Outsider Perspective: A Kind of New Mission Model and a Clear Position on Ethical Issues

Evaluating the Seoul Statement as an Outsider to the Congress

How do I, as an outsider yet sympathetic observer of the Lausanne Movement, evaluate the Seoul Statement? I notice a number of important aspects in the area of mission theology and with respect to the practice of evangelisation. In this article I will summarise these aspects, make comments, and formulate some questions and critical remarks.

Double priority of Evangelism and Discipleship

To begin with, what is the importance of the Seoul Statement in the area of mission theology? Seoul marks the 50th anniversary of the missiological debate about the question of what ‘mission’ entails. It was sparked off by the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 that proposed a comprehensive definition of the mission of the Church by combining the proclamation and the demonstration of the Gospel.

“Seoul marks the 50th anniversary of the missiological debate about the question of what ‘mission’ entails.”

When we look at the Seoul Statement against this background, it is striking that it ignores well-known models like holistic mission, integral mission, missio dei, or the Five Marks of Mission, a model developed in the Anglican Church and widely adopted in Europe. It also bypasses the debate about the relationship between proclamation and social responsibility. Instead, it defines mission in terms of evangelism and discipleship. The authors emphasise that the Great Commission in Matthew 28 is not a mandate to just evangelise all nations, but to make disciples:

This involves two equally important priorities: the evangelistic task of baptising them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the pastoral task of teaching them to obey all that [Christ] had commanded (Preamble, italics are mine).

I suppose that by this insistence on a double priority of the Church, the authors wish to avoid a new priority debate that might dominate the reflection on mission and evangelism for maybe another 50 years to come.

The Statement goes on to develop these two tasks, showing all along that they are intrinsically linked to one another:

Those charged with the task of announcing God’s Good News to all peoples must themselves live as disciples and understand that the proper aim of our mission is the transformation of those who hear and believe the Good News to live as disciples who obey all that the Lord taught (V, 72).

This recalls what some mission theologians have put forward in recent years, namely that we need a more balanced missiology which we could summarise as reaching (through evangelism) and teaching (the new believers in their churches).(1)

I appreciate the way in which the Seoul Statement broadens the understanding of the mission mandate. This is an important step. By concentrating on discipleship, the priority debate of evangelisation and social responsibility is overcome through a new synthesis. In the words of the Statement:

We cannot make disciples without announcing the Good News and cannot be disciples without a deep engagement with a broken world… The pursuit of righteousness in our personal lives, our homes, our churches, and in the societies in which we live can no more be separated from the announcement of the Gospel than being a disciple can be separated from making disciples (V, 73).

Not ‘making’ but ‘teaching’

In this respect, I want to make a critical remark with respect to the expression ‘making disciples’, which translates the central ‘action’ in the Great Commission of Matthew 28: mathéteusaté. This is an imperative form of a verb derived from mathétes, ‘disciple’. It is difficult to translate in our modern languages so is often circumscribed as ‘make disciples’, as also in the Lausanne documents. ‘Disciple making’ is a standard expression in Evangelical mission literature. However, the verb ‘to make’ is absent from the text. A better translation might be to ‘teach’ or ‘instruct’ [someone] ‘as disciple’. Sometimes it is rendered by the verb ‘to disciple’ [someone], but that is not a current word outside Christian circles. At any rate, in Matthew 28, we are not called to ‘make’ or produce disciples, but to ‘teach’ all the peoples in all the world ‘as disciples’. Older Bible translations rendered the phrase as ‘teach’ all the nations.

In fact, when we call communicating the Good News ‘evangelisation’, we should realise that this is not something that precedes teaching. Rather, evangelisation is already a form of teaching, namely teaching other people about Jesus and about the content of the Gospel, its pertinence, its invitation. Listening to the Gospel, i.e., to the explanation of who Jesus is and what He has done to bring salvation, is already a beginning moment of discipleship. When, hopefully, someone’s heart opens up, a process begins that can lead them to becoming a follower of Jesus Christ and a permanent learner in their life-school of discipleship.

