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

I’d like to continue in this episode what we began in the last, reflecting on the Lausanne Fourth Congress that happened at the end of September 2024, which I had the honor of attending. Now, these events don’t happen very often. The previous one was in 2010, 14 years ago. This one was by far the biggest, with 5,000 people from over 200 nations, and I’m still trying to process all the material that was there and all the relationships and new people that I met. So in this episode, we will have a longer conversation at the end with Doug Birdsall, who was chairman of the Lausanne Committee for 10 years, as he reflects on Lausanne and its purpose and where it has come from. But first, I’d like to begin by introducing you to some of the people that I met. Here are just some of the conversations I had with people there.

Please introduce yourself and where you live.

I am Pastor Philip from Bangladesh.

What brings you to the Lausanne conference?

I think Lausanne is a great movement. I already attended Lausanne Cape Town in 2010, and this time I’m here because the main topic is collaborating. This is my desire to collaborate with different people.

Great. It’s interesting. You went to the previous one, too. How would you compare the two so far?

That time it happened in Africa. Culturally, it’s a little bit different because we really enjoyed the arts and culture in the African context. Now this is in Korea. There is a big difference of cultural contents.

Please share your name and where you’re from.

Well, my name is Jamshetu. I’m from the capital city of Pakistan, Islamabad.

Awesome. What do you do there?

Well, I’m running a ministry with the name of MAM, Music on Mission. We are trying to reach children and youth through music.

What are you hoping for in this conference?

Well, I like to meet like-minded people and to learn from their experiences and, of course, the networking and collaboration. When you come to the other countries, you see different people with different gifts and different blessings. It’s always encouraging for the people who are serving. You get ignited. You get refreshed. And you get charging in your power bank to work effectively for the kingdom of the Lord. I feel that I’m getting refreshed here because I’m watching so many enthusiastic people for the ministry and people are using their talent skills for the glory of the Lord. It’s really encouraging.

Nice. Thank you so much.

Hello.

Hello.

Now, I’m not going to ask you what your name is or where you’re from because you’re wearing one of those white name tags. Can you tell me what that means?

For those of us who don’t want to have our picture taken, for the security of our ministry, we’re identified with these white lanyards and a little sticker on our name badges that say no photography, just so that when people take our pictures accidentally those pictures don’t go public or just don’t take pictures at all. Mostly that’s for the sake of security issues within our ministry that we’re serving in closed countries and things like that.

Now, we’re standing here in a seminar room. Can you tell me what the theme is of the talk that’s just about to happen?

Oh, yeah. This is the Islam track. We’re all divided into discussion tables talking about different issues in Islam.

I see there’s a lot of people here.

There is. It’s pretty packed. Yeah.

This conference covers people in restricted countries across the globe, right?

Yes. Even in my little table of six people, there’s different contexts in Central Asia, the Persian world, university ministries, but all within Islam.

Yeah. And you told me just before we started recording that one of the things you’re hoping to get out this conference is really to connect and be able to collaborate with others. Is that right?

That’s right. We have Christians and really top experts from all over the world talking about the Great Commission, trying to figure out how to push forward the goal of the Great Commission and mission. And so I’m here to really hear some of the answers to that question.

Yeah, it really is phenomenal. The people who are here are just amazing.

Yes, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a great time.

Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you.

What is your name and where do you serve?

My name is Jarvis. I was born and raised in Ghana, but now I’m in Canada serving there in a church and also with the denomination in church planting and church health.

Okay. What do you do with the church?

I currently serve with the Free Methodist Church in Canada as Senior Director of Church Health and Church Planting. But as a musician and artist, my music is always going with me wherever I go. I do a lot of singing and worship. I also bring people into my Ghanaian culture with my music. So that’s what I do in Canada.

That’s cool. What brought you to the Lausanne congress?

In 2016, I was part of the worship team that led worship at the YLG conference there, the Younger Leaders Gen conference. I’m not sure if I was nominated by somebody there, but two people nominated me. Anyway I have some connection with the Lausanne Movement, so I’m guessing that may have been the reason.

That’s awesome. It’s great to meet you.

Thank you.

Please tell me what you’re doing here at the Lausanne Movement.

I’m a volunteer. My name is Abel. I’m from Nigeria, but I came in from Germany. I’m a volunteer with the videographer team.

You just had me record something here. For what video are you making right now?

The videographer team is doing videos for post-Lausanne. In the next couple of years, we want videos that are evergreen, expressions of God through the Lausanne movement with vision statements and some of the statements for the Great Commission are what we are recording for posterity.

Great. You’re trying to expand the awareness, too, of what Lausanne is about?

