Rev Williams shared with Christian Today some insights into the current mission work of the Lausanne Committee in Australia and the part it is playing in fulfilling Lausanne’s vision of ‘the whole church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world’.
CT: How did you become involved in the Lausanne Committee here in Australia?
DW: I was invited to participate in the 2004 Forum to be held in Thailand. For about 18 months prior to the forum I worked together with the participants in the Leadership track.
As a result of the 2004 Forum, I was invited to become the International Deputy Director for the Oceania or South Pacific region. As the IDD for the region I automatically became a member of the Australian Lausanne Committee which has always been a strong committee in the Lausanne movement.
CT: Can you tell me what initiatives the Lausanne Committee here is developing to spread the Gospel?
DW: The Australian Committee has looked at the issues that are facing our country and how we might contribute to some of those things. We identified a number of issues that needed to be thought about and brought into the public arena, and we have run some discussion groups on them.
One of the key issues facing the world today is the uniqueness of Christ. We have looked at running some discussion groups across Australia to raise awareness of the difficulties encountered around the world in dealing with this. On August 4, we are co-sponsoring a conference called ‘Better Together’, which is exploring how men and women can use their gift together for the purposes of God. The conference is being held in Sydney. Dr Graham Cole, a professor of the Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical University, Deerfield, Illinois in the US, will be the main speaker.
We’ve partnered with the Langham Partnership Australia to promote a visit by Dr Chris Wright, Langham Partnership’s International Director, to address the issue of theology and how that works out in redeeming our country.
Later this year in November and December, there will be an evangelism conference at which Rebecca Manley Pippert from Salt Shaker ministries in the US will be speaking. Seminars will be held in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane as well as a couple of country areas in New South Wales.
CT: Can you tell me more about the oral initiative which the Lausanne Committee undertook in its recent Congress?
DW: One of the big concerns that came out of the forum in Thailand was the fact that one-third of the world population is illiterate, so they will never read. There is another third that don’t and won’t read. Research has shown that 56 % of high school and 42% of university graduates in the Western world will never read another book.
If this is true we must ask ourselves how we help the two thirds of the world’s population who can’t, don’t, and won’t read come to a living relationship with Jesus. So, the oral communicators of the world - a major group - are thinking and devising strategies, coming up with solutions to help these people access the gospel and be able to respond to it in a way that takes in more senses than just reading and writing.
