Climate change, urbanisation and 'moral failure' on Lausanne agenda

Climate change, urbanisation and the "moral failure" of evangelicals will feature high on the agenda of Lausanne's major 2010 gathering in Cape Town.

"Climate change is the biggest threat on the planet – it’s bigger than global terrorism,” said Lindsay Brown, international director of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation at a meeting of evangelicals in Sydney, Australia, last week to promote the gathering.

Lausanne is hoping that its Third World Congress in October 2010 will make as big an impact on world Christianity as its previous gatherings, particularly Lausanne I held in 1974. That meeting saw 2,300 evangelical Christian leaders come together in Lausanne, Switzerland, to articulate their shared faith in the Lausanne Covenant, a groundbreaking document many Christian organisations still use as their statement of faith today.

Lindsay pointed to the findings of a new survey by the London School of Economics showing that 75 per cent of the world's population will be living in urban centres by the year 2050.

"Evangelicals will need to look at how we engage with Mission in an urbanised context and this will another theme of Capetown 2010,” he said.

Lindsay said Cape Town 2010 would also seek to correct the "loss of clarity" affecting current evangelicalism.

“Evangelicalism is fractured around the world – there are evidences of moral failure even amongst leaders, there has been a loss of clarity as to what constitutes the Gospel, what is evangelism, what is Mission, what is dialogue. There needs to be greater clarity in these areas,” he said.

Evangelicals, he added, also needed to examine prosperity theology - the belief that faith in God will lead to material abundance.

“We have seen the growth of prosperity theology in many parts of the world which has had a devastating impact on the Church of Christ, particularly in Latin America, Africa and Central Europe,” Lindsay said.

“One of the features of prosperity theology is a focus on the notion that those who are ‘switched on’ followers of Jesus Christ will be free of suffering and will prosper, whilst neglecting to understand that the vast majority of believers in the world are rather poor and come from poorer backgrounds."

The Capetown 2010 programme is still being worked out by 12 regional consultations.

More than 4,000 evangelical leaders from around the world are expected to take part in the meeting, which is being held in collaboration with the World Evangelical Alliance.