After months of preparation, prayer, discussion and debate, more than 4,000 evangelical leaders have gathered in Cape Town, South Africa for the Third Lausanne Congress on Global Evangelization.
So now that they’re there, what exactly are the organizers and delegates in Cape Town hoping to accomplish?
One important goal of the Congress becomes clear when we notice how missionary conferences have changed over the years. This is a picture from the famous and influential World Missionary Conference 100 years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland:
Last weekend was the first time Harvest Bible Chapel gathered for worship without James MacDonald as its senior pastor.
Days after firing the church’s founder, the elders of the Chicago-area multisite congregation announced more changes. The executive committee—the top leaders on the elder board—would also be resigning within months. A task force had been formed to review church structure and processes. This week, the elder board winnowed from 30 people to 9.
At Harvest, concerns had lingered for years after the church’s dismissal of three elders in 2013, alleged mismanagement, and negative reports swirling around MacDonald. As leaders and members pray and plan for a healthier church culture, they’re also left lamenting the hurt, confusion, and discord that’s led to this point.
“We know there are many of you feeling shock and frustration—those feelings are real and understandable. We know there are many who have been grieved by these things over the past weeks, months and even years—and we share your grief,” Dave Learned, pastor of counseling ministry, told the congregation on Saturday night. “Our earnest desire is that God would, in his grace, forgive our sins, heal our wounds, and restore unity and harmony to this congregation.”
Harvest numbers around 12,000 members across seven campuses. As a result of the saga, some have already stopped attending or joined nearby congregations, including 2,000 that left around the 2013 incident. During a major transition for the congregation—and the loss of the charismatic preacher who had been its famous face and voice—more will inevitably opt to leave.
Either way, if they stay or go, the body of Christ absorbs the blow; “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). Those affected by the turmoil at Harvest—or elsewhere—need space to grieve and the hope of the gospel.
Church leaders and fellow pastors in the Chicago suburbs have opened their doors to those who fled Harvest. A former women’s ministry director at Harvest who left four years ago, Lina Abujamra, posted on Facebook last week to invite anyone over who needed to talk about what was going on at the church.
“While only a handful showed up, the range of their pain was wide. Some women were still in the middle of the trauma and were still currently attending Harvest. Others had old wounds that had resurfaced and were hurting, having never felt closure to their stories,” Abujamra, a Bible teacher and Moody Radio host, wrote on her blog.
“For years, they had been made to feel like the outcasts, but finally vindication in its godly form was working its way out. And still some came because their loved ones and spouses have abandoned the faith completely and now refuse to go to church—and they long to understand why.”
At Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, campus minister Chris Lash found himself discussing MacDonald’s leadership and firing with students, many of them new believers. Their line of questions felt sadly familiar. Lash similarly saw students grapple with Bill Hybels’s departure from Willow Creek Community Church less than a year ago.
“I’m seeing people who are really burned by a place like Harvest. They’re confused,” said Lash, the director of university ministries, who is planning discussion sessions to address the role of lament and how a Christian responds when the church fails. “Whether it’s the darkness of sin, the darkness of leadership abuses, let’s name that for what it is, and let Christ begin to heal.”
While Harvest and Willow Creek represent two recent, prominent examples in the Chicago area, abuses of power and church mismanagement happen across denominations and in churches of all sizes. Plenty in the pews have been left with the twisted grief of watching once-respected leaders leave their positions and facing the reality of a church in crisis.
Five years ago, after mounting controversy, Mark Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill Church, the multisite megachurch he famously founded around Seattle. Christians across the individual campuses—which became independent churches and took on new names months after he left—grappled with defending their former preacher, dismissing him outright, or just wondering what went wrong.
Campuses lost members by the hundreds, and in the case of the main Bellevue campus, where Driscoll preached in person, thousands, according to The Gospel Coalition (TGC).
Former attendees overwhelmed nearby church plants with both logistical demands and the spiritual baggage of leaving a church after a leadership crisis. “I had never been asked by so many people I don’t know—before I even heard their name—about bylaws and pastoral pay structures in my life,” one Seattle church planter told TGC.
Their experience offers some lessons and, ultimately, gospel hope, as Christians seek to care for their neighbors suffering at Harvest or other congregations in the midst of tough transitions.
“Some will leave, and they did. Some will stay and be angry, and they did. And some will have no clue what’s going on,” said David Fairchild, lead pastor of Trinity West Seattle Church, Mars Hill’s former West Seattle campus, in a recent interview with CT. “Others, who had been in the church a long time, that had maybe been through difficulties like this, will often be your greatest advocates. They recognize the church endures through all of it, and the church will remain through all of it in one form or another.”
During the adjustment period, Fairchild began to preach on the bigger story of the Bible, to offer perspective and context for their place in church history. Then came a sermon series on 1 Corinthians, called This Beautiful Mess, which explored the challenges of a church wounded by sin and infighting.
Mars Hill had always been a place where they would “tell it like it is,” an attitude that led to frank discussions—in Sunday chatter, member meetings, small groups, and one-on-one sessions—about the questions raised by Driscoll’s departure and the church going forward. Fairchild said leaders at Trinity West took their cues from the congregation, remained patient with their grieving and grappling rather than pushing to “move on” to the next season for the church.