Yes, definitely. Lausanne is the global church, and the Great Commission is our collective goal. It’s something that all of us should be doing. We are supposed to be disciples of all nations, spreading the gospel throughout the world. That is the aim, and we want to contribute our part to doing that.

That’s awesome. Thank you.

Thank you very much. God bless you.

Would please let me know your name and where you serve?

My name is Joel, and I come from Rwanda. I serve at my local church as a deacon and a worship leader, but I also serve in the Peace Plan Initiative as a volunteer.

Okay, now what’s the Peace Plan Initiative?

The Peace Plan Initiative was started by Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church, and it’s about equipping servant leaders to go for the Great Commission.

Okay. What is the situation like in Rwanda? What can you tell us about the church in Rwanda?

Well, the church is growing, and yes, they are being requested to do more at this moment. I like this collaboration that is happening because I believe that there’s a huge gap in unity, but I also see many people rising.

Yeah, I see that around the world.

Yes, I see many people rising together to really collaborate and work together for the Great Commission in Rwanda. It’s healing because the past has been a bit hard, but I see the church doing a lot of things in all spaces, education, health, and reaching out to the whole man with love, with God’s love.

That’s awesome. Thank you. We’ll be praying.

Yeah. Thanks.

It truly was an honor to meet all these people from countries across the planet. I think that’s something the Congress did really well, representing the world and fellowshipping together and tackling various themes and problems in the world today. How do we see evangelism expand? You could especially see that around my discussion table in the plenary sessions, where each person was from a different country in the world.

One of the things that we kept hearing time and time again was started by one of the plenary speakers who said that the world today is not post-Christian, but pre-revival. And then that became one of the themes that was repeated over and over again throughout the week. And personally, I really appreciated this optimism about the future, that the church is continuing to grow and that the gospel of grace is reaching more and more people.

Okay, so there’s one more conversation I’d love to share with all of you, with Doug Birdsall, who was the chairman of the Lausanne Committee for 10 years. I came to know him at the same church on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and also he previously served as a missionary in Japan for many years, so we have a lot in common.

He’s just such a kind and generous person. And I thought, who better to help us process the Lausanne Fourth Congress and to help us put it in context of where we where it come from.

Thank you, Doug, so much for being on the program.

Thank you, Roger. It’s really a pleasure to be with you.

I’m really especially happy to talk to you about the Congress that just happened to help me process it. I mean, there are so many people we met. There’s so much information. There’s so many themes that were in the Congress. But before we get to that, I want to start with one of the sessions there celebrating the first 50 years of Lausanne. I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit.

Sure. Well, the evening that we celebrated the 50 years of Lausanne, I was asked by one of my colleagues, a friend from the Philippines, what she thought Billy Graham would say if he was there, or if he knew that there were 5,000 of us who were in Seoul celebrating the 50th anniversary. And I said, well, I don’t know what he would say, but I know what he would think. He would be very surprised. Billy was actually ambivalent about an ongoing movement.

Really? I didn’t hear that.

Yeah, he was. Billy Graham, as a person was a crusade evangelist, he never wanted to compete with any established entity. After they would hold a preaching campaign somewhere, they would dissolve the corporation, and whatever fruit came from that meeting was to be enjoyed and cared for by the local committee. So with the Lausanne Congress, he was planning a 10-day event. He never imagined that there would be an ongoing movement. So it was a surprise to him. But it was interesting. I also shared that shortly before he died, when he was interviewed by Newsweek Magazine for a cover story, which they entitled Billy Graham and Twilight. Towards the end of that interview, they asked him what he thought might be his most enduring legacy. Well, of course, he’s known for his crusades. He’s known for Decision Magazine. He was known for helping to establish Christianity Today. Of course, they established the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. There were so many things that he was a part of in one way or another. He was friends with presidents and prime ministers and kings. He was really a towering figure. But in response to that question, he said to them, it just might be the Lausanne Movement.

Well, they hadn’t done any preparation. They weren’t that familiar with the Lausanne Movement. But it’s very interesting that Billy Graham himself had that opinion. The only way that I know that is that Billy Graham’s assistant, David Bruce, called me and told me that. And when he told me, I said, did he really say that. It was a surprise to me. But I had the privilege of meeting him after I became the leader in 2004, and he was a source of great encouragement. So to be there in the Fourth Congress, and each Congress has its own flavor. It has its own context. It’s meeting in a certain time in history. They build one upon the other. But Lausanne, essentially, is a global network of trusted friends across organizational, geographical, theological boundaries, people who are committed to the extension of the gospel, the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world. That was the vision. And as you’ve intimated, there are many, many organizations, thousands of them. There are many, many networks, hundreds of them. There are significant global networks, perhaps dozens of them. But I think Lausanne has been used of God in a special way, largely because of the towering influence of both Billy Graham and John Stott, who was also ambivalent about Lausanne.

