Hi everyone, welcome to Deep Roots, conversations about theology and ministry.
My name's Eric Ortlund and I teach Hebrew and Old Testament at Oak Hill College.
And I'm joined by my dear friend and colleague, Chris Howles this morning.
Chris, you're new to the podcast.
Could you tell everyone what you were doing before Oak Hill, what brought you here and
what you're doing here at Oak Hill now?
Yeah, thank you, Eric.
New to the podcast and newish to the college.
So we started at Oak Hill in January earlier this year.
Having been a student here many years ago, 2007, for a few years then.
Between then and now, we, my wife and I, with our three kids have been living and working
in Uganda in a place called Namagongo on the outskirts of Kampala, where we were working
at a Bible college teaching and training women and men for ministry across Uganda and East
Africa.
So now back at Oak Hill as director of cross-cultural training.
So that is a role helping and enabling those who might be considering long-term overseas
ministry admission, but also to help all of our students to consider what it looks like
to think and to minister to those of other cultures.
An increasingly important role in Great Britain.
There will be almost no student who leaves Oak Hill wherever they might end up within
the UK, who ends up in a monocultural setting with just people from their own culture.
All will be ministering inter-culturally with those from other cultures.
So to think carefully how to do that is key for all of our students.
Wonderful.
Well, we are so glad you're here at Oak Hill.
You've already been a blessing to us all.
You had a chance to go to a really exciting, I mean, a world event of a missions conference
recently.
Can you tell us about that?
A genuinely global event of which there are not many that take place that are truly global.
So it is called the Lausanne Congress.
Now that might sound a bit confusing because Lausanne is a town in Switzerland.
I didn't go to Switzerland.
I went to Seoul in South Korea.
The reason it's called Lausanne is because that's where the first of these global gatherings
took place 50 years ago in 1974.
And there's been three others since then in Manila in the Philippines in 1989, Cape Town
in South Africa in 2010, and then of course Seoul in South Korea in 2024.
And these congresses are very large global gatherings of evangelicals worldwide to think
about, pray about, talk about, and collaborate in the evangelization of the world, so to
speak, mission what the Lord is doing and how we can participate in what he's doing.
And so it is a massive event.
There were over 5,000 delegates at this conference from over 200 countries, which depending on
how you define it is pretty much every country in the world.
So it's extraordinarily diverse.
You told us beforehand that it was looking like you would get representatives from every
country.
It might not quite have worked out that way, but it was very close.
It was pretty close to that.
There's 202 countries, believers from 202 countries there.
Pretty much that's every political nation on earth, which is remarkable.
Is it fair to say this is the first time in church history where a conference could be
held with Christians coming from every nation or almost every nation?
I think it is true to say that this was almost certainly the most diverse gathering of Christians
in church history.
And what was great, Eric, is that it wasn't just diverse.
So you could be diverse.
If you had a conference, it was 90% American and British, and then had one each from the
other 198 or whatever countries.
That would be technically speaking diverse.
It was more than that.
It was representative or at least broadly representative.
In our world today, many people don't realize that actually about 80% of evangelicals live
in what we might call the global South, which is broadly speaking, Africa, South America,
and Asia.
And only 20% of evangelicals live in Europe and North America.
Of course, if you look at many of our bookshelves or podcasts or just the resources that are
there, you might think it's the other way around, but the vast majority of global evangelicals
do live in the global South.
And the Lausanne Congress there in South Korea reflected that.
Maybe not perfectly, but the vast majority of delegates were from the global South.
And that was really obvious when you're just sitting down over breakfast.
Immediately you're meeting people from Egypt and India and Peru and Pacific Islands and
so on.
And you start to get the sense from more than just statistics, but in real life that yes,
evangelicalism is strongest in the global South.
So it was incredibly diverse and very representative, beautifully so.
I heard a statistic once that if you were to take a hundred Anglican Christians at random,
it's most likely the person you would pick would be a sub-Saharan African woman.
Yeah, that's right.
And so the kind of median location of Christians today is somewhere around Niger in sort of
West Africa.
So by median, what we mean is if you were to have the same number of Christians to the
North of you and the South of you and the same number of Christians to the East of you
and the West of you, that kind of middle spot, so to speak, would be around Niger today or
across West Africa.
Whereas even just 200 years ago, that would have been in Southern Europe and a millennium
ago that would have been in kind of, you know, Central or even Western Europe.
So you're seeing the shift of the church so southwards in terms of Africa and Latin America
and also eastwards towards Asia and Southeast Asia.
And of course, the Congress being held in South Korea is quite reflective of that South
Korea country that just three or four generations ago at the turn, at the start of the 20th
century, the church would have been was very small and sort of insignificant in the kind
of numeric sense.
