THE LAUSANNE COVENANT
INTRODUCTION
We, members of the Church of Jesus Christ, from more than 150
nations, participants in the International Congress on World
Evangelization at Lausanne, praise God for His great salvation and
rejoice in the fellowship He has given us with Himself and with
each other. We are deeply stirred by what God is doing in our
day, moved to penitence by our failures and challenged by the
unfinished task of evangelization. We believe the gospel is
God's good news for the whole world and we are determined by His
grace to obey Christ's commission to proclaim it to every person
and to make disciples of every nation. We desire, therefore,
to affirm our faith and our resolve, and to make public our
covenant.
1. THE PURPOSE OF GOD
We affirm our belief in the one eternal God, Creator and Lord of
the world, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who governs all things
according to the purpose of His will. He has been calling out
from the world a people for Himself, and sending His people back
into the world to be His servants and His witnesses, for the
extension of His Kingdom, and the building up of Christ's body and
the glory of His name. We confess with shame that we have
often denied our calling and failed in our mission, by becoming
conformed to the world or by withdrawing from it. Yet we
rejoice that even when borne by earthen vessels the gospel is still
a precious treasure. To the task of making that treasure
known in the power of the Holy Spirit we desire to dedicate
ourselves anew.
(Isa. 40:28; Matt. 28:19; Eph. 1:11; Acts
15:14; John 17:6, 18; Eph. 4:12; Rom. 12:2;
1 Cor. 5:10; 2 Cor. 4:7)
2. THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF THE
BIBLE
We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of
both Old and New Testament scriptures in their entirety as the only
written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the
only infallible rule of faith and practice. We also affirm
the power of God's word to accomplish His purpose of
salvation. The message of the Bible is addressed to all men
and women. For God's revelation in Christ and in
Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still
speaks today. He illumines the minds of God's people in every
culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and
thus discloses to the whole Church ever more of the many-colored
wisdom of God.
(2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21; Isa. 55:11; Rom.
1:16; 1 Cor. 1:21; John 10:35; Matt. 5:17,
18; Jude 3; Eph. 1:17, 18; 3:10, 18)
3. THE UNIQUENESS AND UNIVERSALITY OF
CHRIST
We affirm that there is only one Savior and only one gospel,
although there is a wide diversity of evangelistic
approaches. We recognize that everyone has some knowledge of
God through his general revelation in nature. But we deny
that this can save, for people suppress the truth by their
unrighteousness. We also reject as derogatory to Christ and
the gospel every kind of syncretism and dialog which implies that
Christ speaks equally through all religions and ideologies.
Jesus Christ, being Himself the only God-man, who gave Himself as
the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and
people. There is no other name by which we must be
saved. All men and women are perishing because of sin, but
God loves everyone, not wishing that any should perish but that all
should repent. Yet those who reject Christ repudiate the joy
of salvation and condemn themselves to eternal separation from
God. To proclaim Jesus as the "the Savior of the world" is
not to affirm that all people are either automatically or
ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer
salvation in Christ. Rather it is to proclaim God's love for
a world of sinners and to invite everyone to respond to Him as
Savior and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of
repentance and faith. Jesus Christ has been exalted above
every other name; we long for the day when every knee shall
bow to Him and every tongue shall confess Him Lord.
(Gal. 1:6-9; Rom. 1:18-32; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Acts
4:12; John 3:16-19; 2 Pet. 3:9; 2 Thess.
1:7-9; John 4:42; Matt. 11:28; Eph. 1:20 ,
21; Phil. 2:9-11)
4. THE NATURE OF
EVANGELISM
To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died
for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the
Scriptures, and that as the reigning Lord He now offers the
forgiveness of sins and the liberating gift of the Spirit to all
who repent and believe. Our Christian presence in the world
is indispensable to evangelism and so is that kind of dialog whose
purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand. But
evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical
Christ as Savior and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come
to Him personally and so be reconciled to God. In issuing the
gospel invitation we have no liberty to conceal the cost of
discipleship. Jesus still calls all who would follow Him to
deny themselves, take up their cross and identify themselves with
His new community. The results of evangelism include
obedience to Christ, incorporation into His Church and responsible
service in the world.
