“REIMAGINING MISSIONS” REMAINS THE MANTRA OF PROGRESSIVE/ JUSTICE INSPIRED GLOBALIST PARTNERING ADVOCATES OF CHANGE WHILE IT REBUKES WESTERN INVOLVEMENT AS “COLONIALISM” BUT INSIST WESTERN CHURCHES BRING THEIR “RESOURCES” TO THE REIMAGINED FUTURE OF “Polycentic Missions”.
Rev Thomas Littleton
10/14/2024
Lausanne Congress 2024 outcomes promise to offer MORE OF THE SAME activism and progressive voices seeking to “Redefine ” and “Reimagine” global evangelism for years to come as the 2010 South Africa Congress set in motion. REcall that Captown 2010 Congress gave us amplified progressive voices like Tim Keller, Rick Warren / Same Sex Attracted Christinaity promoted by an army of gay identified Christian activist and deepening commitments to “Social Justice” ( now known as WOKE Justice ), egalitarianism, and all around humanitarian and redistribution efforts in the new “global Christianity” it envisions.
A LOOK AT WEA REVIEW OF LAUSANNE CONGRESS 2024 OUTCOMES.
“REIMAGINING MISSIONS: EVERYONE TO EVERYWHERE”
by Jay Matenga | Oct 10, 2024
“Dear fellow participants in God’s mission,”
“Grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Immediately following the Fourth Lausanne Congress in Incheon, South Korea (22-28 September, 2024), a group of around 100 Majority World Christian leaders with a passion for missions gathered in Busan, South Korea (29 September – 2 October). The forum was hosted by the new COALA network of Majority World missions leaders. COALA’s acronym stands for “Christ Over Asia, (Africa, Arab World) and Latin America”, with the first A covering increasing territory as more regions join the conversation (hence the parenthesis).”
“The central focus of the gathering was to further explore the meaning of “Polycentric Missions”, which was promoted in the lead-up to Lausanne 4, in the State of the Great Commission report, and celebrated in the diversity of cultures participating and working behind the scenes at the Congress.”
“In this essay, originally titled “An Indigenous Engagement with Polycentic Missions”, Mission Commission Executive Director Jay Mātenga reviews the Mission Commission’s historic commitment to Majority World missions perspectives, corrects some unhelpful ways “polycentrism” is being applied to missions today, emphasises the benefits of the concept for missions in local contexts, and suggests a better term to describe missions from everyone to everywhere with a stronger biblical emphasis and the addition of a 5th ‘self-‘ to the classic 3- and more recent 4-self model of indigenous church development.”
“ALL KINDS OF PARTNERSHIPS”
BUZZPHRASE FOR EXPANDING FAITH BASED PARTNERSHIPS WITH GOVERNMENT AND SECULAR PARTNERS & MORE REDISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES AKA WESTERN WEALTH REDISTRIBUTED.
“To paraphrase, the statement goes on to make six recomendations:”
- The primacy of the Holy Spirit.
- The importance of the local and multi-church connections.
- The need for missionary humility and service to the local church.
- Contextual and cultural sensitivity.
- Promoting growth in the depth and breadth of indigenised Christianity.
- And, careful use of outside resources for mutual benefit.
“In the concluding call for unity and partnership, the COALA 2 statement reaffirms that our “era of polycentric missions” requires the development of all kinds of partnerships to bring resources together “into a powerful synergistic whole for world mission”. Bravo! Those of you who helped craft those recommendations deserve to be applauded. Well done.”
COLONIALISM BAD BUT YOUR MONEY IS WELCOME.
“WEAMC: A bridge-building body between the new Third World Missions and the traditional Western Missions so that help can travel in both directions in the furtherance of the Lord’s work worldwide.”….” We continue as a bridge and from that perspective let me encourage you—in all that the COALA movement seeks to promote, let us take care not to diminish the wonderful contribution our Western brothers and sisters have and will continue to bring into the mix—mutuality demands it.”
“ The old missions paradigms are fading away. “
“Some of us here are representative of a new generation that is facing a radically different global context and a diminishing interest in traditional long-term foreign or cross-cultural missions. Not just from the West but also the Majority World. If the change is not yet apparent in your context, it is coming. We can deny it all we want, we can pour resources into trying to change it. We can recommit and double down (and develop digital tools to try and stem the tide). But, as a missions mobiliser at heart, who literally (co)wrote the book on the subject of mobilisation, called “Mission in Motion”, it pains me to recognise that the traditional missions model is decreasingly fit for purpose in our global context. The old missions paradigms are fading away. The Spirit of God is doing a new thing. But, as Mission Commission Deputy Leader Ken Katayama, President of Crossover Global, has paraphrased Isaiah 43:19, “do we DARE perceive it?””
“Polycentric Defined“
“In its technical sense, polycentric, polycentricism, or polycentricity has very little to do with “from everywhere/one to everywhere”. When it comes to the universal Church, it is probably best to consider it as PLURIcentric—the single body of Christ spreading throughout the world. One authority, in many places with different expressions.”