And now it is huge in South Korea.
Some of the biggest churches and congregations in the world are in South Korea.
And that kind of reflects the growth of the spread of the gospel and the growth of evangelicalism
across the global today.
And that was really reflected at the meeting at the Congress, which was very beautiful.
So things are shifting radically and across a worldwide scale.
Give us your sense from the Lausanne Conference, Congress, sorry, my mistake.
What are some new things God is doing in the world?
What are some challenges that different Christians face around the world?
Give us a sense of how things are shifting.
Broadly speaking, the aim and ambition and kind of purpose of the Lausanne movement,
which began in 1974 through originally kind of Billy Graham and his ministries and then
later joins in with John Stott, this side of the Atlantic and others worldwide.
The original vision was to think about evangelisation of the world.
One of the taglines of Lausanne has been the whole church bringing the whole gospel to
the whole world and trying to really think in terms of the fullness of what is church,
what is the gospel and where is the world, so to speak.
And those kind of emphases remain.
Lausanne has a fourfold ambition and that is the gospel for every person in the world,
disciple making church for every people and place in the world, Christ-like leaders for
every church and sector and then a kingdom impact for every sphere of society.
So they're the kind of broad ambitions and they remain and have remained throughout the
five decades long history of the Lausanne movement.
But of course the world changes and the context changes and so there's lots that needs to
be kind of freshly spoken about, which is why they do one of these congresses every
10 or 15 years.
And so some of the emphases at this most recent congress that perhaps weren't so obvious previously
were things like ministry and mission in a digital age.
So thinking particularly of the rise in AI and its impact on evangelism and discipleship,
there was quite a strong emphasis on migration and movement.
That was one of the tracks that I joined in the afternoons where we were able to split
up into different kind of focus groups, an AI and about 300 or so others each afternoon
met to think about what God is doing in the world through movement.
So one stat that I think is really compelling is that right now there are 280 million people
in the world who live outside of the country of their birth.
You would be one of those Eric, two of my children would be as well, but 280 million
people.
That's not even to mention second and third generation, those who are born off immigrant
parents and so on.
But actually that number, 280 million by 2050, which is not that far up, is estimated to
rise to 1.2 billion.
Which even if let's say that estimation fell by half, would still be an incredible increase
and that's going to have profound implications not only for our world as we see it and know
it today, but also ministry and mission.
So what is the Lord doing through migration, both in terms of Christian migrations, bringing
the gospel to new places or revitalizing, reviving churches like we're seeing in London,
or indeed migration of non-Christians or perhaps Christians, sorry, people from places where
Christianity is not strong, coming to places where they can then hear about the Lord Jesus
and perhaps even take that back to their home countries.
So all these opportunities that migration is providing, that was one of the new focus,
foci of the Congress.
That's fascinating.
I've heard a number of Japanese people will leave Japan and counter the gospel.
The Lord will meet them and then they'll go back to Japan.
But that's frequently in that context, exactly what you're talking about.
Absolutely right.
Just seeing that migration is not simply a kind of human phenomenon in the world today
that needs responding to, although it is that, but actually seeing it as something more deeper,
more profound and dare we say it's something more theological in the sense that God is
at work through migration, has purposes in migration.
If you read the Bible story through the lens of migration, you start to realize that actually
the Lord has always worked through the movement of his people.
And that seems to be very much the case today, even accelerating.
And so thinking, what does it teach us about God and God's nature?
What does it teach us about the world we live in?
And trying to therefore, as Christians move beyond, at least to a point, the political
questions which are important and significant and need wrestling with when it comes to issues
of culture and multiculturality and migration and so on, but actually trying to see through
them or beyond them or at least have a theological and biblical perspective on them to recognize
the challenges that come, no doubt, but also the missional opportunities that God seems
to be providing through this remarkable change and transformation that is happening in the
21st century.
So Lausanne, the Congress that took place, that was one of the focuses that really came
across very strongly.
In the midst of this wonderful opportunity that God is giving us, what are some new challenges
the church around the world is facing?
So I think one of the keys that came across, the key challenges it came across is how there
needs to be better collaboration within global evangelism.
We live, of course, in an age of remarkable technological progress where communication
is global and almost instantaneous, and yet we are still very much as globally evangelicals
siloed into our own little ministries and settings.
And on one hand, that's inevitable and perhaps even right.
We are where the Lord has placed us and that is where our focus primarily must be, but
actually to recognize that we live in this unparalleled era of knowing Christians from
around the world, that we can access their thought, their experiences, their theology,
their questions, their answers, their biblical readings.
