To be clear, the statement does occasionally advert to key terms and concepts shaped by this discussion, but it is not finally about this discussion, at least not in any direct sense. Indeed, I would argue, it transcends it. This is most obvious in the fact that it does not address this debate directly; indeed, expressions such as “social justice” do not occur in the statement at all but are largely subsumed within theological categories such as “discipleship.” However, in focusing our attention on the theological commitments that undergird faithful discipleship and faithful disciple-making, the Statement reframes the discussion of what Christian mission in several ways that push the discussion beyond the debate beyond the earlier debate. I want to focus on two.
First, the statement reaches for language that relates evangelism and love for our neighbors (including the pursuit of justice in society) to one another not by assessing their value relative to one another but by assessing each in relation to a story that forms us as disciples. The discussion of integral or holistic mission within Lausanne has often centered a debate about which activity—evangelism or social justice—is most prone to be omitted from a marriage of two things that both sides agree must not be put asunder.
Leaving aside the question of whether either spouse in a marriage can be said to be indispensable without implying that the other is not, the Seoul Statement invites us to think first about the marriage, that is, the story that brings these two things into relationship with one another to one another. The question is not the relative value of one to another but the relation of both to the story. Because the Gospel is a story, we tell it. Because the Gospel is a formative story—a comprehensive rendering of reality that is received as a way of life—it shapes the lives of those who tell it and of those who hear it into the pattern of life embodied and taught by the crucified Lord.
We thus tell it with the aim of seeing it form the lives of those to whom we tell it; we can only tell it with that aim, if we ourselves have been formed in that way. The Gospel does its formative work as we hear it as God’s saving, transforming word spoken by and about the life-giving Word who through his Spirit moves those who hear it to repentance and faith. That transformation produces obedience to all of Christ’s commands—commands written in our hearts to form us as those who love God and love our neighbors.
Second, the statement attempts to integrate not simply the activities of those who engage in mission but to integrate the activities of mission with the agents and aims of mission. One of the working assumptions of the Theology Working Group from the very beginning was that this needed be considered afresh, prompted by the incessant reports from around the world of low levels of discipleship among evangelicals and high rates of moral failure among those charged with leading the church’s mission. It was for this reason that the Statement called for a deeper integration than the discussion of integral mission has typically engendered within Lausanne. The introduction to Section V puts it this way,
[The] dual emphases [of evangelism and social concern] have often been held together within the concept of “integral mission,” but integral mission has not always fully integrated the command of our Lord to be disciples and his commission to make disciples. As a result, despite our claim to be followers of our crucified Lord, we have often failed to live in keeping with the holy pattern of life he gave to us and to teach others to do the same.
This claim has caused consternation for some who, I believe, misread it as an indictment of integral mission in any and every form rather than as an indictment of the manifest failure of many evangelical leaders of mission to live as disciples and as a frank admission that many who ostensibly believe our proclamation do not live as disciples. Though this part of the statement speaks primarily about our failure to integrate discipleship into our personal lives and mission practice, the conceptualization of mission in terms of a dichotomy of mission activities—evangelization and social concern—has not always focused our attention on the need to live as disciples and make disciples.
The continued salience of this dichotomy within Lausanne is very much in evidence in much of the early reaction to the Seoul Statement. This makes it exceedingly difficult to credit the notion that “‘integral mission’ has always been concerned about holiness and moral integrity.” To be sure proponents of integral mission have often stressed the importance of holiness and moral integrity; so too have proponents of prioritism. But within Lausanne at least that is simply not what the debate about integral mission has been about. And our conception and practice of mission has been the poorer for it.
The integration contemplated in the Statement seeks to move beyond the old dichotomy in two key moves: 1) by integrating Christian social engagement and concern within the totality of what it means to live both individually and collectively as disciples in whom love for God and love for neighbor are undivided; and 2) by integrating this thick description of the discipleship of mission agents with a similarly thick description of the discipleship for which we aim through our proclamation of the saving action of God in Christ.
