The Cape Town Commitment: Lausanne in the 21st Century

In October 2010, over 4,000 evangelical leaders from 198 nations gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, for Lausanne III - the third major congress in the Lausanne Movement's history (the second, Manila 1989, produced the Manila Manifesto). They met for ten days, heard testimony from the global church, and produced the Cape Town Commitment: a comprehensive statement of evangelical faith and mission for the twenty-first century.

Structure: Two Parts

The Cape Town Commitment is organized into two major parts. Part I is titled 'For the Lord We Love: The Cape Town Confession of Faith' - a series of affirmations about what we love, centered on the triune God, the Bible, the Gospel, and the global church. Part II is titled 'For the World We Serve: The Cape Town Call to Action' - concrete commitments about how the church is to engage the world in mission.

New Challenges Addressed

The Cape Town Commitment addresses issues that were not yet on the radar in 1974: the rise of global Christianity's center of gravity to the majority world, Islam, pluralism, and persecution of Christians; the crisis of integrity in church leadership (corruption, sexual failure, financial abuse); the relationship between the Gospel and creation care; the need for evangelical engagement with the arts, science, media, and business. It is a considerably more comprehensive document than its predecessor.

Continuity With Lausanne 1974

Throughout the Cape Town Commitment, the continuity with the 1974 Lausanne Covenant is explicit and intentional. The same convictions about the primacy of evangelism, the uniqueness of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the integral relationship between evangelism and social responsibility are maintained and developed. Cape Town does not revise Lausanne's core commitments - it extends them into new territory.

Together, the Lausanne Covenant and the Cape Town Commitment form a remarkable body of evangelical missional theology. They represent the fruit of global evangelical consultation - not imposed by a single denomination or leader, but agreed upon by thousands of church leaders from every continent and tradition within historic Christianity.