The Cape Town Commitment – A Declaration of Belief and a Call to Action

Author: The Lausanne Movement

Date: 24.10.2010

Category: Partnership

The Cape Town Commitment is a two-part document. Part 1 is  ¢â‚¬Å“What We Believe. ¢â‚¬  It was put together by a group of theologians from around the world. Part 2 is expected to be finished by December. It will be a call to action arising from the listening process at the Congress.

The Cape Town Commitment

PREAMBLE

As members of the worldwide church of Jesus Christ, we joyfully affirm our commitment to the living God and his saving purposes through the Lord Jesus Christ. For his sake we renew our commitment to the vision and goals of the Lausanne Movement.

This means two things:

First, we remain committed to the task of bearing worldwide witness to Jesus Christ and all his teaching. The First Lausanne Congress (1974) was convened for the task of world evangelization. Among its major gifts to the world church were: The Lausanne Covenant; a new awareness of the number of unreached people groups; and a fresh discovery of the holistic nature of the biblical gospel and of Christian mission. The Second Lausanne Congress, in Manila (1989), gave birth to more than 300 strategic partnerships in world evangelization, including many that involved co-operation between nations in all parts of the globe.

And second, we remain committed to the primary documents of the Movement  ¢â‚¬“ The Lausanne Covenant (1974), and The Manila Manifesto (1989). These documents clearly express core truths of the biblical gospel and apply them to our practical mission in ways that are still relevant and challenging. We confess that we have not been faithful to commitments made in those documents. But we commend them and stand by them, as we seek to discern how we must express and apply the eternal truth of the gospel in the ever-changing world of our own generation.

THE REALITIES OF CHANGE

Almost everything about the way we live, think and relate to one another is changing at an accelerating pace. For good or ill, we feel the impact of globalization, the digital revolution, and the changing balance of economic and political power in the world. Some of the things we face cause us grief and anxiety — global poverty, war, disease, the ecological crisis and climate change. But one great change in our world is a cause for rejoicing  ¢â‚¬“ and that is the growth of the global church of Christ.

The fact that the Third Lausanne Congress has taken place in Africa is proof of this. At least three quarters of all the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s Christians now live in the continents of the global south and east. The composition of our Cape Town Congress reflects this enormous shift in world Christianity in the century since the Edinburgh missionary conference in 1910. We rejoice in the amazing growth of the church in Africa, and we rejoice that our African sisters and brothers in Christ hosted this Congress. We must respond in Christian mission to the realities of our own generation. We must also learn from that mixture of wisdom and error that we inherit from previous generations. We honour the past and we engage with the future.

More… http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/11544

See also the Manila Manifesto – http://jmm.org.au/articles/9011.htm