Other former campuses had similar experiences. Aaron Gray, pastor of Sound City Bible Church, formerly Mars Hill Shoreline, remembered being sensitive to how leaders communicated to the congregation afterward, careful not trigger pain or suspicion with their remarks on Sundays. They knew that their people needed time to heal.
“Human beings are remarkably resilient, and God’s Spirit is just relentless in continuing to push us toward the love of Christ and healing,” Gray told CT. “Like grief, you cannot rush the process, and you cannot control the process, and you cannot game-plan the process.”
Changes were on their way, absolutely. New processes and practices would be inevitable. But ultimately, the truth of the gospel became the greatest immediate refuge and the perfect guide for the rebuilding that would come.
“After so many things were unknown, it became really important to focus on the things that were known, even the things that sound incredibly simple. In a time of trial, pain, transition, that’s just the baseline of the gospel itself, that Jesus is alive, the tomb is empty, that Christ died for our sins,” Gray said. “Though the local church is going through an incredible season of turmoil, Jesus promised that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail.”
The Lord continues his work despite and through church’s most difficult times, proving his faithfulness even then.
“Something that’s been really good for me to realize through this process is that when our influence outpaces our maturity, the kindest thing that God can do is remove our influence and bring it to the level of our maturity,” said Fairchild. “Whether it be Mark or James or anyone else that’s experiencing that, it’s not a hateful punishment of God, it’s a loving discipline of our Father.”
In Learned’s statement to Harvest on Saturday, he referenced praying for MacDonald, but also emphasized the church’s place beyond him. “Harvest Bible Chapel was not founded on a great pastor, or a great leadership staff, but on a great God, and a great gospel of grace,” he said.
“We’ve received the benefit of many years of teaching from this pulpit that the message is more than the messenger, and that God stands ready to respond to those who would humble themselves and repent before him. These are truths from the Word of God, not from any pastor, and we can still rely on them.”
This is a picture from Cape Town 2010.
Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Envato
Just for fun, here’s another one, from the opening ceremonies:
As Cubans voted to approve a new constitution on Sunday, widespread Christian opposition may signal a shift in political tone and a new sense of unity among the island’s churches.
The grassroots campaign—formed largely against more permissive language regarding same-sex marriage—earned Christians a measure of political clout in the island nation, but for some it’s also garnered them a reputation as enemies of the state.
“I can’t vote for something that goes against my principles,” Alida Leon, a pastor and president of the Evangelical League of Cuba, told the Associated Press. “It’s sad but it’s a reality.”
“I am voting ‘no’ because taking out that marriage is between a man and a woman opens the door in the future to something that goes against our beliefs and the Bible,” another Baptist pastor in Havana told Christian Today.
In a demonstration earlier this month, at least 100 couples decked in suits and wedding dresses gathered in the capital to renew their vows and to protest redefining marriage in the constitution.
“We’re speaking out in favor of marriage as it was originally designed,” Methodist Church of Cuba bishop Ricardo Pereira said. “It’s the first time since the triumph of the revolution that evangelical churches have created a unified front. It’s historic.”
The government and its loyalists tried to turn the vote into a litmus test for patriotism, instigating a sprawling advertising campaign to promote the new constitution. But Christians’ counter-campaign proved too big to stifle.
The opposition first erupted last year when churches began to hang banners and print flyers espousing a traditional view of marriage. The large-scale coordinated campaign also included delivering a petition with 178,000 signatures rejecting the legalization of gay marriage to the Cuban government.
Public consultations also revealed strong opposition to Article 68, the portion of the constitution offering a new definition of marriage.
Because of that pressure, a level of resistance rarely seen in the 60 years since the Cuban Revolution, Cuba’s National Assembly walked back language that changed the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman to “between two people.”
The revision came as a major blow to the national LGBT rights campaign conducted by Mariela Castro’s National Center for Sex Education and other activists. In response to their denouncement, Castro, daughter of former president Raúl Castro, called the Catholic Church “the serpent of history” in a Facebook statement and bid a strong state response.
Rather than revert to the previous wording, marriage language was left conspicuously absent from the revised document, clearing the way for future legalization efforts. Even with the door open for a later policy change, the reversal marked a win for Cuba’s growing evangelical population.
“Looking at how they’ve managed to derail gay marriage from the constitution, it’s clear the evangelicals have become a major political force,” Javier Corrales, political science professor at Amherst College, told the Guardian.
Christians also expressed intense frustration with the new constitution for softening religious freedom protections, limiting access to education and media, and barring financial investments among native Cubans. Language defending the “freedom of conscience” that had been stated explicitly in the previous constitution had also been eliminated.
Several church groups, including the Eastern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church of Cuba, and the Assemblies of God issued public statements criticizing the proposed constitution. Catholic churches in Cuba went as far as reading a four-point critique at Sunday masses.
Though initial reports on Monday indicate that Cubans “overwhelmingly” voted to ratify the new constitution, experts predicted around 70 percent to 80 percent were in favor, down from the 97.8 percent that approved the island’s previous constitution in 1976.
