In terms of your question, we are collaborating on every level. At the senior leadership level, at the invitation level, at the participation and program level. Just as important is at the post-2010 level. One of the great things that Lindsay Brown, the international director of Lausanne, said is he believes that Lausanne’s best fruit grows on other people’s trees. So the idea is that we don’t need a whole lot of new structures to be developed.
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For example, there will be a focus on poverty. It makes absolute sense to link it in to our Micah Challenge because that is a structured, programmatic initiative that people can engage in right away. We merged, for example, our peace building and reconciliation initiatives. So it’s not collaboration around 2010, but it’s going to be ongoing collaboration.
CP: How can the Lausanne Congress strengthen the Christian body? Will it focus on evangelism strategies to full the Great Commission?
Tunnicliffe: Again the singular goal of the Lausanne movement is world evangelization. It is our hope that as in the two previous congresses, it will help to shape this generation’s understanding of the importance of how we engage as Christians to share the good news to the ends of the earth.
The world is very different than how it was in ’74 and ’89. So how will this generation of leaders be shaped in their commitment to share the good news around the world. It is our combined hope with Lausanne that this will sharpen our focus in terms of the opportunities and needs for the gospel.
There were very specific criteria established by Cape Town 2010. In terms of countries, they were allotted so many people, but they had to fit into many categories such as age, gender, role – ministry, marketplace, or clergy. Certainly the emphasis will be on younger leaders, 25 to 40 year olds. I think it’s making way for this new generation of leaders that are emerging around the world. So there will be a strong emphasis on younger leaders.
CP: What is the WEA doing to help the quake victims in Haiti? Does WEA have an alliance member there?
Tunnicliffe: Our hearts are grieved by the level of destruction that has taken place in Haiti. There is a vibrant church there and there some levels of cooperation and an emerging evangelical alliance there.
But I think what we have learned, and it goes back to our history, when major disasters happen, Christians are very quick to respond but what we learned from the tsunami in Southeast Asia is that so often there is lack of cooperation and collaboration. Not intentionally, but because there was no structure to do that.
Therefore it leads to a waste of resources sometimes and a lack of clear impact. So what we have been working on in WEA for the last three years is to work with some of our partners. We’ve been working with Integral Alliance, which is a network of major Christian and relief development agencies mostly in the global north; Micah Network, which has 300 Christian relief, development, justice organizations primarily in the global south; and World Vision, which is a part of WEA.
What we have been working on is a strategy for when a major disaster happens to form a united strategy of major impact. We are actually several months away from finalizing our works in doing that. Having said that, what our global partners have been doing – you know WEA is not a relief and development organization, though relief and development organizations are part of our movement – is they have combined their efforts together in terms of communications and on the ground activities so they are collaborating together to create greater efficiency and impact.
