로잔운동에 나타나는 지역사회개발선교에 대한 고찰―로잔 문서를 중심으로

Abstract

One of the most noteworthy characteristics of the first Lausanne Congress was its emphasis on social responsibility which was neglected until then among the evangelical groups. However, there was also a strong sense of resistance among the groups who put more emphasis on evangelism than on social responsibility. The conflict and strain between the two groups of evangelicals continued throughout next three decades. However, from the 2004 Pataya Forum, the Lausanne movement started to move forward in the direction of holistic mission, which put equal emphasis on evangelism and social responsibility rather than putting more emphasis on the former. Finally, the third Lausanne Congress held in Cape Town, South Africa, seemed to take the holistic mission as its main strategy instead of focusing on evangelism as the imminant task of the Church. Throughout the Lausanne movement, there were lots of discussions on holistic mission as well as many specific practices of mission related to community development. The community development differentiates from the relief ministry in that the former tries to intensify the capacity of the constituents of a specific community rather than try to overcome the damages caused by unexpected disasters such as floods, storms or typoons, as in the case of relief ministry. In community development, the local church situated in the community takes a very important role of initiating and exerting the influence in the community development efforts. This paper reflects on the specific forms of community development efforts centering on the Lausanne movements, and tries to accept and develop the community development as a mission strategy for today’s world. First, it discusses holistic mission, and then tries to concretely describe the specific features of community development. One of the most common forms of the holistic mission is the Christian community development. It differs from ministry focusing on relief as well as advocacy. Even though the issue group focusing on holistic mission at the Pataya forum defined and ennumerated the diverse forms of the holistic mission, the efforts for relief, development and advocacy by mission agencies and Christian development NGOs had been spreading continuously after the 2nd World War. The Advance Papers presented to the third Lausanne Congress show many specific forms of community development performed by mission agencies and Christian development NGOs. The Christian community development begins under the context of local situations and tries to consolidate the capacity of the people of the community by solving the problems related to a specific community. At first the effort for the total health of a specific village took remedy and treatment of the village people as their main focus. But as time went by, they changed the focus of their approach from remedy to prevention. They found that if they transfered their input of resources and energies on preventing the diseases, they can get more fruitful results out of their efforts. The Christian agency took the strategy of investing their resource first on community development effort, secondly on preventing the diseases and thirdly on treatment of the diseases. Through such processes of trial and error, nowadays Christian agencies are developing their own methods of being involved in a specific community. The contemporary strategies of community development tend to be very context-specific, focus on prevention than treatment, and take the holistic approaches of displaying the Gospel in deeds as well as in words. Today, in the context of building diverse forms of partnerships targeting to fulfil the MDGs on the local level, the local churches in majarity world can contribute much to bring the Kingdom to their community by forming partnerships with related agencies or NGOs. Believers of the Korean Church are required to build partnerships with the local churches or local NGOs in the mission fields and become more active in exerting leadership for the Kingdom of God. If they can coordinate with Christian development NGOs or mission agencies specialized in the area of community development, they can get more productive results through their participation. They need to be careful to understand what is already going on in the community before they participate in it. They need to be reminded that as outsiders their roles are not those of implementers but of catalysts for developing the community. When the churches try to build good relationships with the people in the community, they might get a chance to deliver the Gospel through the contact point which was established by participating in the community development efforts.