“A church that is not faithful to the Gospel in all its dimensions inevitably becomes an instrument of the status quo.”
Fifty years ago, Latin American theologian Rev. C. René Padilla shared these words at the first Lausanne Congress, a global gathering that brought together Christian leaders from nearly 150 countries to address challenges and opportunities in evangelism. In his speech, Padilla made a compelling biblical case for why we can’t separate evangelism from a commitment to justice, explaining that the “church is called to be here and now what God intends the whole of society to be; in its prophetic ministry it lays open the evils that frustrate the purpose of God in society; in its evangelization it seeks to integrate men into that purpose of God whose full realization is to take place in the Kingdom to come. Consequently, wherever the church fails as a prophet it also fails as an evangelist.”
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