(1 Cor. 15:3, 4; Acts 2:23-39; John 20:21; 1
Cor. 1:23; 2 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:11, 20; Luke
14:25-33; Mark 8:34; Acts 2:40, 47; Mark
10:43-45)
5. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY
We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of
all. We therefore should share His concern for justice and
reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of
men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and
women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of
race, religion, color, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic
dignity because of which he or she should be respected and served,
not exploited. Here too we express penitence both for our
neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social
concern as mutually exclusive. Although reconciliation with
other people is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action
evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we
affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both
part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary
expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our
neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ. The message of
salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of
alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be
afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.
When people receive Christ they are born again into His Kingdom and
must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness
in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim
should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and
social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.
(Acts 17:26, 31; Gen. 18:25; Ps. 45:7; Is.
1:17; Gen. 1:26, 27; Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27, 35;
Jas. 3:9; John 3:3, 5; Matt. 5:20; Matt.
6:33; 2 Cor. 3:18; Jas. 2:14-26)
6. THE CHURCH AND
EVANGELISM
We affirm that Christ sends His redeemed people into the world
as the Father sent Him, and that this calls for a similar deep and
costly penetration of the world. We need to break out of our
ecclesiastical ghettos and permeate non-Christian society. In
the Church's mission of sacrificial service evangelism is
primary. World evangelization requires the whole Church to
take the whole gospel to the whole world. The Church is at
the very center of God's cosmic purpose and is His appointed means
of spreading the gospel. But a church which preaches the
cross must itself be marked by the cross. It becomes a
stumbling block to evangelism when it betrays the gospel or lacks a
living faith in God, a genuine love for people, or scrupulous
honesty in all things including promotion and finance. The
church is the community of God's people rather than an institution,
and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or
political system, or human ideology.
(John 17:18; John 20:21; Matt. 28:19,
20; Acts 1:8; Acts 20:27; Eph. 1:9, 10; Eph
3:9-11; Gal. 6:14, 17; 2 Cor. 6:3, 4; 2 Tim.
2:19-21; Phil. 1:27)
7. COOPERATION IN
EVANGELISM
We affirm that the Church's visible unity in truth is God's
purpose. Evangelism also summons us to unity, because our
oneness strengthens our witness, just as our disunity undermines
our gospel of reconciliation. We recognize, however, that
organizational unity may take many forms and does not necessarily
forward evangelism. Yet we who share the same biblical faith
should be closely united in fellowship, work and witness. We
confess that our testimony has sometimes been marred by sinful
individualism and needless duplication. We pledge ourselves
to seek a deeper unity in truth, worship, holiness and
mission. We urge the development of regional and functional
co-operation for the furtherance of the Church's mission, for
strategic planning, for mutual encouragement, and for the sharing
of resources and experience.
(Eph. 4:3, 4; John 17:11- 23; John 13:35;
Phil. 1:27)
8. CHURCHES IN EVANGELISTIC
PARTNERSHIP
We rejoice that a new missionary era has dawned. The
dominant role of western missions is fast disappearing. God
is raising up from the younger churches a great new resource for
world evangelization, and is thus demonstrating that the
responsibility to evangelize belongs to the whole body of
Christ. All churches should therefore be asking God and
themselves what they should be doing both to reach their own area
and to send missionaries to other parts of the world. A
re-evaluation of our missionary responsibility and role should be
continuous. Thus a growing partnership of churches will
develop and the universal character of Christ's Church will be more
clearly exhibited. We also thank God for agencies which labor
in Bible translation, theological education, the mass media,
Christian literature, evangelism, missions, church renewal and
other specialist fields. They too should engage in constant
self-examination to evaluate their effectiveness as part of the
Church's mission.
