The First International Congress on World Evangelization (ICOWE), also sometimes called the Lausanne Congress or Lausanne '74, was a Christian conference held from 16 to 25 July 1974 in Switzerland.
The conference is noted for producing the Lausanne Covenant, one of the major documents of modern evangelical Christianity. The drafting committee of the covenant was headed by John Stott of England. [1]
The movement claims to follow in the footsteps of the 1910 World Missionary Conference.
The congress started as a plan announced by American evangelist Billy Graham in August 1972 to hold an international congress on evangelism as a follow-up to the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin, West Germany. [2] The conference was called by a committee headed by Graham and brought together religious leaders from 150 nations. [3] Lausanne was selected for the congress in October 1972. The congress office opened in April 1973. The theme of the congress was "Let the earth hear His voice."
Almost 2,700 evangelical Christian leaders attended the conference at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland to discuss the progress, resources and methods of evangelizing the world. [4] The reports and papers at the congress helped to illustrate the shift of Christianity's center of gravity from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Millie Dienert chaired the prayer committee at the Lausanne conference. [5] After the congress, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization was established.
The conference was attended by, among others, Francis Schaeffer, journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and bishop Jack Dain. [6]
The Second International Congress on World Evangelization was held fifteen years later in Manila. [7]
The Third International Congress on World Evangelization was held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 16 to 25 October 2010. [8]
A fourth congress was held in Incheon, Seoul, South Korea in September 2024. [9]
In Christianity, evangelism or witnessing is the act of preaching the gospel with the intention of sharing the message and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is sometimes associated with Christian missions.
The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is an interdenominational organization of evangelical Christian churches with 600 million adherents that was founded in 1846 in London, England, to unite evangelicals worldwide. WEA is the largest international organization of evangelical churches. It has offices at the United Nations in New York City, Geneva, and Bonn. It brings together nine regional and 143 national evangelical alliances of churches, and over one hundred member organizations. Moreover, a number of international evangelical denominations are members of the WEA. As of March 2021, the Secretary General of the WEA is German theologian Thomas Schirrmacher.
Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was an American evangelical Christian theologian who provided intellectual and institutional leadership to the neo-evangelical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. He was ordained in 1942 after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to teach and lecture at various schools and publish and edit many works surrounding the neo-evangelical movement. His early book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (1947), was influential in calling evangelicals to differentiate themselves from separatist fundamentalism and claim a role in influencing the wider American culture. He was involved in the creation of numerous major evangelical organizations that contributed to his influence in Neo-evangelicalism and lasting legacy, including the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Theological Seminary, Evangelical Theological Society, Christianity Today magazine, and the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. The Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity International University seek to carry on his legacy. His ideas about Neo-evangelism are still debated to this day and his legacy continues to inspire change in American social and political culture.
The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is an interdenominational association of 180 evangelical Christian student movements worldwide, encouraging evangelism, discipleship and mission among students. The headquarters is in Oxford, England.
John Robert Walmsley Stott was a British Anglican priest and theologian who was noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement. He was one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974. In 2005, Time magazine ranked Stott among the 100 most influential people in the world.
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, ordained Southern Baptist minister, and civil rights advocate, whose broadcasts and world tours featuring live sermons became well known in the mid- to late 20th century. Throughout his career, spanning over six decades, Graham rose to prominence as an evangelical Christian figure in the United States and abroad.
The Lausanne Covenant is a July 1974 religious manifesto promoting active worldwide Christian evangelism. One of the most influential documents in modern evangelicalism, it was written at the First International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, where it was adopted by 2,300 evangelicals in attendance.
The 1910 World Missionary Conference, or the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, was held on 14 to 23 June 1910. Some have seen it as both the culmination of nineteenth-century Protestant Christian missions and the formal beginning of the modern Protestant Christian ecumenical movement, after a sequence of interdenominational meetings that can be traced back as far as 1854.
The Second International Congress on World Evangelization, often called Lausanne II or Lausanne '89, was a Christian conference held in Manila, Philippines in 1989.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is a non-profit Christian outreach organization that promotes multimedia evangelism, conducts evangelistic crusades, and engages in disaster response. The BGEA operates the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Ralph Dana Winter was an American missiologist and Presbyterian missionary who helped pioneer Theological Education by Extension, raised the debate about the role of the church and mission structures and became well known as the advocate for pioneer outreach among unreached people groups. He was the founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, William Carey International University, and the International Society for Frontier Missiology.
Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR) is a coalition of Christian countercult organizations. It was founded by Gordon Lewis, James Bjornstad, Ronald Enroth, and Walter Ralston Martin in 1982.
The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, more commonly known as the Lausanne Movement, is a global movement that mobilizes Christian leaders to collaborate for world evangelization. The movement's fourfold vision is to see 'the gospel for every person, disciple-making churches for every people and place, Christ-like leaders for every church and sector, and kingdom impact in every sphere of society'.
Integral mission or holistic mission describes an understanding of Christian mission that embraces both evangelism and social responsibility. With origins in Latin American, integral mission has influenced a significant number of Protestants around the world through the Lausanne Movement.
The Centre for Missional Leadership(CML) was a theological centre specialising in applied theology. It was based in Watford, 20 miles northwest of central London, England.
Ruth Alex Mitchell was a British journalist who was the "editor and driving force behind the Christian current affairs magazine Third Way". She edited Third Way for five of its first six years and "established its reputation as making a significant contribution to Christian social thinking." Her hymn "Now We Sing a Harvest Song" is in the BBC's popular hymnal Come and Praise.
Michael Young-Suk Oh is a Korean American evangelical and the Global Executive Director/CEO of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
C. René Padilla was an Ecuadorian evangelical theologian and missiologist known for coining the term integral mission in the 1970s to articulate Christianity's dual priority in evangelism and social activism. He popularized this term in Latin American evangelicalism through the Latin American Theological Fellowship and through the global evangelical Lausanne Conference of 1974.
Michael Cassidy, is a South African Christian leader, evangelist, writer and founder of Africa Enterprise, known for his initiatives at ecumenism, and reconciliation on personal, church and political levels.