There are aspects of world evangelicalism which are not very attractive at all. My personal hope is that Lausanne 2010 will be the launch pad of a kind of 21st century reformation within the evangelical movement, because there are many abuses and corruptions and all kinds of things that are really not of the true Gospel and certainly not either like Christ or glorifying Christ. I would love to see us having the courage to identify them, and where necessary to renounce them and certainly have the courage to repent of such things and come back to the foot of the cross and to say 'this is where we need to find our unity and our identity'. That is what I am hoping for from Lausanne 2010.
CT: There are many areas that are still unchurched and have still not heard the word of God. Where do we stand in terms of the gospel being planted around the world?
CW: Certainly there are those within Lausanne who are quite rightly drawing our attention to the fact that there are still millions of people in our world who have not heard of the word of Jesus and that is a scandal and we cannot but be ashamed of that and say 'what should we be doing to bring the good news of Jesus to those who have never had the opportunity to hear it?' That has to remain one of our key motivations in mission. We can't just say 'yup, that's it!'
The second thing I would say is that there are those who have a particular kind of interpretation of the great commission at the end of Matthew; that somehow all we need to do is to try to get every people group on the planet to have heard the Gospel in some way and then Jesus can come back. But I don't read the great commission that way at all.
It doesn't say evangelise the nations in the sense of simply make them hear the Gospel. Jesus quite specifically says, "Go and disciple the nations, baptising them and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you."
So the task is not just one of evangelisation but it is one of discipling, and discipling is not a task that is ever finished. Britain is evangelised but it certainly isn't discipled. And every generation needs the fresh call to discipling and obedience and to live like Jesus lived. So I see the great commission not so much as a kind of ticking clock, that we can eventually say 'oh we are nearly there, the job's nearly finished, let's get the task finished'.
There are an awful lot of people who talk like that. 'What would it take to finish the job?' is some of the language we hear. Whoever said it was a job we were just going to get finished? It's not so much a ticking clock as a self-replicating mandate to go and make disciples and the making of disciples is like painting the Forth Bridge - it goes on and on and on because we are constantly needing to be disciplers and to be discipling.
A friend said at the Lausanne Theology working group, we need to remember that the New Testament was written by disciples for disciples about making disciples. And we have rather twisted it as if we only think in terms of how many people have had the opportunity to literally hear the name Jesus and respond in some sense to the Gospel.
So, I want to affirm the importance of the unreached need and that huge task. I don't want to in any sense minimise it or to say that we shouldn't be concerned about it because of course we should, but I don't want it to turn into the timetable for the second coming because I don't think that is the way it was intended to be in the New Testament. We are still called to live as Christians and to be faithful and to be disciples as well as making disciples.
Having said all that, there is no doubt that we live in a most remarkable age in the sense of the multinational nature of the people of God. There are more Christians now in the south, or the east, Africa, Asia, all over the West. These are wonderful days, the church is truly global and we should rejoice in God keeping His promise to Abraham because that is what He promised He was going to do, to bless all nations through his people and He is and He has and will continue to do so right up until people of every nation, and language, and tribe and tongue gather before the Lord.
