The concluding message from World Evangelical Alliance Secretary General Botrus’ at the 2026 World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly at the Sarang Church in Seoul, South Korea (October 30, 2026).
For God alone,
I’m really humbled by the choice of the International Council and the search committee and I feel the big responsibility. I’m here to serve and as I shared before, be patient a little bit with me as I get to know more and more WEA and I want us to work together as a team. It’s not Butros Mansoor now is going to solve everything. No, this is something that we will work together as alliances from all over the world. Teamwork. Allow me to say that asking someone like me, Palestinian, Christian from Israel to be the Secretary General is something special. Especially at this time when there’s a ceasefire that I pray will last in our region after two years of war.
Botrus Mansour 2025 WEA General Assembly
I give tribute to my people and to my country. I also want to give tribute to my parents. My mother passed away 15 years ago and my dad is 91 and a half. I think he might be watching us now. My sister is preparing for him to watch this service. I want to give tribute to them and of course to my family, to my wife Abir and to my three kids and my daughter in law and also my grandson who’s a month and a half. He was also watching, but I don’t think he understood anything.
Vision is not something, someone’s idea that comes out of the blue. This is what I believe. But it is crystallized jointly after prayer and communication between the stakeholders. It is also rooted in the word of God.
And our vision that we have seen in the last five days is rooted in three verses or paragraphs from the Bible. I’m not going to preach three sermons now, but I’m going to mention them.
One is in the beginning of Jesus ministry, actually Jesus in Nazareth, my hometown, when he entered into the synagogue and he read from there, you know, in Luke 4.
The second one is just before the cross. Just before going to the cross, the Lord spent time of prayer with Father, God the Father. And he prayed that we be one.
And the last pillar is the one before he ascended to heaven at the end of his days on earth. I will start with the one in the middle, the one before the cross.
So our first part or pillar of our vision is unity.
We have heard that again and again during these five days, and it seems this is on the heart of a lot of people—we felt it, we didn’t even need to hear it from people. We felt it among those that were sharing in the sweet fellowship that we had one with another.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the conference when I shared that it is not only in Ephesians 2 that there were four sermons about unity and about shattering the dividing wall between us, and making us one in him, but also in John 17, the passage that I mentioned. There, Jesus talks to the Father and says, let them be one. he prays to the Father and says, let them be one. Like we are one. Like the Trinity, let them be one. So unity is on our heart, all of us.
So that’s the first part. We need to keep that unity. If this is our vision, we should keep our unity. We are different people, but we have one spirit. We have one mission. We have one set of core beliefs. Can we raise up to be in the level of Jesus prayer? Let them be one, like I am one with the Father, like we are one?
The second pillar of the vision that we have is that we want to impact the world with the gospel.
We are joining in with different Christians all around the world to impact the world with the gospel. We can impact them if we reach with the 600 million. I’ve heard 600 million. We’ll go for 600 million evangelicals. We will reach them by strengthening our regional alliances internationally.
If we strengthen the regional alliances as much as we can, then the regional alliances will strengthen the alliances in every country. And those national alliances will strengthen the church. And then the church will be strong and the believers in every church and church will be strong and willing to share and impact the world with the gospel.
2033 is a nice target. 2000 years since the resurrection and since the crucifixion, since Pentecost as well. And we celebrate it. It does not have to have eschatological meaning, but it’s a milestone, a lovely milestone that we can look to, to seek after 2000 years that we will reach the whole world with the gospel. What greater present we can give to the Lord Jesus? He has everything. We cannot give him anything that he does not have but our hearts.
He gave us the liberty. He gave us the freedom to choose. So if we can seek to give Jesus the hearts of people, that will be the greatest present that we can give Him. We have heard inspiring words from our beloved pastor Rick Warren and his organization name that says it all: Finishing the Task. We want to finish the task and reach out to people.
What does impacting the world with the gospel mean? What does it mean to reach out to the world with the gospel? In Matthew 28, that’s the last passage, of course, the Great Commission that we know. Matthew 28:18, sharing the good news. And evangelicals from evangelic, means good news. We are the evangelicals. We are the bearers of that good news.
We want to also reclaim that name. It has been politicized and it has been changed, and people use it in different ways these days. No, the original name of evangelical is the bearers of good news. And we want to be really bearers of good news to the whole world. We will work for this task.
The (WEA’s) advocacy team. Sometimes you wonder, you say, why do we have an advocacy team? This is not evangelism and this is not discipleship. But the advocacy team, with God’s grace, help work tirelessly in the UN and other places in order to help the people to be able to have freedom of worship, to pray, to evangelize, and so on. So it’s important also to keep them in our mind when we talk about vision. Let’s pray also for the advocacy team that are doing a magnificent job in Geneva and also in New York.
Discipleship also is part of reaching the world with impacting the world with the Gospel.
And we end. The last paragraph or pillar is the one in Luke 4, as I said, the synagogue, it is the first chronologically. But here in our vision, it is the third one, the last one. He says there, the Lord read from Isaiah 61 when he entered into the synagogue.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
(Luke 4:18-19)
So it means not only that we are sharing when we want to impact the world with the gospel. It does not only mean that we share the good news verbally or tell people about Jesus and ask them to become believers, to put their trust in him. But it’s more than that.
As Dr. Stephen Tung said in his memorable sermon here, he said, it’s all about the kingdom of God. We want the kingdom of God to reign. We want to impact the world with the gospel. So the kingdom of God, the values of the kingdom will be there. This means a holistic understanding of the gospel. The gospel comes to change our whole life, our families, our. Our work, our workplace, everything. Everything. So we want also to do that, as when we come to impact the world with the gospel.
You know, the first inauguration or the speech of Jesus or what Jesus read in the synagogue is like the inauguration it was in the beginning of his ministry in Luke 4. So it’s very important you always look what the inauguration speech will be and so this is also important for us. So some will do works of mercy and justice and reconciliation and they will impact others also with the gospel.
So in summary, three things: unity and impacting the world with the gospel after the way of Jesus’ inauguration.
How do we impact the world with the gospel with the Great Commission? Telling the world about Jesus telling them that he is the only hope. Don’t fetch, don’t look for hope somewhere else. I don’t know how you are able to live your life if you don’t know Jesus in this tough world that we are living. He is the only hope.
And then, holistically, we are impacting the world with the gospel holistically in different ways in showing our deeds we are reflecting that gospel of Jesus in our relationships and in all spheres of life.
And to God be all the glory. Amen.