Seoul Shortcoming

The State of the Great Commission Report is a big project produced by 150 researchers on behalf of the Lausanne Movement and in readiness for the Fourth Congress that has just taken place. I read it with much interest when it came out, and learned a lot. The Report addresses ten key questions, such as, What is community? What is fair and just? What is sustainable? and What does it mean to be human? The answers to these questions form the shape of the world in which we live and in which we seek to fulfil God's purpose for our lives. It is well worth a careful read.

Then in August, various regional reports were also published, in which those same questions were addressed in Europe, North America, Francophone Africa, etc. I have not read all of these yet, but I have read the reports on South Asia (which oddly includes Iran and Afghanistan), South East Asia, and East Asia.

I am sorry to say, I found the reports on South Asia and South East Asia seriously underwhelming. The report on South Asia looks at the region through the eyes of the minority Christian community. Although opportunities as well as challenges are presented, the huge majority communities in the countries of South Asia are like elephants in the room. How is it that the vast Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist blocs that form the majority communities of South Asia are hardly mentioned, except in their role as the purveyors of persecution? A once-in-a-generation opportunity has been missed.

Which brings me to the 'Great Commission Gaps' of the State of the Great Commission Report. These 25 gaps are challenges and opportunities which the global church needs to address in order to fulfil the great commission. The gaps identified are, for example, discipleship in a digital age, sexuality and gender, AI and transhumanism, and people on the move. At the Congress we each focussed on one of those gaps during the afternoon collaborative sessions.

There was a collaborative action group on Islam, but not on Hinduism or Buddhism. So I chose to join the one on Least-Reached Peoples. In the room, I joined a table to focus on 'World Religions' - I don't know what the other tables were focussing on. It was a tough time, seeking to discuss the given questions focussing on our topic of concern. There was plenty to discuss, but we finished the week with a sense that we had accomplished little. Perhaps our achievement of the week was, once again, to identify that this is a huge area that needs a lot more work. Who will do that? How will we do that?

One afternoon, unrelated to the collaborative action sessions, we did have a one-off breakout group to discuss Hinduism. There were 21 of us in the room: as far as I can remember, 15 from India and six Westerners. No Nepalis. No Sri Lankans. I found this disconcerting and discouraging, so I asked a few of the Indian and Nepali delegates why they did not attend what was surely, for them, the single most important contextual topic of the week? One answered that he has already done seminars on Hinduism. Another that their biggest problem is secularism rather than Hinduism. With respect, I think there is a big problem here. Of course, secularism is a problem in Asia as well as the West. But the Hindu and Buddhist worlds adapt and accommodate secular forces in their own way. And unless we have a deep understanding of Hindu and Buddhist civilisations we will never get to grips with that. So the one-off session was also a missed opportunity.

There has never been a significant turning to Christ of Hindus. I know that people report all sorts of movements. Some of those may be significant. But, as far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no movement to Christ among self-consciously religious Hindus. And I think that situation will obtain as long as we who are involved in the Hindu world, South Asians as well as outsiders, refuse to pay attention to the longings of the Hindu peoples in their history, literature, music, art, dance, festivals, life-cycle rituals, etc. If we are content with only a superficial knowledge and refuse to go deeper, we are depriving our Hindu friends of respectful, loving, truth-filled gospel dialogue. 

The same is true of the Buddhist world.

So the biggest shortcoming of Seoul, I think, was not having Gaps on Hinduism and Buddhism. Least-Reached Peoples was a more general way to accommodate those concerns. And perhaps there would have been too few with any interest in those mega-blocs to justify giving them a specific Collaborative Action Session. But if Lausanne doesn't do it, who will?