The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the International Congress on World Evangelization (ICOWE) held July 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland. To mark the anniversary, the Billy Graham Center Archives (Wheaton, IL, USA) has placed a number of items on its web site - including photos, audio files and notes from the 1974 Congress and subsequent meetings.

It was thirty years ago that the ICOWE, better known as the Lausanne Congress, brought Christian leaders from around the world to discuss and plan worldwide efforts to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Representatives came mostly but not exclusively from the Protestant Evangelical tradition.

One outcome of the the Congress was the Lausanne Covenant, a statement of Christian belief and lifestyle that became a touchstone for Evangelicals and has been adopted by many groups as their statement of faith. Another result, slightly later, was the formation of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE). The Committee grew out of a continuation committee that had surveyed the attendees of the the congress to discover if a continuing organization was desired and if so, what it should do. The continuation committee met in Mexico City in January 1975 and formed the LCWE. more >>

In recent developments, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism is making plans to hold an international conference in Thailand in September 2004. The goal of the conference is to discuss current issues confronting evangelism in the world.

According to the brochure issued by the Lausanne Committee, the forum will discuss 24 issues. Each of the 24 issues discussed solutions for issues discussed will be divided into three categories of discussion: Whole World, Whole Church, and Whole Gospel.

The Whole World mainly confronts the current geopolitical and cultural issues in the world. As evangelism often requires outreach in different places in the world, the panel responsible for discussing this particular seeks to talk about global issues that might confront world missions and solutions or ways to deal with them. Such issues include globalization and the rise in persecution of Christians in the world today. more >>