This is perhaps that closest pair of words I can think of to describe what just happened at the 4th Congress of the Lausanne Movement in Incheon, South Korea. The conference in itself is a very interesting theatre of so many tensions at work today in the evangelical community which includes the 'speech that shookt the L4' delivered by Dr Ruth Padilla DeBorst from Latin America.
But for those looking beyond the veneer of what was seen on stage, one of the critical aspects that needs attention is the tension arising from the push and pull of missiological perspectives. The theme of the congress itself is very telling: "Let the church declare and display Christ together." Three tarpaulins were put up, one emphasizing the word 'declare', the other 'display,' and the third one 'together.' Immediately, I thought, these visuals reveal where the movement is at in 2024:
Within Lausanne, there are those who wished to see that 'proclamation' will be emphasized more so that evangelical churches will not lose their fervent for evangelism and be markedly distinguishable from the mission trajectory of the World Council of Churches (WCC). They are the people who remembers the first Lausanne in 1974 as the necessary antidote to the waning evangelistic energy among the ecumenical circle. They celebrate the UPGs and other 'strategies' developed as the core strength of what Lausanne is and hope that the movement will continue to be at the cutting edge of coming up with similar 'strategies' to 'finish the task" of evangelizing the world. While some of them believe that the Gospel has to be and cannot afford not to be 'holistic', in practical and even theological sense, still yet 'priority' has to be given to finding ways of 'telling the Gospel' clearly and effectively. Ed Stetzer, regional director of Lausanne in North America, wrote a post-conference reflection that articulates exactly this conviction.
But also within Lausanne are those who hope to see 'demonstration' to finally get the legitimization it deserves as a missional expression of what it means to be a witness of the Gospel. They come in many names and don different hats, e.g., faith-based development agencies, justice initiatives, social workers, community organizers, climate activists, among many others who are working to ensure that more people will experience the "fullness of life" in the here and now, aside from, of course, getting assured of 'eternal life' in the world to come. They are the people who remember the first Lausanne Congress in 1974 as the struggle of Majority World voices in disrupting the narrow, truncated, model of mission that developed in the West, or to recall a phrase that René Padilla used in his speech, the need for a more 'integral' mission as an antidote to the dominance of "a Gospel with no teeth." A younger leader from Sri Lanka, Nathanael Somanathan, member of Lausanne's current Theology Working Group, wrote a penetrating post-conf analysis that articulates this perspective.
50 years later, the tension between these two missiological camps remain, and the L4 congress is where they needed to discover how to share the same space, be together as brothers and sisters, talk with each other, and also find ways to work together. The big push for this in the congress is framed around the call for 'COLLABORATION'. The sessions and activities of the weeklong event were designed around this objective. The many tensions that transpired behind the scenes throughout the week are but indicators of how the movement is grappling with what happens when you ask advocates of justice & peace to share the same stage with heralds of justification & church planting. Bibimbap is only as good as the choice of side dishes to mix and how well everything will be tossed happily in the bowl. It cannot be truly enjoyed by eating the rice separately and each side dishes on its own as one would normally do with a rice and viand meal.
And this is where I guess the conference failed.
'Bibimbap' could have been a good metaphor for the congress to capture the changing landscape of today's Christianity that is going more and more global. But it turned out to be a missed opportunity. What the congress tried to do is to get different camps together, toss them in a single bowl, with the hopes of arriving at a dish that will be good for everyone, everywhere, and perhaps, for all time. The delegates heard of talks about resolving the tensions, managing the fractures, and finding a happy resolution. Together. Maybe the three tarpaulins were illustrative of how to make sure everybody will find their own happy space under the big tent of Lausanne.
However, for both sides, the feeling is mutual in terms of disappointment. The 'declare' camp remains worried that the Seoul Statement has not gone far enough to ensure that evangelizing the lost, the last, and the least, while not the only task of God's people, shall, at the end of the day, be on top of everything else. The 'display' camp, on the other hand, were frustrated that not much space were given to articulate the cause of justice, peace, and reconciliation, and the very few times it was forcefully articulated on stage, the L4 organizers were quick to even issue a public apology!
The problem with a global missiology. The unhappy lot experienced by both parties during the L4, I think, is very much rooted in an imaginary that remains to be a sticky feature of evangelicalism -the yearning for a singular story that can define and unite the movement. In the field of missiology, the three previous Lausanne documents have been seen as building-up on each other with the hope of finally arriving at a more 'biblical' missiology, one that will be good for everyone, everywhere, and hopefully, for a really long, if not, all, time. Technically, the pursuit of a truly 'global' missiology for today's global church.