A kind of new mission model – presence, proclamation, and practice

In the passages of the Seoul Statement which describe the Gospel and the double priority of evangelisation and discipleship, something like a new mission model emerges. With a reference to Matthew 28, the Statement affirms:

The church is called to declare and display Christ together. The Great Commission summons all believers everywhere to participate in our Lord’s will to make disciples of all peoples, by baptising those who believe in the Gospel message and teaching them true obedience to Jesus Christ. In the power of his Word and Spirit, God sends us out into the world as a holy people to bear witness to the Gospel before a watching world. We do this through our Christ-filled presence, our Christ-centred proclamation, and our Christlike practice (II, 43).

This squares with the theme of the congress, ‘let the Church declare and display Christ together’. Participants of the congress tell me that this duality of declare-display played an important role in the programme, and that three large tarpaulins were put up with parallel exhibitions under the themes ‘declare’, ‘display’ and ‘together’. When we turn to the Seoul Statement however, this terminology of declare and display does not play an important role. Instead, the authors emphasise the triad of presence, proclamation and practice – in that order. This 3 P model shows how evangelisation and discipleship work together for communicating the Gospel.

“The authors emphasise the triad of presence, proclamation and practice, showing how evangelisation and discipleship work together for communicating the Gospel.”

Presence refers to being the ‘salt of the earth’ that must maintain its integrity and so never lose its potency. If refers to the presence and the lifestyle of individual Christians and of church communities in the various spheres of society – families, neighbourhoods, schools, the workplace, the public square, politics. “God uses our practical discipleship in these areas to make known his nearness to a world long alienated from him” (III, 44).

Proclamation is “essential” to the witness of the Church. “The church displays God’s saving power of the Gospel and sends heralds to declare his Gospel where Christ is not known” (III, 45).

Practice includes what previous Lausanne documents called ‘social responsibility’ or ‘the demonstration of the Gospel’ (III, 46).

Discipleship and local church connection

The Seoul Statement goes on at length to describe a third foundational element of carrying out the Great Commission besides evangelisation and discipleship, namely active involvement in a local church. I am not sure under which P this should be put, but the Statement devotes a whole section to the Church (section III). Living as a disciple of Jesus and ‘making disciples’ (the term used in the text) are both inseparable from a local church community and its regular worship services.

The topic is taken up again in Section V on discipleship. Here we read that local churches “play a vital role in our formation as disciples” (V, 75). Moreover…

They play a vital role in providing accountability and modelling healthy patterns of leadership and governance for ministry leaders, missionaries, and ministry partners… Therefore, we call on ministry leaders and missionaries to remain in vital fellowship with and accountability to local churches (V, 76).

“I think the emphasis on the life of local churches, as an integral element of the mission mandate of evangelisation and discipleship, is extremely important. ”

I think that the emphasis on the life of local churches, as an integral element of the mission mandate of evangelisation and discipleship, is extremely important. At least in the European context with which I am familiar, there is a tendency to disconnect ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’. Many people experience or seek ‘spirituality’ outside organised and institutional church life. Moreover, missionary and other para-church organisations are easily becoming a parallel circuit for their workers, operating outside the orbit of local churches and without accountability to them.

Clear stance on sexuality, gender, marriage, and family

A striking aspect of the Seoul Statement is that it pays so much attention to the practice of our faith, and specifically the moral norms and values to which we adhere as disciples of Jesus Christ. Surprisingly, 30% of the document is devoted to ethical issues in the area of sexuality, gender, marriage, and family. What is the link with the communication of the Gospel?

Today, the world is absorbed with the question, “What does it mean to be human?” This makes the Christian doctrine of the human person critically important. How we answer this question has profound implications for our witness in the world and our life in the church. It goes to the very heart of the great upheavals in the world with regard to issues such as identity, human sexuality, and the implications of advancing technologies (IV, introduction).

And so, the section opens by recalling Biblical anthropology: (1) Human beings are uniquely created in the image of God. (2) Human sin affects the degree to which human beings can fully reflect the image of God and corrupts our human nature and capacities as well as our relationships with others. (3) The image of God in us is restored in Jesus Christ:

‘As the preeminent and perfect image of God, he is the human ideal to which every believer is being transformed by the Holy Spirit’ (IV, 51).

The Statement continues with an extensive discussion of sexuality, identity and gender, marriage and singleness, same-sex relations, and same-sex marriage. Western societies are increasingly abandoning the traditional norms and values that are rooted in Christian morals and Biblical anthropology, as they have been taught for centuries by the church. The new morality is cultural liberalism, with its so-called progressive values of gender diversity, individual desire as the highest ethical norm, and in these areas, inclusiveness and tolerance.

