Lausanne 1974: Billy Graham, John Stott, and the Birth of a Movement
Ordained Minister, M.Div.
May 16, 2026
2 min read
In July 1974, 2,700 evangelical leaders from 150 nations converged on Lausanne, Switzerland, at the invitation of Billy Graham. The International Congress on World Evangelization was the largest gathering of evangelical Christians in history at that point. It produced a document that would reshape how evangelicals thought about mission, the Gospel, and the church's responsibility in the world.
The Context: Evangelism in the Late Twentieth Century
By the early 1970s, evangelical Christianity faced several internal tensions. Some emphasized personal evangelism while marginalizing social concern. Others, influenced by liberation theology, were moving away from proclamation-centered mission. The Lausanne Congress was convened partly to articulate a third way: a robust affirmation of the primacy of evangelism held together with a genuine commitment to social responsibility.
The Two Architects: Graham and Stott
Billy Graham provided the organizational vision and global network that made Lausanne possible. John Stott provided the theological architecture. Stott chaired the drafting committee and is generally credited as the primary author of the Lausanne Covenant. The two men embodied the two streams they sought to hold together: Graham the mass evangelist, Stott the scholar-pastor who insisted on thinking carefully about the church's whole mission.
The Covenant's Structure
The Lausanne Covenant is organized into fifteen paragraphs covering the purposes of God, the authority and power of the Bible, the uniqueness and universality of Christ, the nature of evangelism, Christian social responsibility, the church and evangelism, cooperation in evangelism, churches in evangelical partnership, the urgency of the evangelistic task, evangelism and culture, education and leadership, spiritual conflict, freedom and persecution, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the return of Christ.
The congress concluded with 2,300 participants signing the Covenant - a figure that itself testified to its authority. It launched the Lausanne Movement, which has continued to produce major documents including the Willowbank Report (1978), the Consultation on the Relationship Between Evangelism and Social Responsibility (1982), and the Cape Town Commitment (2010).
