Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

evangelism – (and) state what the relationship is between evangelism and social
responsibility.‟ 163
Out of this Congress came the Lausanne Covenant, drawn up under the leadership of the
Anglican John Stott and signed by most delegates. The Covenant was to work toward „the
whole church (taking) the whole gospel to the whole world.‟ The Covenant represented a
very wide spectrum of Evangelicals worldwide and stressed the uniqueness of the Bible as
„the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms and the only infallible rule
of faith and practice‟ for believers.
The uniqueness of Christ was also affirmed to counter growing pluralist pressures.
By the time of the Lausanne Congress, Evangelicals had become concerned about the
Christian responsibility to a needy world.
A Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism was formed and a second Congress was
held in 1989 in Manila with an even greater number of delegates (3,600 from 170 nations).
Unlike the first Lausanne Congress, Lausanne II had a charismatic representation among its
delegates.
In Vol 3 of A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Keith Clements and Todor Saber write:
„The WCC, sister ecumenical bodies and churches in Eastern Europe joined in paving
the way for Billy Graham‟s historic evangelism campaigns in Yugoslavia (1967);
Hungary (1977 and 1989); Poland (1978); the GDR, Czechoslovakia and the USSR
(1982); and Romania (1985). These spectacular events gathered millions of people,
had tremendous impact on ecumenical relations and confidence-building, and created
new perceptions of religion.‟ 164
The kind of Evangelicalism Billy Graham now embraced was able to cross the political
boundaries of East and West and draw together Christians of many denominations.
For many, all this was evidence of the Holy Spirit doing a new thing.
163 Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, ed Lossky, Nicholas et al, WCC Publishing,
Geneva/William B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1991, p 594.
164 Ed Briggs, John; Oduyoye, Mercy Amba; Tsetsis, Georges, A History of the Ecumenical
Movement, Vol 3, 1968-2000, WCC, Geneva, 2004, p 549.
Page 130