This morality is secularised and post-Christian, yet it is gaining ground in churches, and even making inroads in the Protestant Evangelical world, at least in Western societies. As for Evangelicals in Europe, we can observe a contrast between north-western Europe, where a minority of churches accept homosexuality and transgenderism, and the rest of the continent where churches almost unanimously reject these practices as going against the teaching of the Bible and therefore incompatible with discipleship. That is, of course, also the position of Evangelical churches and theologians in the Global South and East.

It is no doubt due to the weight of the non-Western voices in global Evangelicalism that the Seoul Statement takes such a clear and unambiguous position on human sexuality. It affirms what all the streams of Christianity were agreed upon until a generation ago, and what we now call a ‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ view – conservative in the sense of conserving, maintaining what was adhered to in the past. In this respect I cannot do better than quote the two key paragraphs. Referring to the Biblical doctrine of creation, the Statement affirms that:

Humans are created as sexual beings with clearly identifiable physical characteristics as male and female and relational characteristics as man and woman. The “sex” of an individual refers to the biological characteristics that distinguish male from female, whereas “gender” refers to the psychological, social, and cultural associations with being male or female. (…)

We lament any distortion of sexuality. We reject the notion that individuals may determine their gender without regard to our createdness. Although biological sex and gender may be distinguished, they are inseparable. Maleness and femaleness are an inherent fact of human createdness—a fact to which cultures give expression in distinguishing between men and women. We also reject the notion of gender fluidity (the claim to fluctuating gender identity or gender expression, depending on situation and experience) (IV, 55-56).

The Statement goes on to affirm that marriage is ‘the exclusive bond of one man and one woman’, and as such ‘the only legitimate context for sexual intercourse’. It ‘laments’ that some churches ‘define same-sex partnerships as biblically valid marriages’ and ‘grieves’ that they ‘have acquiesced to the demands of culture and consecrate such relationships as marriages’ (IV, 59-61). It further deplores that the pursuit of sexual freedom has ‘downplayed the procreational aspect of marital sex, which has often led to the devaluing of children and the dramatic increase in abortions’ (IV, 63).

The authors pay special attention to singleness, saying single persons ‘are fully able to fulfil the Creator’s will and bear witness to Jesus Christ’. They call local churches to support both singles and married couples through teaching, mentoring, and networks of mutual encouragement and practical support. Together, they witness to the power of the Gospel by modelling the biblical values of deep friendships, love, and faithfulness in marriage, the honouring of parents, and the dedicated nurture of children (IV, 65-66).

After a short exegesis of the four passages explicitly condemning homosexual practice, the Statement comes to the ‘inescapable conclusion that God considers such acts as a violation of his intention for sex…, and therefore sinful’ (IV, 68).

The authors reaffirm the classical Evangelical adage: ‘God loves the sinner but rejects the sin’. Following that principle, they call for pastoral care of believers who experience same-sex attraction. Churches should accept them as brothers and sisters while showing them the way of sexual abstinence and singleness. There is not a word about ‘healing’ or ‘changing into heterosexuals’ and ‘getting married’ (with someone of the opposite sex). Instead, there is a call to “repent from lack of love in the Christian communities towards believers who face challenges because of their sexual attraction” (IV, 69).

Finally, the authors warn against the tendency to single out homosexual practice among other forms of trespassing Biblical norms, when they write that ‘the biblical insistence to resist temptation and maintain sexual holiness, in both desire and behaviour, applies equally to heterosexually attracted individuals’ (IV, 69-70).

The Statement is a voice to be listened to, especially in the Western world. One might be surprised that a declaration on evangelisation deals with such questions of conduct, because this is not at all customary. However, it is quite logical given the whole thrust of the Seoul Statement that evangelisation and discipleship belong together, as we are called to mission and holiness. The sexual conduct of believers is clearly relevant to their integrity as witnesses of Jesus Christ in words and deeds.

