The Algiers Covenant

The Lausanne Covenant starts out with the purpose of God, “who governs all things according to the purpose of his will” (page 1). It next states their position on the authority and power of the Bible, “We affirm the divine inspirations, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice” (page 2). Next is the uniqueness and universality of Christ, “We affirm that there is only one Savior and only one gospel” (page 2). Next they touch on the nature of evangelism, “To evangelize is to spread the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures,
He says the purposes in the mission are “not necessarily bad, they’re not necessarily unbiblical, but they’re deficient” (page 233). He goes on to say “that what they really needed was a statement of faith. What they got was a king of statement of evangelical purpose” (page 234). He states “Lausanne has had some difficulty maintaining its identity and clarifying its purpose... that grows out of the fact that some of the basic issues that occasioned Lausanne were not answered at Lausanne” (page 234). He then states that “I don’t think the Lausanne Continuation Committee in Lausanne today can engender anything like the same kind of enthusiasm that Lausanne ’74 evidenced. And I think it certainly didn’t enhance involvement for world evangelization by the year 2000 movement. If anything it abetted some of the weaknesses of that and probably even contributed to its relative demise as time moves on…. The positive is, whether we agree or don’t agree or whatever, it has kept evangelicals talking, and it has kept evangelicals thinking in terms of places where we might agree and work together in evangelical ecumenicity, and so on” (page