We can access that and learn from that and collaborate with others in our own ministries
and missions.
We are facing global problems and global challenges and evangelicals must respond globally if
we have any chance of thinking rightly about these issues and responding appropriately
to them.
So I think just the emphasis on collaboration was really important.
You mentioned accessing the experiences, the insights that global Christians have.
Are there some specific and particular ways that UK Christians could access that?
So for me personally, just being at that Congress was an extraordinary thing.
In the main hall, 5,200 of us were actually able to sit around tables of six or seven.
And so on my table, there was a Christian publisher from East Africa.
There was one of the youngest Japanese pastors.
There was a young theological student from Central Europe.
There was an American theologian working with disability ministries.
So even just around that table, there was an amazing sense of after each session, we
would discuss it around our table.
And I was hearing and understanding new ideas, new ways of thinking that really made me see
that my own corner of evangelicalism is quite small.
That doesn't make it wrong or inappropriate at all, but it is just quite small.
Even within evangelicalism, not even talking world Christianity, but evangelicalism, however
we quite draw those lines, my own corner of it is remarkably small.
And actually seeing that not as a threat, they're not like me, but rather an extraordinarily
beautiful thing that the Lord is at work across the world in ways that I just got a little
glimpse at.
I was privileged to get a little taste of there at the Lausanne Congress.
And I think that was really encouraging for me in a setting here in the UK where we can
feel very small and perhaps are very small in a sense, numerically speaking, and where
our impact can feel quite low at times.
Actually to see the Lord powerfully at work across the world reinforces that teaching
of Jesus in Matthew 16 that the kingdom will grow, the church will grow, even the gates
of Hades will not overcome what the Lord is building in his church.
And I think we saw that very powerfully.
So in terms of your question, Eric, in terms of just accessing the richness and diversity
of global evangelical thought worldwide, I mean, it goes without saying that the internet
just connects us to resources, podcasts, books in ways that we just weren't able to even
just 20 years ago.
And so perhaps if I could just name one example of that, there's a Christian publisher, Langham
publishing, who are doing remarkable work in enabling and empowering and equipping global
South voices from Africa and Asia, and that's in America, to write and publish what they've
been speaking on for generations, but that we normally haven't had access to in the Western
world.
Sometimes it's been said, Eric, that there is a theological famine in the global South.
That's not true at all.
Christians around the world and across the ages have been theologizing in the sense of
seeking answers to what it looks like to live Christianly in their own settings and contexts.
Theologizing is going on in every church community worldwide.
What we now have unparalleled access to is the kind of the written or the spoken fruits
of that theologizing that we're able to then learn from and enjoy.
And so reading some of the books that Langham publishers are getting out, hearing from voices
from other contexts, I find really enriches my own faith and understanding, not just on
a global level, but even in my own context here in the UK.
I actually loaned you a book from Langham by Jerry Huang, fascinating book on contextualizing
Christianity in Chinese South Asian contexts, especially using the Old Testament to do that.
It was just wonderful to read.
Are there in particular podcasts or things on YouTube or a little bit more accessible
media that UK Christians could get at to get a sense of the richness of what's going on
in the church around the world?
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's a number one example of what you've just said would be a podcast called
Meet an African Pastor, which is literally just that each week the host who works in
Uganda actually interviews a different pastor who is working sometimes in quite remote or
rural areas across the continents and just hears their voice.
What are they doing?
How are they finding?
What are the challenges?
What are they learning from the Bible?
What is the Lord doing through that church?
And I just think a podcast like that, we have access to voices of normal African pastors,
so to speak, in ways that just a generation ago we almost never would have.
And I think that is a real gift to the church and as much as modern technological change,
the rise of AI and so on can be a very frightening and threatening thing because things are changing
so fast and that's hard.
Actually, such technologies open up possibilities for us to learn from and engage with and be
blessed by global evangelicals in ways that we are the first generation in church history
to be able to have access to that.
And I think that's something to really enjoy and utilise as best we can.
I remember over a decade ago it was now, there were some different things happening in Iraq
and I was able to email a pastor in Iraq and say, I'm praying for you.
We had never met before and that would have been impossible even five years ago.
What a wonderful opportunity in a very difficult part of the world.
Chris, let's say a UK pastor is listening or a lay person in a church and they're noticing
a consistent pattern of Ugandan or Iranian or Indian or Chinese families showing up.
How would you like the pastor to engage with, think about and treat that as a wonderful
ministry opportunity?
Could you speak to that a little bit?
Thank you.