(Rom. 1:8; Phil. 1:5; Phil. 4:15; Acts
13:1-3; 1 Thess. 1:6-8)
9. THE URGENCY OF THE EVANGELISTIC
TASK
More than 2,700 million people, which is more than two-thirds of
all humanity, have yet to be evangelized. We are ashamed that
so many have been neglected; it is a standing rebuke to us
and to the whole Church. There is now, however, in many parts
of the world an unprecedented receptivity to the Lord Jesus
Christ. We are convinced that this is the time for churches
and para-church agencies to pray earnestly for the salvation of the
unreached and to launch new efforts to achieve world
evangelization. A reduction of foreign missionaries and money
in an evangelized country may sometimes be necessary to facilitate
the national church's growth in self-reliance and to release
resources for unevangelized areas. Missionaries should flow
ever more freely from and to all six continents in a spirit of
humble service. The goal should be, by all available means
and at the earliest time, that every person will have the
opportunity to hear, understand, and receive the good news.
We cannot hope to attain this goal without sacrifice. All of
us are shocked by the poverty of millions and disturbed by the
injustices which cause it. Those of us who live in affluent
circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple life-style in
order to contribute more generously to both relief and
evangelism.
(Mark 16:15; John 9:4; Matt. 9:35-38; Isa.
58:6, 7; Jas 2:1-9; 1 Cor. 9:19-23; Jas
1:27; Matt. 25:31-46; Acts 2:44, 45; Acts 4:34,
35; Rom. 9:1-3)
10. EVANGELISM AND CULTURE
The development of strategies for world evangelization calls for
imaginative pioneering methods. Under God, the result will be
the rise of churches deeply rooted in Christ and closely related to
their culture. Culture must always be tested and judged by
Scripture. Because men and women are God's creatures,
some of their culture is rich in beauty and goodness. Because
they are fallen, all of it is tainted with sin and some of it is
demonic. The gospel does not pre-suppose the superiority of
any culture to another, but evaluates all cultures according to its
own criteria of truth and righteousness, and insists on moral
absolutes in every culture. Missions have all too frequently
exported with the gospel an alien culture and churches have
sometimes been in bondage to culture rather than to
Scripture. Christ's evangelists must humbly seek to empty
themselves of all but their personal authenticity in order to
become the servants of others, and churches must seek to transform
and enrich culture, all for the glory of God.
(Mark 7:8, 9, 13; Gen. 4:21, 22; 1 Cor.
9:19-23; Phil. 2:5-7; 2 Cor. 4:5)
11. EDUCATION AND
LEADERSHIP
We confess that we have sometimes pursued church growth at the
expense of church depth, and divorced evangelism from Christian
nurture. We also acknowledge that some of our missions have
been too slow to equip and encourage national leaders to assume
their rightful responsibilities. Yet we are committed to
indigenous principles, and long that every church will have
national leaders who manifest a Christian style of leadership in
terms not of domination but of service. We recognize that
there is a great need to improve theological education, especially
for church leaders. In every nation and culture there should
be an effective training program for pastors and laity in doctrine,
discipleship, evangelism, nurture and service. Such training
programs should not rely on any stereotyped methodology but should
be developed by creative local initiatives according to biblical
standards.
(Col. 1:27, 28; Acts 14:23; Tit. 1:5, 9; Mark
10:42-45; Eph. 4:11, 12)
12. SPIRITUAL CONFLICT
We believe that we are engaged in constant spiritual warfare
with the principalities and powers of evil, who are seeking to
overthrow the Church and frustrate its task of world
evangelization. We know our need to equip ourselves with
God's armor and to fight this battle with the spiritual weapons of
truth and prayer. For we detect the activity of our enemy,
not only in false ideologies outside the Church, but also inside it
in false gospels which twist Scripture and put people in the place
of God. We need both watchfulness and discernment to
safeguard the biblical gospel. We acknowledge that we
ourselves are not immune to worldliness of thought and action, that
is, to a surrender to secularism. For example, although
careful studies of church growth, both numerical and spiritual, are
right and valuable, we have sometimes neglected them. At
other times, desirous to ensure a response to the gospel, we have
compromised our message, manipulated our hearers through pressure
techniques, and become unduly pre-occupied with statistics or even
dishonest in our use of them. All this is worldly. The
Church must be in the world; the world must not be in the
Church.