But such an endeavor will continue to be less than helpful. As Christianity re/emerges more and more in different parts of the world, it is becoming clear that the challenge has more to do with something beyond the preoccupation with constructing a global (applicable to all) perspective of mission for the evangelical community.
The challenge is how to come to terms with the reality that each locality, each community, each region of the world, faces a context, culture, and church histories that will demand approaches to doing mission that can only be articulated from within.
This has nothing to do with the usual approach of 'contextualizing' something that is global so that it becomes more palatable locally (think of making Bibimbap burgers or Bibimbap salad). This is about recognizing that there is hardly such thing as 'global' and those that put itself forward as one are actually more appropriately labeled as 'colonial' for they are, in different ways, actually experienced as such. Bibimbap is a Korean dish and best enjoyed in the Korean way of eating and for the L4 delegates right where the dish originated -Korea. But to think of a 'global' Bibimbap that serves as a dish for everyone, everywhere, and for all time, is a big mistake.
Lately, I've been talking of how the theology of 'integral mission' has been less effective and became more contentious when it was 'Lausannized' (read as globalized!). It did not help that the Micah Declaration on Integral Mission was drafted in Oxford! Not a few who have encountered integral mission through these sources have thought of 'integral mission' as another 'colonizing' Western framework seeking embrace from their people! Not a few also missed the fact that the 'integral' in Integral Mission is not from the English word 'integrate' (fuse things together) but from what makes 'pan integral' (whole wheat bread) a more healthy choice of bread in the tables of South America. It does not help that even celebrated advocates of Integral Mission also omit the 'genealogy' and historical roots with the hope that a more 'abstracted' version shall be more helpful. This is really unfortunate.
Confronting colonial missiology. What Rene Padilla, Samuel Escobar, Kwame Bediako, John Stott, among others, accomplished, together, in 1974 is to remind the evangelicals molded in the tradition, history, and context of the Western hemisphere that the Western approach to doing mission does not (and cannot) apply to everyone else in the world. The other regions of the world, today dubbed as the Majority World, are facing battles of their own on how the Gospel will take root in the hearts and minds of their own people, amidst the social and political issues of their communities. It is naive to think that there is 'one' way to do address these multifaceted dimensions of mission and ministry across the world.
Integral Mission is a sharp critique, a necessary pushback, and also a concrete alternative from Latin America to what the West offers. It is a 'moment' in evangelical missiology that has the power to encourage the people of God in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and other regions of the Majority World to reimagine mission anew, and that to do so is not 'heretical' but actually truly 'missional.' It has the power to confront and undo the 'colonial captivity' that not a few in the Majority World continue to suffer from in subtle and hidden ways. This is the 'decolonial' edge of Integral Mission that got blunt when it was 'globalized' in the shape of the old colonial mold of Western missiology. Pan Integral missiology could have launched a thousand ships of missional expressions: adobo mission in the Philippines, Phin mission in Vietnam, Khao soi mission in Thailand, etc. A clear case of why it is not enough to be 'contextual', one also needs to be 'de-colonial' -basically an insistent conviction to root one's way of thinking from where one's feet land and straddle.
And so the struggle has to move beyond, and away from, whether Integral Mission or Prioritism will win as the official evangelical missiology. Such a question can easily go down the path of colonial preoccupation disguised in the language of which one is more 'biblical'. The real work is how the different spaces and communities of evangelicals in different parts of the world can encourage one another to plant the seeds of the Gospel in their localities, sharpen each others perspectives and practices by exchanging notes, and celebrate the fact that it is in these diverse expressions and articulations lie the true strength and uniqueness of the 'church' spreading worldwide whom Christ continues to build and lead.
It is also where a platform like the Lausanne Movement can best position itself in service -not as missiological policemen but as Gospel caterers. That is, a gastronomic platform that will go beyond extending and making the 'global' table more longer, but interrogating the very idea of having a single table! Inviting everyone to ask instead how things will be different if we celebrate the existence of more and many tables and encouraging people to stand-up, explore, and savor what other tables have to offer, not necessarily to copy one another but to be challenged to further deepen each other's work.
I have some ideas on what will happen when we switch from a globalized-bibimbap to single-origin coffee missiology but that will have to be for another post...
-Rants by Rei Lemuel Crizaldo on the recently concluded 4th Congress of the Lausanne Movement held in South Korea from September 22-28, 2024.
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