Such near-unanimous votes are customary for the communist-led government, but things are changing. In a country where national atheism was long considered legal policy, Cuban Christians’ influence is growing. The way they use their place to pressure policymakers and express public dissent could have serious ramifications, particularly as the political class views their unprecedented opposition as a dangerous turn.
Despite the near-certainty that the referendum would pass, Christians still faced threatening treatment for their public opposition leading up to the vote.
Last week, Carlos Sebastián Hernández, president of Western Baptist Convention, received a call from Sonia García García, deputy head of Cuba’s Office of Religious Affairs, in which García García reportedly said he “will no longer be treated as a pastor, but as a counter-revolutionary.”
“I have total confidence that, even in Cuba, God reigns. Pray for me and my family,” Sebastián Hernández told CSW, a UK-based charity defending Christians against persecution. “My wife and I have spoken and prayed because at any moment they could take me prisoner.”
Other pastors have reported their homes being surrounded by state security forces, receiving threatening phone calls warning of imprisonment if they don’t call their congregations to vote in favor of the referendum, being labeled “mercenaries,” and other forms of intimidation.
“The church has had no rest in these days,” another denominational leader who received a threatening call from García García told CSW. “They are besieging and intimidating us just for defending our rights and our principles.”
“The Cuban government must immediately cease its attempts to intimidate and pressure religious leaders and their congregations as the country prepares to vote on Sunday,” Anna-Lee Stangl, CSW’s Americas team leader, said last week, echoing similar calls from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and others.
“As church leaders have repeatedly pointed out, the government largely ignored their requests and recommendations during the period of national consultation on the draft constitution specifically with regards to freedom of religion or belief and freedom of conscience. It is telling that the Cuban government considers calling for freedom of religion or belief a ‘counter-revolutionary’ activity.”
But even as many Cuban Christians have been vilified by the government, they’ve been lionized by one another. Historically, denominations and churches in Cuba have not formed strong united fronts. Amid recent struggles and shared pressure from the state, that may be changing too.
Between 5 and 10 percent of Cubans consider themselves evangelicals and as many as 70 percent associate with Roman Catholicism, sometimes of a syncretistic variety. While unity has been lacking in recent decades, opposition to elements of the new constitution made allies of Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Assemblies of God churches, and many in the Catholic Church.
While the referendum passed, this significant and unified show of dissent may be the first decisive move of Cuban Christianity, especially evangelicalism, on the modern political stage.
CT reported in 2015 on evangelicals’ revival in Cuba as the country renewed diplomatic ties with the US, as well as the death of longtime leader Fidel Castro, which ultimately had little impact on the island’s religious landscape.
Over the past several years, it’s become apparent in the church that the Global South and East–Africa, Asia, and South America–have grown just as active in sending missionaries as they are in receiving them. Conferences like Cape Town are partially about making it clear that Christianity in the 21st century regards mission work as a fully global partnership.
“The church in the South tends to look at herself through the eyes of the North,” wrote Daniel Bianchi of Buenos Aires earlier this year as part of the Lausanne Movement’s Global Conversation. “When you convince someone that he needs help you also convince him that he can’t help others, somebody said. The church in the [South and East] needs to regard herself as valuable, capable and responsible as the rest of the church.”
But the Congress wants to do more than just make the statement. By bringing the delegates together in Cape Town, organizers hope that mission-minded Christians from across the world can get to know each other, become aware of the strengths, weaknesses, problems and opportunities apparent in every part of the world, and come to a common consensus and strategy on how missions is supposed to work in the next century.
That’s one of the reasons the conference has the word “Lausanne” in its name. The original Lausanne Conference–the First International Congress on World Evangelization, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974 and organized by such influential evangelicals Billy Graham and John Stott–produced the Lausanne Covenant, a very influential missions manifesto which became “a rallying point for many evangelicals all around the world,” in the words of Chris Wright, chair of the Lausanne Theology Working Group. Claiming the original conference in their heritage, the organizers of Lausanne III hope to refresh the agenda for global evangelization.
“Just as Lausanne I produced The Lausanne Covenant and Lausanne II [in 1989] produced the Manila Manifesto, Cape Town 2010 will also produce a major document that we pray will help unite and guide the Church in the years to come by helping establishing missions and evangelization priorities,” writes Doug Birdsall, executive chair of Cape Town 2010.
One of the planks of the Lausanne Movement’s platform is that “evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world,” to quote the original Covenant. The “whole gospel,” according to Wright, means bringing to the world both God’s message of sin and redemption and God’s “passion against political tyranny, economic exploitation, judicial corruption, the suffering of the poor and oppressed, brutality and bloodshed.”
And we can only reach every part of the world, he adds, by utilizing every part of the church.
“None of us can engage in every area,” Wright writes. “That is why God created the church with a multiplicity of gifts and callings, so that we can, as a whole church bear witness to the whole gospel in the whole world.”
That, in a thumbnail, is the stated mission of Cape Town 2010.
(Photos courtesy Wikipedia, Lausanne Movement Flickr Photostream)
