters. And in one sense, as soon as people received this statement, that began to happen.

Roger

Yeah, I heard a lot of conversations happening about it.

Victor

Some distancing themselves from this statement. Others not happy with the way the sentences were constructed. And I think that was the objective behind this.

Roger

You know, one of my main impressions, just about the conference in general, was the way it felt like there were so many things happening around the world, so many movements, so many nations leading so many different ways. It didn’t feel like, in some ways it didn’t feel unified because there was so much…I don’t know if chaos is the right word…but definitely very diverse in what is happening. And I’m still trying to process it all. Can you help me process it?

Victor

Well, yeah, I don’t know if I can help, but I think the emphasis on polycentric mission helps speak to that. The fact that it’s no longer a mission or missions from one region of the world to another. We no longer have one who sends and the other who receives. It’s from everywhere to everywhere. Even when we talk about Africa, the African church is not waiting to send missionaries. We have already done that. Perhaps we need to organize better, train better. So it’s already happening from everywhere to everywhere. And even, you know, when we talk about unity in diversity, there’s a sense in which we’re quite happy to celebrate the diversity. But what’s more complicated is the unity. What is it that unifies us as evangelicals? I think there was a sense at the congress that perhaps this broad church has reached a point where there’s need to revisit the fundamentals, the essentials of the faith that unite us. Are we still united around those essentials or fundamentals and the non-essentials? To what extent have the non-essentials seeped into the essentials box and they need, you know, to refine that?

But what I found interesting, I think, is the need for that is being manifested over things we’re fighting over issues of identity, issues of technology. I mean, we realize, for example, that the global church needs a theology of technology so that we’re not dealing with issues, but we are providing broadly what the Bible would help us think about as we think about technology. So a theology of technology that is all-encompassing. But we’re right at the beginning of doing that. I don’t think we’ve arrived yet. And when we’re talking about issues of identity and sexuality, we realize that perhaps the real need is to revisit our doctrine of humankind. We need a robust anthropology that speaks to and helps us engage with what society is grappling with. So we kept going back to the fundamentals. What are these fundamentals of the faith? What are these robust theologies that we need to revisit? Perhaps they need to repackage the same, but repackage in a way that millennials and Gen Zs can understand and process.

Roger

Yeah, it’s so good to be having these conversations because I know, like, for example, this past summer we had five summer interns come, undergrads from the States, and it was so different. I felt the difference between interns in previous years that this generation really understands social media and technology in ways that I’m always playing catch up.

Victor

Oh, yeah.

Roger

And so to have these conversations allows them to have a voice and say, well, here’s how I’ve been impacted in positive and negative ways. I really appreciate that.

Victor

Yeah. One of the things that I’ve appreciated is at times how the world, the secular world generally tends to be way ahead of us as believers. Because the secular world in business has talked about peer mentoring, I think, for the last 10 years, where you have a millennial, a young leader mentoring an older leader into the world of social media because they understand, understand social media better and they’re helping the CEO understand how do we use it and where should we be careful. I think it’s the same thing with us. We need to find ways to allow the younger generation to have a voice. I mean, one of the things the Lausanne movement talks about a lot is what will the church look like in 2050? Well, most of us are not going to be there in 2050, so why not allow the millennials and Gen Z’s, those who are going to be there, to have a voice and perhaps influence how we’re going to get to 2050?

Roger

That certainly was what I saw as the beauty of the Lausanne Congress. To be able to create unity, you need to have relationships. You need to be talking about these things together to be together and to be able to bring people from all over the world of all age categories. We had a Gen Z at our table. In fact, she was the table leader, the group discussion leader, and she was amazing.

People keep asking, was it worth it? Going all the way there: was it worth the money? Was it worth the time? And I have to say yes.

Victor

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, especially when you consider the fact that this doesn’t happen often. The Lausanne movement is not the only one that tries to bring together the global church. And so any opportunity to meet with more than 5,000 leaders from 200 countries at least. What an opportunity. I mean, when people talk about a taste of heaven, right? In terms of diversity and unity, the fact that we actually came together, just that by itself is good cause for celebration.

Roger

Certainly is. I can’t wait for the next one.

Victor

Oh, yeah.

Roger

Thank you for all your hard work preparing for this.

Victor

It was my pleasure.

Roger

Thank you.

Victor

Roger, good to talk to you. Thank you, brother.

Roger

So I think you can see from this short conversation that there’re so many things that were talked about at the conference and that we could talk about in this podcast, and I’ll be sharing some of those in the episodes ahead. Something that Lausanne did really well at the Congress was to represent the nations of the world at my discussion table at the plenaries. We had eight people from eight different countries, and in every mealtime and every seminar and everything that I went to, I was always talking with people from all over the world. So, what was clear coming away from the Lausanne Congress is that God is working around the globe and he will continue to do so. He is building his church, and he is spreading his kingdom across the face of this planet for the sake of his glory.

Thank you so much for listening to the Art Life Faith podcast. As we say in Japan “Ja, matane. We’ll see you next time.”