Since then, he has been driving the global network forward towards the next major congress, Lausanne III: Cape Town 2010, which will bring together 4,000 Christians in the South African city to assess the challenges and opportunities in respect of world evangelisation.
Most recently, Christians in mission-related work gathered from around the world for the Lausanne Bi-Annual International Leadership Meeting in Budapest, Hungary, last week to pray, plan and work together for Lausanne III.
Rev Birdsall took time out from the conference to speak with Christian Today about Lausanne III and the shape of world mission today.
CT: Lausanne I was defined by the Lausanne Covenant. Lausanne II gave birth to the Manila Manifesto. What can we expect from Lausanne III?
DB: I think at Lausanne III we will be able to look at critiquing the church as thoroughly as we analyse the world. Chris Wright [head of the Langham Partnership] reminded us that the Reformation without mission was deficient but mission without a reformation of the church can be equally dangerous. So, I think the fact that there are so many things in the church that really do obstruct the advance of the Gospel is one area that we have to work on very closely.
I think another major area has to do with involving the laity. If Lausanne I helped us to really think about the nature of holistic ministry and unreached people and Lausanne II brought Pentecostals and evangelicals together, it may be that Lausanne III will release the enormous human resource for world evangelisation in the laity.
Much of evangelisation is done in adverse and hostile situations and evangelisation, which is really 'good newsing', is often confused with proselytising. Proselytising almost always involves coercive behaviour and a lack of ethics. I think we have to really take a look at that because I think many people in the world would like to say 'let the Christians be Christians, let the Hindus be Hindus, but let's not interfere with one another'. So, I think that we really have to make the case for the legitimacy of evangelising and it has to come in the context of both religious freedom and human rights. I think that is a very important issue.
And then related to that is the uniqueness of Christ. In a pluralistic world we have to be able to reaffirm that and then have to be able to share it in a way that really is compelling. But we also know that the cross is an offence so we have to do it courageously - even when people will stone us. There have to be models of courage.