“While many historical mainline churches and also some Evangelicals in Europe will certainly have a problem with the Seoul Statement over these questions, I am persuaded that this voice needs to be heard in Europe”

While many historical mainline churches and also some Evangelicals in Europe will certainly have a problem with the Seoul Statement over these questions, I am persuaded that this voice needs to be heard in Europe. This is especially true in countries where Evangelical pastors have become reluctant to give clear guidance to believers in their teaching and preaching, because of a ‘pastoral’ concern for Christians who have adopted a liberal position in these issues, and/or out of fear for the legal consequences, that one might be accused of discrimination and condemned by a court of law.

Nationalism and technology

The Seoul Statement deals with two other ethical issues, but to a far lesser extent. To begin with, conflicts between peoples and nationalism. This section is a bit confusing. The thrust seems to be that Christians should be known as people of peace, and that they should contribute to reconciliation between peoples in conflict – ‘whether as frontline peacemakers between conflicting parties or through negotiation, influence, and intercession in the background of the conflict’ (VI, 78).

But then, the focus shifts to the opposite phenomenon that Christians often ‘fail to condemn and restrain violence by remaining silent, by promoting nationalism, or by unjustly supporting conflicts through deficient theological justification’. The list of examples includes the history and legacy of racism and black slavery; the holocaust against the Jews; apartheid; ‘ethnic cleansing’; inter-Christian sectarian violence; decimation of indigenous populations; political and ethnic violence; Palestinian suffering; caste oppression and tribal genocide (VI, 80-82).

Nationalism – lack of clarity

Particular attention is given to nationalism which is defined as ‘the belief that every state should have a single, national culture and no other’, and ethnonationalism, ‘the belief that every ethnic group should have its own state’ (VI, 85). The authors seem to condemn nationalism categorically, but their definitions are incomplete and defective. There are different forms of nationalism, ranging from a patriotic love for one’s country to a militant and aggressive ideology that sets up one nation against others. How should Evangelicals relate to the nation or nation-state of which they are part? The Seoul Statement does not clarify this. It also leaves aside the question of how the universality of the Church and the Gospel relates to our nationhood and the national identity of the disciples of Jesus Christ. Granted, there is in the Evangelical world a dearth of Biblical teaching on this subject and this Statement is no exception to that. In this respect I would like to refer the readers to my article and the articles of others in the preceding issue of Vista, that dealt with this very issue in the context of Europe.(2)

Technology – a positive critical stance

The last issue is technology. Several modern innovations lend themselves to the merging of humans with technology or to the creation of immersive environments in which humans may become subjected to technology’s domination. These potentialities arise from areas such as genetic engineering, cloning, biotechnology, mind-uploading, digital media, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. These technologies raise moral and ethical concerns in terms of their impact on society and on the planet.

This section of the Statement begins with a recap of the doctrines of creation and of man created in the image of God, and then focusses on the mandate of stewardship of creation, including the stewardship of these technological advancements.

Biblical wisdom is vital to enable the church to be discerning and definitive about the moral and ethical implications of emerging technologies, even as it embraces and stewards the fruit of God-given human creativity and innovation, including in ways that accelerate evangelism and discipleship (VII, introduction).

As for me, I would like to endorse this positive-critical position. Interestingly, the Seoul Statement also deals with the way in which new technologies affect the worship services of the churches and the communication of the Gospel. In the first case, the authors call for caution, but in the second case they ‘applaud the Church’s evangelistic drive that has led to increasing technological adaptation and unprecedented opportunities for sharing the Gospel’ (VI, 96-97).

Recommendation

“To conclude this evaluation, I recommend the Seoul Statement to a wide readership; in academia, in mission circles, and in churches”

To conclude this evaluation, I recommend the Seoul Statement to a wide readership; in academia, in mission circles, and in churches. It presents in a concise way an approach to mission that has the potential to bring together theologians and practitioners with different foci: evangelisation, integral mission, church planting, discipleship formation, etc. It is profitable for practitioners and educators alike.

Evert Van de Poll
Vista Co-editor

Endnotes

Cf. the title of the book of M. David Sills on the mission mandate of the Church: Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience (Chicago, Moody Publishers, 2010).
Vista 45, Nationalism in Europe, https://vistajournal.online/news-and-events/vista-45-nationalism-in-europe Accessed 13/12/24

Outsider Perspective: A Kind of New Mission Model and a Clear Position on Ethical Issues

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