“The Great Commission is everyone’s responsibility,” Dr Michael Oh told 1000’s of Christians at the tip of the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Incheon, South Korea, on Saturday.
Speaking in the course of the closing ceremony of Lausanne 4, Dr Oh warned against dismissing the Great Commission as “not my business”, and said that it have to be seen because the Church’s “collective responsibility” and “everyone’s business”.
“The Great Commission is everyone’s responsibility. The aggregate results of Christians doing their very own thing in their very own place – even faithfully – has left us with the trajectory that, yr after yr, there are more people on the earth who’ve never heard the Gospel than the yr before,” he said.
In his final keynote address of the congress on Saturday, Dr Oh said that “anything wanting an enormous realignment of Christian presence and coordination and intentionality” would end in billions of individuals never hearing the Gospel.
He said he desired to see more Christians entering different spheres of society to achieve individuals with the Gospel.
“With 3.4 billion individuals who live amongst 7,400 unreached people groups on the earth and can likely never hear the Good News of Jesus before they die; with 86 per cent of all of the world’s Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus not knowing a single Christian … this just isn’t just the responsibility of missionaries and ministers, but of artists, engineers, students, professors, CFOs, CEOs and more,” he said.
He continued, “May none of us find comfort in imagining ourselves standing before God sooner or later and giving excuses for our lack of intentionality and collective responsibility by pleading ignorance and saying, sorry, I didn’t know.”
Collaborative motion has been stressed throughout Lausanne 4. On the ultimate day, participants were asked to sign a ‘Collaborative Action Commitment’ to encourage them to proceed searching for ways to work together beyond the congress in sharing the Gospel.
Dr Oh said that no Christian could say they didn’t need one another. “What impact and greater effectiveness might there be if the ministry of all God’s people were to [be] less just like the Christian version of ‘do random acts of kindness’ and more like a coordinated and healthy body of Jesus Christ?” he said.
Also speaking on the ultimate day of the congress was American pastor and bestselling creator Rick Warren, who told younger participants below the age of 40, “You have the potential to complete the duty and complete the Great Commission.”
However, “to make it to the finish line,” he said that they needed 4 things: “mentors, models, partners and friends.”
Asking those over the age of 40 to get up, he told younger participants, “These are the people try to be learning from. You can learn from anybody if you happen to know the proper questions. All leaders are learners. These people have already been in ministry for years in order that they can teach you things that you simply do not know.”
He added, “Now, my prayer for each of those groups is that you’re going to finish well.”
Lausanne 4 brought together over 5,000 Christians from over 200 countries to South Korea for every week of collaborating and strategising for world mission.
Discussions were alleged to be underpinned by the Seoul Statement, a 20-page document intended to enrich and construct upon previous Lausanne theological statements. However, publishing the Seoul Statement prior to the congress proved controversial and created confusion and frustration amongst many participants who had expected to deliberate over it in the course of the gathering as a way to provide feedback before its release.
The strength of feeling led Lausanne leaders to open a feedback mechanism for congress participants to share their reflections on the Seoul Statement’s content.Â
Lausanne spokesperson Michael du Toit acknowledged the confusion in an email to participants inviting their responses to the Seoul Statement: “We recognise that in introducing the Seoul Statement, we should always have been clearer in explaining its purpose and the best way wherein participants are invited to interact with it.”
The feedback might be considered in the approaching weeks by the Theology Working Group, who along with Lausanne senior leaders will determine any next steps to be taken.Â
The Seoul Statement was not the one controversy on the congress after some participants were upset by comments from guest speaker Ruth Padilla DeBorst criticising Israel and dispensational eschatology.
The comments during her Monday night presentation on justice prompted an apology by congress director David Bennett.
Others were angered by the apology. Valdir Steuernagel, a Brazilian theologian and senior executive adviser to the Lausanne Movement, said it was “problematic” that Lausanne had “distanced itself from probably the most impactful presentations of the event.”
Addressing the controversy on Friday, Chris Wright, who serves on Lausanne’s board of directors, told reporters that the movement “doesn’t claim to be the voice of the entire Christian community”, and suggested that members must discover a method to live with their differences that doesn’t seek to “pin blame or provide you with easy solutions”.
“What was said on Monday night was certain to be hurtful for some, and the apology on her behalf hurtful for others. It’s very hard to easily say that one side’s right or the opposite side’s flawed,” he said.
Lausanne 4 was held over seven days on the Songdo Convensia in Incheon, just outside the Korean capital of Seoul. Sessions explored key topics regarding world mission, including leadership, intergenerational discipleship, urban mission, sexuality, faith within the workplace, justice, climate change, and persecution.
The congress coincided with the Lausanne Movement’s fiftieth anniversary, marking half a century since Billy Graham, John Stott and other evangelical leaders got here together in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974 to found the mission-focused movement.
In his keynote address in the course of the anniversary celebrations on Wednesday, Dr Oh said it was imperative that the Church engage digitally with the world or else “lose the longer term”.
Lausanne 4 was held across the theme of ‘Let the Church Declare and Display Christ Together’. It was supported by lots of of Korean churches and 1000’s of individual Korean Christians who signed up to hope for the event throughout the week, although a couple of local Christians protested outside the gathering, claiming that Lausanne was failing to talk out against homosexuality. A Lausanne spokesperson said that the movement had decided not to interact with the protesters.
