Editor’s note: This article is part of forum discussing the fourth Lausanne Congress. It is not an official Lausanne Movement forum but an opportunity for Lausanne delegates to share their thoughts about the fourth Lausanne Congress, the Seoul Statement, and the future of the mission. You can read the entire series, from diverse voices around the world here.
Strategy and vision can lead to disorder even as we strive for order. In this article, I want to explore a few observations and loving critiques of the fourth Lausanne Congress (L4). Fifty years ago, the first Lausanne Congress responded to its own contextual challenges, and we now suffer from new disorders. These disorders are caused by an overemphasis on one sided-strategy, corporate technologizing at the expense of relationality, and urban mission at the expense of rural mission. Let me explain what I mean.
One-Sided Strategy
Urban beautification projects generally aim to improve residents’ lives through refurbishing and embellishing existing public spaces to increase social interaction, heighten safety, provide accessibility, and generally make life for residents better. There is research, however, suggesting the outcomes of such strategies fail to meet the aims.1 The point hinges on a relation between a production, what gets made of them, and their broader impact. French scholar of spirituality and culture Michel de Certeau analyzed similar phenomena using what he called spatial language. I want to note a set of terms, strategy and place (lieu). For de Certeau, strategies are designed practices (the beautification projects) intended to produce effectiveness and some measurable gain (better resident life). Strategies require a vision for the order (what better life is) but also a differentiation of the environment to be acted in (urban centres).2 The place is the physical, material, or social thing produced by those strategies. The problem is that even as the thing produced can represent the strategy, it does not give any proof to what users make or do with the place or to any broader impact.
Technology and Relationships
At the recent Lausanne Congress in Seoul, participants were not provided a new declarative vision of the needs and methods required to carry the Great Commission forward over the next half century. In line with the overarching philosophy of Polycentric Mission, participants were invited to collaborate with others in main session table groups and at Gap Sessions to envision practical steps towards addressing key needs or maximizing key opportunities to heighten gospel impact. The strategy builds on the idea that at events like this much of the vitality is connected to and born out of the relational events that take place during that time. As much was said from the main stage. Beautiful moments of providential spontaneity and chance meetings or random connections from previous Lausanne events were noted as key points that resulted in personal transformation, lifelong friendships, significant partnerships, and new missional endeavours. Knowing the value of such relational moments the Congress organizers strategized the use of digital technology and software intelligence to synthesize, facilitate and track such relationality, providing a resource and platform that participants could use post-congress.
When the product of this technology is combined with session recordings and any forthcoming post-congress reports, the digital place will no doubt prove a quality resource about the Congress. What it will not be is a representation of those relational experiences. In fact, during the Congress, the strategy interfered with the relational experiences it tried to support. At times, the drive for the corporate technological application disturbed the relational aspect of the Congress—with frequent reminders to use the tech, the time spent trying to figure out how to use the tech, and the technology’s inaccessibility or crashing systems. This clash between strategy and the relational lead to some participants abandoning the tech entirely. The preference for the relational means their participation will not be represented in the digital place nor will the tech strategy be able to serve them as it was intended.
1 J. Antonio Lara-Hernandez and Alessandro Melis, “Understanding the temporary appropriation in relationship to social sustainability,” Sustainable Cities and Society (39), May 2018, pp. 366-374.
2 Michel de Certeau, “The Practice of Everyday Life.” (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), p. xix.
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