Eighth Annual Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism Conference
By Tuvya Zaretsky
The Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism (LCJE) met 19-24 August 2007 for its eighth international conference by Lake Balaton, Hungary. The worldwide network brought together over 160 participants from eighteen countries, representing sixteen agencies and congregations involved in Jewish evangelism. The LCJE began in 1980 and is among the longest standing specialized people group networks in the Lausanne Movement.
The theme of this quadrennial conference was “Jewish Evangelism—Telling the Story.” The week of meetings provided a platform for the unique network of organizations and individuals to gather information, coordinate strategies, consider trends and stimulate theological thinking and missiological research in the cause of advancing Jewish evangelism.
Notable at the meeting was the participation of Doug Birdsall, executive chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE), the sponsoring body of the 1980 Pattaya Consultation on World Evangelization, from which LCJE was launched. Birdsall affirmed a special place for Jewish evangelism on the Church’s agenda: “The story of Jesus Christ is a message to be shared with the whole world, but especially with the Jewish people, as it is the fullest expression of God's love relationship with his people.”
His statement was particularly fitting in light of the location and timing of this conference. Eighty years earlier, the International Missionary Council launched a similar network for Jewish evangelism that met in Budapest, Hungary, with a similar mandate. The 1927 conferees described a unique opportunity to share the gospel in the Europe of their day.
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