His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’—Matt 25:21
Three years ago, when I started this exciting journey of leading the Lausanne Movement, a single word was on my heart as I prayed. Stewardship. I wanted to be a faithful steward of this calling from the Lord and a faithful steward of the legacy of the Lord’s work in and through the Lausanne Movement.
In pursuit of such faithful stewardship, I committed the first two years to listen to the voices of the Movement. This process included one-on-one interviews with more than 50 core present and past leaders; hours of input from Board members, Working Groups, regional and network leaders; and a survey that engaged more than 800 global leaders from the broader Movement.
The first fruits of this time of listening led to Lausanne’s four-fold vision statement and our mission statement ‘connecting influencers and ideas for global mission’.
We’ve continued the listening process in the year since our 40th anniversary celebration with an internal review of the Movement, to explore our strengths and weaknesses and to determine which structures need to be in place for Lausanne to best fulfill our ministry.
We are making changes based on three themes that emerged from the review process:
1) The need for closer collaboration within the Movement. For a Movement whose focus is on connections, we found that we also needed better internal communication and collaboration.This led us to identify and more closely connect the three core dimensions of the Movement: regions, ideas, and generations.
These include the work in our 12 geographical regions, 35 global issue networks, and the Younger Leaders Generation initiative. As a result, these three areas are becoming more globally interactive than before. They are also being led by a more global leadership than ever before, with a multi-fold increase in Majority World leadership in the past year.
2) The need for more effective stewardship of Lausanne content. We recently formed a ‘content team’ to develop strategies appropriate to communicate decades of rich Lausanne content in today’s digital and social media age.
The content team is focusing on a ‘book to byte’ strategy, with content that may include a substantial book in addition to shorter articles, blog posts, video clips, and dozens of 140-character tweets for a broader and deeper reach.
3) The need for clarity and connections of Lausanne leadership roles and titles. We are making critical changes to several leadership titles for closer alignment with our mission statement and to allow for stronger collaboration.To lead Lausanne’s three core dimensions of regions, ideas, and generations, we will have three Global Associate Directors—one for each dimension.
The 12 ‘International Deputy Directors’ are now ‘Regional Directors’. And ‘Senior Associates’ will now be known as ‘Lausanne Catalysts’ as they seek to help catalyze our global issue networks in their areas of expertise and passion.
By undergirding our newly articulated mission and vision with clearer structures and definitions, we are able to continue moving forward with greater unity, clarity, and momentum. Please pray with us that we may be found faithful stewards of all the Lord has entrusted to us.