(Eph. 6:12; 2 Cor. 4:3, 4; Eph. 6:11, 13-18; 2
Cor. 10:3-5; 1 John 2:18-26; 1 John 4:1-3; Gal.
1:6-9; 2 Cor. 2:17; 2 Cor. 4:2; John 17:15)
13. FREEDOM AND
PERSECUTION
It is the God-appointed duty of every government to secure
conditions of peace, justice and liberty in which the Church may
obey God, serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and preach the gospel
without interference. We therefore pray for the leaders of
the nations and call upon them to guarantee freedom of thought and
conscience, and freedom to practice and propagate religion in
accordance with the will of God and as set forth in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. We also express our deep concern
for all who have been unjustly imprisoned, and especially for those
who are suffering for their testimony to the Lord Jesus. We
promise to pray and work for their freedom. At the same time
we refuse to be intimidated by their fate. God helping us, we
too will seek to stand against injustice and to remain faithful to
the gospel, whatever the cost. We do not forget the warnings
of Jesus that persecution is inevitable.
(1 Tim. 1:1-4; Col. 3:24; Acts 4:19; Acts
5:29; Heb. 13:1-3; Luke 4:18; Gal. 5:11;
Gal. 6:12; Matt. 5:10-12; John 15:18-21)
14. THE POWER OF THE HOLY
SPIRIT
We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Father
sent His Spirit to bear witness to His Son; without His
witness ours is futile. Conviction of sin, faith in Christ,
new birth and Christian growth are all His work. Further, the
Holy Spirit is a missionary spirit; thus evangelism should arise
spontaneously from a Spirit-filled church. A church that is
not a missionary church is contradicting itself and quenching the
Spirit. Worldwide evangelization will become a realistic
possibility only when the Spirit renews the Church in truth and
wisdom, faith, holiness, love and power. We therefore call
upon all Christians to pray for such a visitation of the sovereign
Spirit of God that all His fruit may appear in all His people and
that all His gifts may enrich the body of Christ. Only then
will the whole Church become a fit instrument in His hands, that
the whole earth may hear His voice.
(Acts 1:8; 1 Cor. 2:4; John 15:26, 27; John
16:8-11; 1 Cor. 12:3; John 3:6-8; 2 Cor.
3:18; John 7:37-39; 1 Thess. 5:19; Ps.
85:4-7; Gal. 5:22, 23; Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor.
12:4-31; Ps 67:1-3)
15. THE RETURN OF CHRIST
We believe that Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly,
in power and glory, to consummate His salvation and His
judgment. This promise of His coming is a further spur to our
evangelism, for we remember His words that the gospel must first be
preached to all nations. We believe that the interim period
between Christ's ascension and return is to be filled with the
mission of the people of God, who have no liberty to stop before
the end. We also remember His warning that false Christs and
false prophets will arise as precursors of the final
Antichrist. We therefore reject as a proud, self-confident
dream the notion that people can ever build a utopia on
earth. Our Christian confidence is that God will perfect His
kingdom, and we look forward with eager anticipation to that day,
and to the new heaven and earth in which righteousness will dwell
and God will reign forever. Meanwhile, we rededicate
ourselves to the service of Christ and of people in joyful
submission to His authority over the whole of our lives.
(Mark 14:62; Heb. 9:28: Mark 13:10; Matt.
28:20; Acts 1:8-11; Mark 13:21-23; John
2:18; John 4:1-3; Luke 12:32; Rev. 21:1-5;
2 Pet. 3:13; Matt. 28:18)
CONCLUSION
Therefore, in the light of this our faith and our resolve, we
enter into a solemn covenant with God and with each other, to pray,
to plan and to work together for the evangelization of the whole
world. We call upon others to join us. May God help us
by His grace and for his glory to be faithful to this our
covenant! Amen, Alleluia!
(International Congress on World Evangelization, Lausanne,
Switzerland, July 1974)