“DO WE DARE LOOK…”
“God is doing a new thing. Do we dare perceive it? Do we dare honour the local and hold back from imposing our cultural Christianity upon them? Do we dare say to the Western missions paradigm, “thank you for all you have done, but let us reset the drawing board, lay aside your assumptions, and find new ways forward from here, together, with high mutuality”? Do we dare work in NEW ways to co-create New Creation in specific contexts, inspired by many voices from across the global church, yet led by local voices?….
…Regardless of our backgrounds, do we dare look in the mirror and acknowledge our own ethnocentricities, our biases and prejudices, and repent? Let us beware of repeating the same colonial mistakes with a different skin tone.”
“Where the congress fell short“
“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. They lament that, while not the only task of God’s people, proclamation evangelisation should have been confirmed as a priortity, but it wasn’t. The ‘display’ camp, on the other hand, were frustrated that not much space was given to articulate the cause of justice, peace, and reconciliation. Furthermore, at one of the very few times it was forcefully articulated on stage, the L4 organizers were influenced to issue a public apology, which then upset another group at the event.”
“Confronting colonial missiology”
“What Rene Padilla, Samuel Escobar, Kwame Bediako, John Stott, among others, accomplished, together, in 1974 was to remind the evangelicals molded in the tradition, history, and context of the Western hemisphere that the Western approach to doing missions does not (and cannot) apply to everyone else in the world. The other regions of the world, today called the “Majority World”, are facing battles of their own with regard to how the gospel takes root in the hearts and minds of their people, amidst the social and political issues of their communities. It is naive to think that there is a singular way to address these multifaceted dimensions of mission and ministry across the world.”
THE HORRORS OF 2010 LAUSANNE INFLUENCE.
READ HERE FOR OVERVIEW OF LONGTERM CAPETOWN 2010 INFLUENCE
“THE World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) has been closely involved in the development of the congress programme, but participants will be drawn from beyond the constituency of the WEA. One of the notable features of the second Lausanne Congress in Manila in 1989 was to bring into dialogue Pentecostals and those engaged in Charismatic renewal with those from other Evangelical traditions.”…”“The Cape Town Congress was particularly concerned about the crises of our time. Prominent themes were, for example, the increasing impoverishment of many segments of the population in underdeveloped countries and the accumulation of wealth and assets of affluence among a relatively small upper class, not only in the Southern Hemisphere but also in the West. Other themes of the Congress that affect the spread of Christianity worldwide included the reconciliation of human races, the achievement of social justice, the mitigation of global warming, the increase of women in leadership positions, the right approach to homosexuality, the oral tradition of the Bible, and the conduct of spiritual warfare. These are all issues that fit into the category of dominionism (establishing the Kingdom of God as an earthly kingdom).”
(This quote is from Dr Martin Erdmann who has written several books on the dangers of
the Lausanne Movement and the special focus of the 2010 meetings)
THE LGBTQ FOCUS LEADING UP TO 2024 CONGRESS.
READ
THE WEA & WCC ROLE IN AND CRITIQUE OF LAUSANNE CONGRESS 2024.
“Within Lausanne, there are those who wished to see declaration emphasized more so that evangelical churches would not lose their fervour for evangelism, which distinguishes evangelicalism from the more socially active missions trajectory of the World Council of Churches (WCC). These are likely people who remember that the first Lausanne in 1974 was held in reaction to waning evangelistic energy and calls for a moratorium on missionary sending within ecumenical circles. The proponents of proclamation prioritisation also promote ‘finish the task’, classify ‘unreached people groups’, and develop specific ‘strategies’ with the aim of fulfilling Jesus’ command to evangelise the world in anticipation of ‘hastening’ His return. They view Lausanne as the platform to achieve this—with this focus seen as the core strength of what Lausanne is and their hopes for what the movement will continue to be. While some of them also believe that the gospel has to be ‘holistic’, in a practical and even a theological sense, ‘priority’ remains on finding ways of ‘telling the gospel’ clearly and effectively (this is also known as ‘prioritism’). Ed Stetzer, regional director of Lausanne in North America, has already written a post-conference reflection that articulates exactly this conviction.”
CONCLUSION
The WEA and NAE ,along with multiple central Lausanne influencing organizations have FULLY SUBSCRIBED to Global Christinaity and to the United Nations Agenda 2030. There is no longer shame, denial, or doubt left about this reality in the organizations own media and statements. Given this hard reality -Lausanne today is nothing more that the gatheirng of the global harlot church in Revelation 17 working directly with the powers seeking to establish the kingdom of anti christ at the midnight hour in these last days. God is certainly not impressed of looking to such compromised leaders to “reimagine missions” on HIS behalf. Rather HE has condemned these blind guides in advance of their pending shipwreck ideology and pathetic earthly wisdom.
Revelation
“The Scarlet Woman and the Scarlet Beast”
17 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying [a]to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”
3 So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of [b]her fornication. 5 And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.
6 I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”
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