We live in an age where you don't have to turn on the news for long to see that there
are huge differences in opinion about immigration into the UK today, how it's happening, what
the results are, big debates about who we are as a country, what our identity should
be, whether it should be rooted in some sort of British indigenous culture, whatever quite
that might be, or whether multiculturality is who we are as Britain or who we should
be or want to be.
And I think pastors could easily get very wrapped up in such debates and it wouldn't
be necessarily wrong to do so or at least to be engaged with them because certainly
those in our pews are.
But I think one thing I'd want to encourage and appeal to is to recognise, as we were
saying earlier, Eric, that to see what God is doing in this, not to purely see it as
a political issue, although it is that, or simply an issue that is happening, a response
to things like climate change and war and to recognise that Christians can and should
be as bitter-boiled as immigrants move into this country.
They are all good things.
But rather to ask slightly deeper questions than that and say, is this a great work that
God is doing in the world today to achieve his purposes?
What might he be doing by bringing, for example, the recent large increases in Hong Kong believers
coming into the UK, many of our churches, particularly in our towns and cities, you
will enter and now find brothers and sisters who were in Hong Kong five years ago who have
now moved to the UK.
One friend of mine says that British churches have been praying for revivals for many generations.
It's just that they didn't, it's come, but they just haven't recognised it because it's
from outside.
And so once that 14% of Londoners are black, but some might say that even 60%, some estimate
that up to 60% of churchgoers in London are black.
The rise in Chinese Christians in our churches recently.
And so the Lord seems to be doing something quite powerful and profound, perhaps even
in terms of renewal, refreshing, maybe even revival in certainly London Christianity,
but other large towns and cities across the UK too.
And so I would ask the pastors to think it through theologically and missiologically.
Look around the communities that you are part of, whereas in the past, fulfilling the Lord's
command to make disciples of all nations almost always involved travel, intentional movement.
Now it still does.
There are plenty of people around the world who will not hear of the Lord Jesus if it
does not involve Christians moving and crossing geographical territorial boundaries.
But at the same time, more and more, the nations are of course coming to London and to the
UK.
And so what an opportunity that is towards the evangelisation of the world, that fulfilment
to the great commission, if we were to use such language, that the Lord is putting on
our own doorsteps.
And so as pastors think about mission and missions in the world today, it's not just
that going and sending, though that remains absolutely crucial.
I'm convinced of it, but also asking what the opportunities are that the Lord is providing
in our own settings as well.
That's a fascinating thought that God has been answering our prayers, but in an unexpected
form.
So Chris, tell us about some especially striking experiences you had during the Congress.
There are so many, Eric.
I think two evenings jump out for me.
One was an evening where we had a particular focus on the persecuted church worldwide.
That was a remarkable event.
One thing that took place was that they invited one believer from each of the 50 most persecuted
countries in the world today to take the stage with a sign with their country on it.
And just to say a quick prayer, even just Lord have mercy for that country, one every
30 seconds, which when you have 50, that took quite a while.
And they just come up one after the other.
And that came after a session where we've been hearing some of the most remarkable testimonies
from Christians who lived and ministered and evangelized and disciples in the context of
persecution, their courage, perseverance, and endurance in that we heard from Christians
who or a Christian brother who after the last of those and Congress in 2010, came back to
his country and had been in prisons for five years following.
And made a sort of joke about how he hopes that doesn't happen this time.
Just sort of speaking lightly about something so weighty and crushing and impactful was
very striking on the rest of us who live in context of such comfort and ease and freedom.
So I think to see believers from all these countries to pray for their countries, I think
it's over 300 million brothers and sisters live in context of persecution.
Well, I think that was really moving and striking.
And actually the message that came across that Eric for many was not so much pity us,
pity us, but rather pray for us and also learn from us.
And remarkably, we have the privilege of being in a persecuted context with all the joys
of communion and closeness with the Lord that that persecution brings.
And of course, being in the UK where there's so much freedom to practice our faith and
the kind of complacency that that can sometimes breed as a result of that.
To hear persecuted believers say, don't pity us, but learn from us and even rejoice with
us, felt very Acts five where the apostles leave having been whipped for their beliefs,
to leave rejoicing that they were considered worthy for suffering disgrace for the name
of Jesus.
I saw that there in Lausanne, that was extraordinary.
And just very briefly, Eric, one of the second highlight for me was one evening when the
Korean church in Korea and were able to present the history of Christianity in their country
and both the joys of that with regards to remarkable church growth and missionary sending
growth.
Korea is now the second largest missionary sending country in the world after the US,
which is a mark of business.
So to experience the joys of Korea and Christianity, but also to suffer, to hear about their sufferings
through the Korean war in the world war two, and then the Korean war in the forties and
fifties and then obviously the ongoing sufferings of having a people divided in terms of North
Korea and South Korea.
