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For 35 years one of the simplest ways to define evangelical Christianity has been to refer to the Lausanne Covenant, the document that emerged from the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974. Convened by American evangelist (and Christianity Today founder) Billy Graham and British clergyman John R. W. Stott, the congress brought together 2,300 church and missionary leaders from 150 countries, including a substantial number of leaders from the then-nascent evangelical communities of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The Lausanne Covenant became a milestone in evangelical history, confidently proclaiming the continued need for evangelism when much of mainline Protestantism had lost confidence in biblical faith, while also reclaiming social responsibility when many fundamentalists disdained justice as a "liberal" concern. (Read the Lausanne Covenant at Lausanne.org/covenant.)

In October 2010, the Lausanne Movement will convene another congress, this time in Cape Town, South Africa. The majority of participants will be from the Majority World, where evangelicalism is now thriving dramatically. For the next year, Christianity Today, in partnership with the Lausanne Movement and fellow Christian publications around the world, will address some of the principal issues that confront the contemporary church as we seek to proclaim and demonstrate the gospel in all its historic depth and breadth. We are calling these articles the Global Conversation.

Taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, in obedience to the Great Commission, is an inescapable imperative. A definition of world evangelization that has won assent from Christians of all stripes was memorably summarized in the Lausanne Covenant—the document substantially crafted by John R. W. Stott and affirmed by the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974: "Evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world."

The "three wholes" in this ringing phrase had been part of Christian discourse for some years before Stott drafted the covenant. Indeed, they go back to the apostle Paul, if not to the patriarch Abraham. But to keep the conversation within living memory, a stirring statement by the Dutch theologian Willem Adolf Visser't Hooft makes the point:

The command to witness to Christ is given to every member of his church. It is a commission given to the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. When the church recognizes that it exists for the world, there arises a passionate concern that the blessings of the gospel of Christ should be brought to every land and to every man and woman.

This quote is all the more striking since Visser't Hooft was writing in 1961 on behalf of the World Council of Churches. Yet he seems to use the word whole primarily in a quantitative sense. For Visser't Hooft, the whole church means "every member." The whole world means "every man and woman." The whole gospel means all "the blessings of the gospel." That is surely better than some missionaries taking some blessings of the gospel to some people in some parts of the world. But the three wholes have more substantial, qualitative implications, implications that are worthy ...

Read Christopher J. H. Wright's complete article

Selected writers respond to Christopher J. H. Wright from around the globe.

For More Conversation

The covenant, explored

After Lausanne 1974, John R. W. Stott explained the process behind the covenant the Congress had adopted, and its key points of significance.

Chris Wright on "the whole church"

Chris Wright talks about the breadth and depth of the phrase "the whole church."

Southern voices on evangelism

Samuel Escobar describes some of the many distinctive contributions from Global South theologians in the wake of the 1974 Congress.

When the poor are still with us

Can Christians address poverty without personal relationships with the poor? Christopher Heuertz suggests why our approach to poverty is often inadequate.