He didn’t want to come to the Congress in ‘74. He had to be persuaded, both by Bishop Jack Dain and by Billy Graham, who both went and visited him and called him before it eventually came. But probably John Stott…the movement would not have happened without John Stott and Billy Graham and gave leadership to the ongoing movement. And Gottfried Osei-Mensah of Ghana became its international director. But it does provide this place we can get together and talk about both the proclamation and the demonstration of the gospel. We can talk about theology and strategy. Those are really the twin pillars of the Lausanne Movement. And once again, we met in Seoul.

I was the leader for the Third Congress in Cape Town. And oftentimes, I said to our leadership team, which started as a team of five and grew to about 120. I said, we do not want to compare ourselves with Lausanne One and Two. We want to learn from them. But it was said of David, he fulfilled the purposes of God and his generation, and then he died, and he was buried, and he saw corruption. That is, he rotted. Well, there’s a sense in which we did our best, and we had a certain set of challenges and circumstances in 2010 that were different from both ’74 and ’89 and 2024. But the amazing thing is that in each of these congresses, when you bring together, whether it’s 2,500 or 4,000 or 5,000 people, and the Holy spirit is present, and you have people who are eager to learn from each other what’s happening, what are the opportunities, amazing things happen. And I often said to our team also that the fruit of Lausanne grows in other people’s trees. Movements are not interested in counting their members or their money. They’re trying to see what influence we have together for the gospel.

Yeah, definitely.

That’s the history it was on.

All right. So help me process now this Congress in particular. I mean, there’s so many people they met from all over the world. So many themes were discussed. What do you see as the vision for each Congress in particular? Most of the people listening did not have the chance to be able to go to Seoul. What is the Lausanne Movement about, specifically, in these congresses?

Sure. Well, Billy Graham shared the fact that as a preacher who God used around the world, he had met people from every part of the world, and he had met many of the greatest leaders. They had been involved in his preaching campaigns. He had started Christianity Today, which was really a forum for people to discuss the great ideas before the church. And then he said, in the crusades, we met the people. We had the magazine with the ideas. We needed to bring them all together. And that’s really what 1974 was all about. The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world. Let the Earth hear his voice. And by virtue of the fact that it was Billy Graham and John Stott, two, I’m going to say maybe once in 500 years figures at the same time and had a trusting relationship. And then the people that they brought, there were just so many really brilliant people there, including a person like Ralph Winter, a breakthrough thinker in unreached people groups, Samuel Escobar, Rene Padilla, and Orlando Costas, recapturing the social responsibility of the Church, which we had lost.

There was a great Protestant liberal divide. More conservative Christians like us, evangelicals, focused almost exclusively on the proclamation, the salvation, and forgot about the incarnation. So that was a great contribution of the First Congress: unreached people groups, the Lausanne Covenant, and social responsibility. The second Congress in Manila brought together Pentecostals, and Charismatics, and evangelicals in a new way. That was another phenomena. We had been walking parallel to one another but not walking together. And again, God used some great people there, J. I. Packer, for one, and Jack Hayford, for another, representing different schools who really embraced each other in every sense of the word. And then the third Congress in Cape Town was a renewal the Lausanne Movement, a revitalization. You may know that the Lausanne Movement almost died in the ’90s. There were no major events for about 10 or 15 years, but I think one of the great contributions of the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town was the Cape Town 2010 Commitment. We live in a new world, and much of the old Christian world is post-Christian. And so we had to have not a Lausanne Covenant or a Manila Manifesto, but a Cape Town commitment.

We’re making these commitments, and it was written in the language of God’s covenantal love. That was really, I think, a wonderful gift of that Congress. And of course, it renewed relationships. At Seoul 2024, I think there was a real emphasis on, in a sense, getting the job done. A lot of talk about the gaps. Where is the work undone? Where are the opportunities? And so maybe it was a bit more, shall we say, practically focused than the previous. Those are differences. And it’s obvious that when we find another one, we look back in terms of what was done, what was strong, what was weak. And we look ahead, what are the challenges and the opportunities? So you wouldn’t want them to be cookie cutter replicas. You come to the same party, but they will naturally be different. So Seoul was the largest Congress, 5,000 people. That created some great opportunities. It also creates some challenges logistically. But perhaps those are some of the highlights, some of the distinctives.

Something you said before we started recording was the fact that there were so many, not just people represented there, but so many movements in so many countries. And Lausanne has always tried to not manage these movements, but rather be a catalyst for what are the things that keep putting the vision out there. What are the things we need to be talking about? How do we need to bring people together? Is that something you saw at this Congress?

