Editor’s note: This article is part of forum discussing the fourth Lausanne Congress. It is not an official Lausanne Movement forum but an opportunity for Lausanne delegates to share their thoughts about the fourth Lausanne Congress, the Seoul Statement, and the future of the mission. You can read the entire series, from diverse voices around the world here.
Over six days in Incheon, Korea, 5,000 brothers and sisters from across the globe gathered at the fourth Lausanne Congress. I was privileged to be among them. As brothers and sisters, we listened to one another, prayed for one another, and learned from each other’s vast experiences.
Many things were said at the six-day conference that ran from morning into the evening. As is the benefit of such diversity, one hears various views. There are some things shared on the stage and from my brothers and sisters in conversation that I agreed with deeply. And there were a few I do not, due to a different theological perspective. But given my work and calling to serve the body of Christ at large, I personally don’t often find myself hung up on minor differences.
As a neuroscientist and psychologist sent to serve the church, part of that work is having a keen ear to hear the narrative that underlies what is being said. What is the story the speaker is living in? And is that story one of the Kingdom and Good News? On the last day of the 4th Lausanne Congress, however, I heard a narrative that I cannot just brush off as theological difference but feel compelled to illuminate and examine.
In the last session, when talking about the reasons for collaboration, they gave the illustration of a computer program that allowed a robot to shoot one dot of paint at a time onto a canvas. The alternative illustration was a robot that could make many calculations and had many cannons that could paint a picture much faster.
As I understand it, one of the outcomes of the Congress is that we would share in a technology hub how each of us is serving in ministry and Kingdom work, and an AI model would make suggestions for collaboration. I am not clear if it will run like a dating app that matches people based on an algorithm or something more, but the idea of depending on an AI for the strategy of the church’s evangelism and discipleship is unsettling. Using AI for data and summarizing is one thing; strategic direction is another.
The robot illustration and other comments in the closing remarks made me curious about the implicit narrative behind the exhortation. It made me wonder if the story Lausanne is operating in is one where our global efforts thus far have been poorly coordinated and inefficient. Is it a story in which we, as the global church, are not doing things right, and thus strategies generated by AI would better organize our work? Indeed, similar thoughts were expressed by those speaking for Lausanne.
As a pentecostal, I am significantly bothered by this narrative’s key assumptions.
- The assumption that the Holy Spirit has not been leading men and women in every country to do the work they are doing.
- The assumption that our efforts are random, undirected, and inefficient.
- The assumption that we only need to feed information into an AI model for it to coordinate our efforts more effectively.
Whether explicit or implicit, these assumptions create a narrative that the last 50 years of human endeavors to accomplish the Great Commission have been exercised on behalf of the Kingdom, but “randomly” and “ineffectively”—so apparently not under the direction and Lordship of the King. The solution suggested: to these human sub-par efforts we must add artificial, technological wisdom.
