THE CAPE TOWN COMMITMENT
A Confession of Faith & A Call to Action
From the Third Lausanne Congress. 10Publishing. 80 pages. £2.99
ISBN 978 1 906 890 063
In October 2010, over 4,000 evangelical leaders from 198 countries met in Cape Town, South Africa, for the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation. It was described by some as ‘one of the most significant gatherings of Christians in the history of the church of Jesus Christ’. The aims of the Congress were twofold:
* to hear the voice of the living God through his word and, from that,
* to discern the priorities for the global church over the coming years as it seeks to complete the Lord’s commission to ‘make disciples of all the nations’.
Formal statement
The Cape Town Commitment is the formal statement from the Congress. It is a distillation of all the teaching and thinking which took place, both prior to the Congress and during those eight historic days on the Cape Peninsula. It builds on the statements of previous gatherings, the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and the Manila Manifesto (1989).
It is, therefore, a massively important document which calls for careful reading and consideration by all Christians in their concern for the ongoing task of world evangelisation.
In Scripture, major turning points in the life of God’s people are frequently characterised by three specific emphases: a fresh appreciation and understanding of God — his character, truth and purposes; a humble recognition of past failure; and, a renewed commitment to live for him in the future. (See, for example, the reforms under King Josiah in 2 Kings 22 & 23). The Commitment contains all three! It is based on Scripture, moulded by Scripture and brilliantly reflects scriptural thinking, priorities, attitudes and practices.
The Commitment is in two parts: A Confession of Faith and A Call to Action.
The Confession of Faith is framed in a refreshingly God-centred way. It is all built around the person of the living God — who he is, what he is like and what he wants. The tone, therefore, is hugely uplifting.
It is also framed in the language of love. It begins with God’s grace, God’s initiative. It clearly demonstrates how all mission in the world flows out of hearts which are responding, first and foremost, to the God who loves us. As the Confession says: ‘We love because God first loved us’! And, therefore, ‘we love the living God’, ‘we love God the Father’, ‘we love God the Son’, ‘we love God the Holy Spirit’, ‘we love God’s word’, ‘we love God’s world’, ‘we love the gospel of God’, ‘we love the people of God’, and ‘we love the mission of God’. Mission is not something we do because we have to — to be ‘good Christians’. It is the natural (supernatural!) response of lives captivated and propelled by grace alone:
Oh that the world might taste and see
the riches of his grace!
The arms of love that compass me
would all mankind embrace!
Charles Wesley
You can only sing those words if you are enjoying his grace day by day.
The Confession of Faith, written in this fresh and arresting style, covers a lot of ground. Traditional Christian doctrine is all there, but amplified to reflect hearts and minds that are passionate about God and his world. Reading it warms the heart, draws out a strong response of, ‘Amen! I agree!’ and then demands the question, ‘What are we going to do?’ This is the subject of the Cape Town Call to Action.
Call to action
This second part of the Commitment is necessarily longer than the first and contains a large amount of material. The Call to Action is in six sections reflecting the six major themes of the Congress: truth, reconciliation, world faiths, priorities, integrity and partnership. These themes were considered in papers circulated prior to the Congress which were then tackled in Cape Town. This was done through Bible expositions on Ephesians, through large ‘multiplexes’ and through ‘dialogue sessions’. Throughout the Congress, feedback was being given to the ‘Statement Working Group’ which would be responsible for the final document which we now have.
The Call to Action is breathtaking in its scope, moving in its passionate appeals and sometimes shocking in its language as it calls the church of Christ to wake up to the challenges facing the worldwide church at the start of the 21st century. For example, in the paragraph on reaching children across the world as being one of the major priorities in world evangelisation, it is humbling and disturbing to read, from a Western materialistic perspective, that, ‘children of the wealthy and secure have everything to live with, but nothing to live for’ (p.57). We can’t ignore the pressing issues right on our doorstep!
Both/and!
One of the major tensions in global evangelicalism over recent decades has been the ongoing debate about where the emphasis in Christian witness should be placed — on gospel proclamation or on social involvement. The Call to Action is clear that it is not a matter of either/or but both/and! Perhaps John Piper summed it up most succinctly in his Congress exposition: ‘Christians are called to eliminate ALL suffering in the world, particularly eternal suffering!’ It may be a shock to realise, for example, that there are more people around the world in slavery today (an estimated 27 million!) than there were 200 years ago when Wilberforce was fighting to abolish the transatlantic slave trade.
However, for me, some of the most urgent and compelling words of the Call to Action are found in the section on integrity, headed, ‘calling the church back to humility, integrity and simplicity’. The Congress was outspoken on the plausibility crisis facing the global church as it fails to live out its calling in front of a watching world. Lindsay Brown, Lausanne International Director, quoted John Stott’s last published sermon in his closing address: ‘The greatest hindrance to the advance of the gospel worldwide is the failure of God’s people to live as God’s people’. As a church leader for nearly 20 years now, reviewing one’s own life and the lives of those one serves, I am, sadly, bound to agree. Will we all heed this urgent call?
And so, another Congress, another publication, another book on our shelves. The world moves on. What will be the impact of The Cape Town Commitment? Particularly in the UK? British evangelicalism is very diverse. We love taking up positions. We love debating. But this is a Confession of Faith and a Call to Action around which all of us, to a major extent, can unite. Yes, for some it will be too broad. For others, too narrow. Be that as it may, let’s buy it, read it, study it, discuss it and, above all, take action locally and nationally because of it.
The extent to which we heed this crucial document from the global church, and at least put some of it into practice, may well determine the extent of our success — or failure — in the re-evangelisation of Britain in the coming years!
Tim Gunn,
Woodlands Evangelical Church, Derby
