Doug Birdsall, executive chairman, said the congress is historic in many respects. "We have men and women from around the world who represent the majority of the church. People hear the good news from friends, neighbors, and teachers and recognize that giftedness. We have 150 global executives meeting at a leadership forum, another 150 government officials, with thousands more watching around the world. It is an enriching time strategically. We want to see the cross lifted high in the boardrooms, and academic institutions around the world."

The congress is being linked through 700 global link sites in 97 countries reaching 100,000 people in eight languages. The Book of Ephesians is the guiding Biblical document uniting this congress.

Dr. Os Guinness, an American evangelical sociologist, set the tone for the congress stressing truth as the central characteristic without which the Congress might just as well fold its tent. "Those who weaken their hold on truth weaken their hold on God. The record of Scripture shows us that there are three main reasons why we believe. We come to faith in Christ driven by human need. He (Christ) seeks for us and finds us. We come to faith in Christ and we find the claims of the gospel are true. It is because of truth that our faith in God is not irrational, emotional, a psychological projection weapon, wish fulfillment or the opiate of the masses. Only a high view of truth keeps us on track. Skeptics and relativists undermine truth. Without truth science and all human knowledge would collapse into conjecture. Without truth the worlds of politics and business result in power games.

"We as followers of Christ must be guardians of truth. Only a high view of truth undergirds our defense of the faith...all truth is God's truth.

"All humans are not only truth seekers. Our stand for truth must stand in the church itself. We must not downplay truth for methodology, truth as entertainment or seeker sensitivity, nor must we place modern and revisionist views of truth in place of the biblical view.

"All sectarianisms lead to a weak and compromised faith. To abandon truth is to abandon hatefulness and to commit theological adultery leading to spiritual suicide. Let the sorry fate of Protestant liberalism be a stern warning to us all.

"Post modern thinking is occurring with global expansions of markets and freedom, technology and human dysfunction we are facing the greatest human rights crisis of all time. Hypocrisy and evil always use lies to cover oppression. Only a high view of truth can stop this.

"If we do not stand for truth the congress might as well stop. Jesus is the way the truth and the life." Quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Guinness said, "One word of truth outweighs the whole world."

Christianity a Global religion

"Our faith in Christ is truly the world's first global religion. It is the most numerous group on earth. The church is the most diverse group on earth and the bible is the most translated book on earth," said Guinness.

"We are seeing a massive resurgence of all the world's religions. This is not accidental. Globalization is integral to your faith. The blessing of God to all the earth is the gospel. It was globalized before modernity."

Guinness urged his listeners to be humbly aware of their own flawed heritage. "1910 fulfilled their audacity. They had a terrible blind spot, they were not self critical. Today that would be to commit spiritual suicide. We heads of the reformation must be aware of the complexities and entanglement. Our heirs fought and split.

"Much of evangelicalism is at a stage that the reactions to it have an ugliness and strength in direct proportion to the loss of the gospel in the West. We talk of the Reformation but it was the Counter Reformation that led to mission. The Reformation did not lead to world mission that came later.

"We are seeing a grand cultural transformation of our time. There is an awful lot of hype. The highest change is globalization, shifting from the industrial age to the information age. Secondly we are seeing a huge shift from a single modernity to multiple modernities.

"For 600 years the West has dominated the world, now there is American modernity, Asian modernity, so we from west should come to the world with a new humility, we are one of many and we need to share how not to do it. We have capitulated in the area of truth. The third shift is from the West to the Global South. Much of the Global South is pre modern and developing. The challenge of the Global South is still to come.

"Be prepared for a war of spirits. The war of spirits is the like of which we have never seen. This is what globalization now means. Every faith is now actively present for its own arguments. The war of the spirits going on in the public square. Christianity and Islam are in the war of sprits and staggeringly polls show that 50% of young evangelicals no longer believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

"We must prepare the Global South too rise to the challenge of the hour. They have a boldness, simplicity and the power of their faith is magnificent. Yet they haven't faced the onslaught of modernity. Will they resist as they change and grow?

"The second grand change is to win back the West. This is the third mission of the West. The conversion of Rome was the first mission much of the church was wiped out. The second mission was the conversion of the barbarians. Now in the twilight of the West, together with all the world we must win the western world back to Christ. It is possible in the face of a vast modernity and we can prevail.

"Our humble task is to help guide humanity forward with constructive answers to this generation. The next generation is a crunch generation. The world is facing a whole barrage of questions in the adulthood of the younger generation. Thank God for those tackling AIDS, the trafficking of women, but the missing note is the huge questions for humanity. Only in Christ can we thrown up the visionary answers to the future.

"We come here at an extraordinary moment for humanity and an extraordinary moment for the West and for the church of Christ. Jesus is the Good News not globalization. We need to do the Lord's work in the Lords way. We are in one of the greatest moments in human history."

END

LEXICON: Folks attending the Lausanne Congress on world evangelization are participants, not delegates or conferees. This is a Congress, not a Conference.