The World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly wrapped up Thursday evening after four days focused on Evangelicalism’s key challenges.
During the meetings, the Rev. Botrus Mansour was installed as the WEA’s new secretary general, filling the top post after an 18-month vacancy.
Hailing from Nazareth, Mansour brings legal and leadership experience from the Holy Land, including roles across church and educational bodies and as co‑chair of the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation Israel‑Palestine.
In his first address as secretary general, he said he was “really humbled” to be elected and felt a “big responsibility” for a global body with 161 national alliances representing over 650 million Evangelicals.
Emphasizing collaboration, he pledged, “I’m here to serve,” and cast a vision for a WEA characterized by “teamwork” and “unity,” alongside stronger regional alliances.
He asked, “We are different people but we have one spirit, we have one mission, one core of beliefs. Can we rise up to the level of Jesus’s prayer, ‘Let them be one as we are one’?”
Later, Mansour said he wanted to “reclaim” the word ‘Evangelical’ and bring it back to its original meaning as "bears of good news.”
“It has been politicized and changed, and people use it in different ways … we want to be bearers of the Good News to the whole world. We will work for this task.”
Leadership changes extended beyond the secretariat as Sri Lankan leader Godfrey Yogarajah was installed as chair of the WEA’s International Council. It is the first time that both the secretary general and chairman of the WEA come from the global South.
On the final day, delegates received the WEA’s Seoul Declaration, which sets out Evangelical positions on issues including gender and human sexuality, war, abortion, religious freedom, and divisions on the Korean Peninsula.
Perhaps responding to criticism of the WEA’s interfaith relations — which drew protests from some Korean Christians outside the venue over the four days — the declaration insists the WEA is committed to “collaboration without compromise.” and “remaining alert to the dangers of religious pluralism and syncretism, while holding firm to the Gospel, biblical orthodoxy, and the Spirit’s renewing power for both personal and societal transformation.”
It also recognizes pastoral realities by stating, “acknowledge that many in our societies wrestle deeply with questions of identity, sexuality and belonging,” and calls Evangelicals to “listening with humility, walking with compassion, and ministering with biblical clarity and pastoral tenderness.”
Clarifying its sexual ethic, the declaration states, “Therefore, we affirm that practicing homosexuality is sin (Romans 1:26-27), contrary to God’s design for human sexuality. But we proclaim this truth not with condemnation, but in love — offering hope, healing and freedom that is found in Christ alone (1 Corinthians 6:9-11),” followed by, “We desire to be a Church that speaks truth while embodying grace, always remembering our own need for mercy (Titus 3:3-7).”
The document reaffirms that humanity is created “male and female, equal in dignity and worth,” and that marriage is a “sacred union” between one man and one woman.
It further rejects “the culture of death that devalues the weak, the elderly, the unborn” and affirms “the sacredness of life from conception to natural death.”
Finally, the declaration commits the WEA to “boldly resisting all ideological systems that suppress freedom of faith and distort biblical anthropology, even as we boldly share the truth in love and proclaim Christ with compassion, humility and courage.”