Well, I think that I didn’t see that as much, perhaps, as I might have liked, Roger. I think that perhaps there was more of a commitment to, let’s organize, let’s strategize, let’s close the gaps. I think Lausanne had spoken in terms of we’re taking on the mantle for, finally, a comprehensive, coordinated, well-sustained effort, something like that. I’m not quite sure of the exact language. That, I would say, is a bit new to Lausanne. And I think that that needs to be evaluated carefully, because I would say that as a missionary and as a mission leader who has been involved for some time. I’ve always gone to Lausanne events, large or small, thinking I’m going to meet some really interesting people, and I’m going to get some very high-quality information that’s going to help me as a leader, help the organization for which I’ve been responsible. So we’re not Lausanne Japan. We were a mission in Japan, but I benefited enormously from what was going on. And if we had more time, I would tell you about the result of Lausanne 2 in Manila.

I took a 12-country tour to try to understand what are the implications for a mission organization like ours. The impetus for that came from the Congress. It’s still working itself out in our mission all these many, many years later. So I think that Lausanne is perhaps best when it’s providing ideas and providing the arena, literally, in this sense, the convention, there were the 5,000 people, where people come together. And rather than us trying to coordinate it all, it’s a matter of we’re creating the environment in which people will meet over lunch and in bigger sessions and smaller sessions. I think that’s where Lausanne is the best. And then leaders, in particular, take it back to the organizations which they are leading. And that’s why I think it’s important to get the right people in the room so that a person who has new material has somewhere to go with it, as opposed to, I went unattached, and I left unattached. You don’t really join Lausanne. Lausanne does not have any members. We talk about the fact that Lausanne doesn’t have delegates. Nobody sent them. Lausanne has participants and volunteers. That’s what’s the nature of the movement.

That’s so well said, because that’s certainly the experience I had at this Congress. There are artists around the world that I got to meet that weren’t part of the networks that I usually am part of. I was like, Who are these people? I want to know these people. I was so thankful that Lausanne brought them together and look forward to the next opportunity to meet them and talk with them.

Yeah. And you see, it’s interesting because there were some very significant artists who were there, and there are artists networks. I think there may be an artist network in Lausanne, Byron Spradlin, who is a very large organization. But if his organization, and Byron is a very good friend, but if he hosted an international gathering, it’s like, oh, well, the thought is, is he asking us to come to help promote his organization? But when you come to Lausanne, there’s a sense of like, no, Lausanne doesn’t plant churches or start seminaries or mission organizations. And so, we were able to come as a particular individual, part of an organization, part of a network, part of the theological stream, but realizing what a feast. And the fact that was on made a special effort to make sure that artists were connecting. And there’s a sense in which we’re just going to trust God that out of that room, there will be musicians, poets, painters, sculptures, architects that are going to do things and say, it’s interesting. We met for dinner in Seoul, or we went to a session. That’s where the really good stuff happens in my observation, my experience.

Definitely. I love the meals I had together. There were other artists I really wanted to connect with that were spending a lot of time in the workplace forums. They said that, I I really want to connect with the business people around the world and make…Because arts, for it to succeed, really does need to be connected to the business world. It’s really cool to see that happening as well. What about going forward? Where do you hope to see Lausanne go in the years ahead?

Well, Lausanne has made a real intensive, intentional commitment to developing younger leaders. But under the leadership of Nana Yaw, it’s not just younger leaders. It’s like, how do we help each generation where they are? How do we help them learn from one another so that the older people are still being sought out for their experience and wisdom, and they have the joy of encouraging younger leaders and seeing them do new things. I think that’s a very important part. I would hope that Lausanne would strengthen its theology working group and its strategy working group, those who have historically been pillars of the movement. And I think we’re facing some very significant issues, theologically, when it comes to a matter of human identity, the questions having to do with the sexual identity and artificial intelligence, those are very complex problems, and they need really brilliant, Godly people working together to help all of us, because my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren yet to be born, they’ll be dealing with some of these issues. And so I think, especially people who are working in the university world, you would want to go to Lausanne and say, what are we saying about these issues. Identifying the issues and then bringing together the best minds and the people of greatest courage and character, that’s where I think we really need help.

Right. Yeah. And Lausanne still, it really can play that role, right? Because it’s a global network…

Yeah, it’s a trusted broker. And it’s trusted because of the fact that it has a generous spirit. I hope it has a wise spirit, but also the sense of we’re here to help others. They have a trusted broker of ideas and relationships like Lausanne is really a gift. We received it, and it’s important for us to steward it and to pass it on.

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Roger. I’ve enjoyed this. It’s been nice to see you again.

Yeah, it’s good to see you again.

We couldn’t meet at your house or my house, but this has been very nice.

God bless.

Okay. We’ll see you. Bye-bye.

You’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. If you’d like to read the transcript from these conversations, you can find it on my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne. See you next time.”