Now, stepping back to WEA, the purpose of our trip to China – it was a really historic visit, it was the first visit of WEA senior leaders at the invitation of the official church structures in China for a visit to begin building a relationship. The primary purpose of the trip was not advocacy for any movement within China, but it was simply to build understanding.
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The challenge in many contexts, not only in China, is that evangelical Christians have been stereotyped often times by the media who portrays them as having a certain political perspective or certain bias. So part of our goal going to China is to de-stigmatize the understanding of what evangelicals are around the world; so to create a clear understanding of who evangelical Christians are around the world.
I think from the Chinese perspective, their goal was to simply communicate out of their context what was happening in the churches associated with TSPM/CCC.
But I think another important principle that WEA operates out of is that we never discuss in public what we talk about in private. And so we have both public meetings with the Chinese churches and private conversations. The reality is if you are building trust then don’t betray your trust on what you say in public meetings.
So we recognize that some people’s role within our evangelical world community is to be a constant public voice pointing out issues. WEA’s role is to seek to determine what are the best mechanisms for different contexts, and this applies to China and other parts of the world. So WEA has both a public and private voice.
Sometimes we have to determine what is appropriate. For us, we used our inside voice in terms of our conversation. Because we are committed to a long term relationship with Christians in China and this was simply a first step.
CP: What role is WEA playing in the Lausanne Congress later this year?
Tunnicliffe: I think this is a historic event in many ways. Lausanne ’74 facilitated by Dr. Billy Graham was a major event for a particular generation. It shaped a lot of Christian leaders out of that. Then there was the ’89 event in Manila.
Very early on after Doug Birdsall became chairman for Lausanne, he and I met in London and the context there was we felt there needed to be a strong partnership between our movements. Understanding the Lausanne movement is a movement of individuals in many parts of the world who are connected through this common vision of world evangelization. WEA is also a movement, but we are a movement of institutions and organizations and structures who also have the same commitment to world evangelization.
So the feeling was in order to maximize the impact of Cape Town 2010, it was absolutely essential that Lausanne and WEA to collaborate together to one, demonstrate the unity in the body of Christ, that we’re not competing movements but we are complimentary movements. Secondly, in holding a major congress like Cape Town it is really important that we deliver the impact what happens in Cape Town back to the grassroots.
That will happen in a variety of ways. One is there will be a global conversation that is taking place through technology and the GlobaLink. But also because now WEA and Lausanne are linked, the impact of Lausanne, it is our hope and prayer, that it will be pushed back through our structures, through our alliances, denominations and through the churches and leaders in a much more systematic and significant way.
And that Cape Town will continue to help shape the understanding and conversation on world evangelization.
