Lausanne 4: Michael Oh reveals 4 most-dangerous words affecting the global Church
INCHEON, South Korea — Reflecting on the wisdom found in the scriptures, Michael Oh, global executive director of the Lausanne Movement, called on believers to humble themselves and work together to spread the Gospel worldwide effectively.
In his message to the 5,000 Christians gathered from over 200 countries at the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization this week at Songdo Convensia international convention center and the 5,000 others participating virtually Sunday night, Oh admonished the mentalities and actions hindering the Christian witness and efforts to fulfill the Great Commission.
Oh, who, along with his wife and children, previously served as missionaries in Japan, called on Christians to repent of four things: their pride, parochialism, isolation and arrogance.
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"We repent of not so much saying with our words but feeling in our heart or showing through our actions those four dangerous words that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 12:21-27: 'I don't need you.' And we have said those to each other, and we have said those to God. But God reminds us, 'apart from me you can do nothing' (John 15:5)," Oh said, lamenting the "isolation" and "competition" among various ministry groups.
Those four words, "I don't need you," Oh stressed, are hampering the impact of the global Church today.
The mentality of being "so self-focused, self-confident, self-sustained and perhaps flat out selfish," he said, is causing believers to miss out on the "competitive advantage of working with others — other ministries, other businesses, other schools, other denominations or other parts of the Body."
The focus on competition within the Church instead of collaboration "has led to a fight over financial resources and, ultimately, the ineffectiveness and ugliness of the Body of Christ," he said.
"One of the greatest reasons for the ineffectiveness of the Body is the failure to incorporate the whole Body into God's mission," he added, reminding those gathered that through collaboration, it only takes a few people to "change the world."
An example of the fruit of such efforts, he said, was cultivated at Lausanne 1 held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974, where great emphasis was placed on sharing the Gospel with unreached people groups. That effort has led to the sharing of the Gospel with 9,000 unreached people groups over the last 50 years and the growth of churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Pointing to Romans 10:14, Oh shared that because missionaries planted the first churches in the city of Incheon over 100 years ago, his mother came to faith in Christ. And without the work of those men and women, "I might not be here today."
South Korea has since become the second-largest missionary-sending nation in the world. Hundreds of churches throughout the country have been working alongside Lausanne to host the event, and 4,000 Korean Christians have committed to praying for the event's success.
'Stumbling over the messengers'
Although many new evangelistic tools have been developed over the decades, particularly in the last 15 years, in "safe areas of the world" that have seen population growth, Oh said there has been a "deceleration" in sharing the Gospel. This is compounded by the fact that "year after year, there are more people in the world who have never heard the Gospel than a year before," he explained.
"Fifty years later, we are humbled as we recognize that we still have a flawed witness in the world and a flawed mission to the world," he said. "The task of sharing the Good News to all the world is still challenging and incomplete."
A separate issue Oh lamented is the numerous scandals of "pride, power and impurity" among church leaders that have "rocked the Church and compromised our witness."
"The reputation of the bride of Christ in many places around the world is not good," Oh added. "Rather than people stumbling over the message of the Gospel, as we see in Romans 9, too many are stumbling over the messengers. Our failures today in a world of social media are more public and profoundly felt and seen globally than ever before. And so, we continue, 50 years later, to be moved to penetrance by our failures, or at least we need to be."
These two issues — sharing the Gospel throughout the world and the reputation of the bride of Christ — are the reasons why the delegates selected to attend Lausanne 4 must embrace collaboration and the theme of this Congress: "Let the Church declare and display Christ together," he continued.
Despite one's human flaws, Oh encouraged delegates not to live in fear but to live in faith and to not walk in arrogance but to exhibit humility. Likewise, he reiterated the need not to be in competition but to collaborate in terms of mission and purpose.
"We must be vocal, beautifully vocal, biblically vocal, clearly vocal with the message of the Gospel" in a way that is "personalized, contextualized, compassionate, compelling words of life and love," Oh added, citing 1 Corinthians 12:12, which says: "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ."