But also they were very open and honest to a mark be so in outlining what they perceive
to be their own failures in their churches today, denominational competitiveness, corruption,
a lack of integrity amongst some leaders and really asking for prayer from their global
brothers and sisters for those issues and to stand up in front of the world, so to speak,
and really be open about your own failures and shortcomings in a context of such church
growth recently, I thought was a real challenge to be self-aware, humble and prayerful in
these matters.
So that was really striking.
Wow.
What an amazing opportunity for representatives from the global church to pray for the global
church that must have been really unforgettable.
And you know, you're there in a hall around tables, seeing people from every continent
on each table pretty much just praying for the church in Korea or some of these persecuted
countries that we spoke of a moment ago.
There's something so beautifully global about that.
And of course, what it reflects is the global universal nature of our creator and redeeming
God and that he is not a local God.
Christianity is not a faith restricted to one particular culture or language or tribe
or people or continent or race, even though some might try and claim that or even God
forbid behave in that way.
Obviously we follow a God of the whole world.
And I think that has always been true, of course, but I think to see it embodied so
tangibly visibly at Congress like Lausanne was profoundly encouraging to me personally.
And actually, many of us made the sort of connection with Revelation seven, where of
course we see this great heavenly vision of those from every tribe, tongue, nation, people
worshipping the lamb around the throne of God in the new creation.
And just something, there was something, just a little glimpse, a little taste of that at
this Lausanne Congress in a way that I don't think I've experienced quite so powerfully
before and in that sense for all the mass work and cost and effort that goes into a
Congress like this that is just unimaginably massive in terms of logistics and administration,
actually to encourage those of us who were there and hopefully through podcasts like
this or many of us to encourage us to see how God is at work across the whole world,
I think is really valuable.
I was going to ask you what encouragements you see for people who are listening to this
podcast, but I think you just answered that.
That would certainly be the main encouragement I would take away.
I think as well, Lausanne works really hard to make sure that there are younger leaders
there participating in these Congresses.
And so there was a lot of what we might call Gen Z, those who are sort of digital natives,
those who were born and grew up in this digital age in the 21st century, younger people.
Many spoke from the fronts, they were throughout the hall as well.
And I think to recognise that as much as some countries including the UK at times have quite
an ageing church and that can be quite visible at times.
And certainly when it comes to some of our mission agencies and the prayer meetings that
we have, they can sometimes look quite aged actually to see so many young people gathering
together with all the decades ahead, God willing, that they have of ministry and mission to
see their love for the Lord, their energy, the way they're thinking digitally and employing
those resources in their outreach and to see their excitement for what the Lord is doing,
I think was thrilling as well.
Wonderful.
So, Chris, tell us how this particular Lausanne Congress has made you excited for the future.
There was a real focus on the year 2050.
There was a real sense of looking for the next quarter century, what are the gaps that
are still present in our world evangelisation and how can we collaborate to try and narrow
those gaps.
We had already talked about migration and how that is a gap in our kind of thinking
about world mission that we're working to fill, but there were other working groups
that were looking at things like evangelism and digital tools, looking at youth ministries,
looking at Islam, looking at urbanisation, looking at unreached people groups and so
on.
I think the developing really good collaborative networks of Christians from different continents
to work together to fill these global gaps in mission as we work towards 2050, recognising
that the Lord has done extraordinary work and continues to do so through his church
in recent decades, but recognising that this is no time for complacency, that there are
huge challenges still to come.
I think one encouragement that I will really take away is, I'm going to use a theological
word here but I'll explain it, the polycentric nature of Christianity today.
What I mean by that is polycentric meaning there is multiple centres of Christianity.
Christianity is not founded and located into the one place that it must spread from, but
actually it is polycentric.
It is from everywhere to everywhere.
I think seeing and hearing about African churches sending missionaries, the Korean church, countries
from all around the world not just receiving missionaries, but actually sending in mission
and recognising that that kind of multi-directional, as I say, polycentric nature of mission today,
I think that is the future of mission.
I think that is where we are going to see the acceleration of gospel growth, of kingdom
growth around the world as mission doesn't just become a kind of West to the West, so
to speak, but actually becomes something from everywhere to everywhere and all the inherent,
immense, almost infinite possibility and potential that comes with that.
As we look towards 2050, I think let's all be looking out for that.
Let's be praying for that.
Let's be recognising that where we see it, including in our own countries where we have
missionaries from other countries arriving to help us in this context.
Let's be ready to receive that as well.
I think that is an exciting work that the Lord is doing.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much, Chris.
Thank you for sharing with us and thank you to everyone who watched and listened.
God bless.