The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, abbreviated LCWE, is an Evangelical Christian movement that grew out of the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization (ICOWE) and promotes active worldwide evangelism.[1] LCWE is also known as The Lausanne Movement. The Lausanne Covenant defines the movement’s goals and expresses its commitment to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.[2] The movement’s tagline is 'The Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.'[1]
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The ICOWE was organized in part by Billy Graham and met in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. Some 2,700 participants and guests from over 150 nations met here to discuss and promote evangelism.[1] One result of this conference was the Lausanne Continuation Committee, which planned to sustain the movement started at Lausanne. This committee formed the backbone for the official inception of the LCWE in 1976.[2] Another organizational backbone of the movement was the Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center (MARC), a division of World Vision International.[3]
The Executive Board of Directors is headed by American Rev. Dr. S. Douglas Birdsall, the current Executive Chairman. Other Board members hail from all over the world.[4]
Its latest conference took place in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2010.[1]
The LCWE claims to avoid the bureaucratization that typically occurs within similar movements. It chooses instead to maintain a federated system with dense networks that connect local activists with global leaders.[1]
The LCWE has spawned significant involvement from agencies and individual Christians. The movement surrounding it has led to hundreds of books on evangelism and theology being published. These include workbooks for choosing strategies with which to evangelize to “unreached peoples”.[5] The document of greatest significance to date is the Lausanne Covenant, which is used by evangelical mission organisations worldwide as a basis for faith, action and partnership.
The LCWE publishes Occasional Papers on its website. The series of booklets, The Didasko Files, is also published for the Lausanne Movement, and includes a study guide to the Lausanne Covenant, written by the chief architect of the Covenant, John Stott.[6]
At the urging of evangelical leaders worldwide, the Lausanne Movement held the Third Congress on World Evangelisation in Cape Town, South Africa, 16–25 October 2010. The goal of Cape Town 2010 was to re-stimulate the spirit of Lausanne represented in the Lausanne Covenant: to promote unity, humbleness in service, and a call to action for global evangelization.[7]