Global Report: Korean Church Catches a Whiff of Trouble in the Air

by Stan Guthrie

The bloom may not be quite off the rose of South Korea’s civilian-led democracy, but the country’s once intoxicating political aroma has definitely soured.

The bloom may not be quite off the rose of South Korea’s civilian-led democracy, but the country’s once intoxicating political aroma has definitely soured.

Former President Roh Tae Woo was found to be keeping a $650 million slush fund and was indicted for bribery, while he and another ex-president, Chun Doo-Hwan, are being prosecuted in connection with a bloody 1980 government crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Kwangju. The scandals have not tarred the reformist Kim Young Sam, a professing Christian who in 1992 was the first civilian to be elected president since 1961—but analysts worry that they might. One Samsung executive told Business Week, “This is something that we didn’t need at this critical juncture when we are just launching our global-ization plan.”

Factor in the continuing tensions with heavily armed and unpredictable North Korea, and fears over the astronomical costs expected to accompany any peaceful reunification, and these are uncertain days for one of East Asia’s four economic “tigers.”

Korean Christians, widely hailed as the new tigers of the globalization of missions, are also beginning to catch a whiff of trouble. Triumph-alistic pronouncements—such as one at a 1992 Korean missions conference by a prominent ministry leader that Korea would be the hub of world Christianity until the Second Advent—are a little harder to find.

As they have moved out aggressively in world evangelization, Korean church leaders have been shocked to discover that they are losing ground in their own back yard. According to David Tai-Woong Lee, director of the Global Ministry Training Center, Seoul, the average annual growth rate of South Korea’s churches was 8.4 percent from 1960 to 1985, falling to 6.7 percent from 1985 to 1990. Figures from the government ministry of information are even more unsettling, pointing to an absolute decline of 4 percent in 1993 (see chart top of page 200). Lee, however, estimates modest growth of 3 percent for 1994, although official numbers are not yet available.

Korean theologian Bong Rin Ro says the growth decline began in 1984 and may not soon be over. “There is no guarantee by God that he will continue to use the Korean church in the future,” Ro states. “Unless the Korean church once again comes to God in repentance and seeks God’s help in humility, the Korean church will face similar problems which the churches in the West have been facing.”

By many measures, of course, the Korean church seems to be doing far better than her Western counterparts. With 6,800 churches, Seoul, Korea’s capital, is said to be home to half of the world’s 20 largest churches. One church in Seoul, the ornate Choong Hyun Presbyterian Church (with six services and 30,000 members), played host to the historic Global Consultation on World Evangelization last May, attended by 4,000 delegates from 186 countries. The Korean church sank $3 million of its own money into GCOWE.

South Korea has 40,000 churches, 5,000 more than in 1990, and more than 100 mission agencies. The number of Korean missionaries has grown at an even faster rate, from 500 in 1988 to 3,272 in 1994, to perhaps more than 4,000 today. Leaders are aiming for a total of 10,000 by the year 2000 and are aggressively “adopting” unreached peoples for evangelism and prayer. (Korean Christians don’t just pray at home and at church; they own 521 “prayer mountains.”)

The affluence of the Korean church (the per-person gross national product is $6,500 and climbing)—symbolized by the cavernous Korean Center for World Missions in Seoul, also known as the Torch Center—has had a clear impact, both positive and negative. Korean Christians are faithful tithers, and it shows, both in bricks and mortar, and in a proliferation of programs. Some North Americans, accustomed to constantly scouring supporters for scarce funds, seem almost a little green as they look on.

“Some of the church buildings and adjacent facilities are astonishingly large and complete,” said one well-connected Western missions executive who requestedanonymity. “The budget to construct, and to administrate, the Torch Center . . . is beyond comprehension to many. . . . Surely one component fueling the rapid growth of Korean missionaries is the capacity to pay the financial tag. Many churches are simply wealthy.

“But there are serious questions about the impact of prosperity and modernity in the evangelical younger generations,” he continued. “They have no memory of the Korean War. They faintly remember or have heard of their parents’ poverty. But their world is prosperity.”

Ro warns that money—a recent challenge in Korea—often leads to church neglect. “The Korean church is basically a suffering church,” Ro states. “The churches have suffered so much, and . . . produced a large number of Christian martyrs—over 500 during the Korean War. We are reaping the results of these Christians’ suffering of the past. But that is the story of the past—not today.”

Lee admits, “With having political freedom came less dependence on God or religion in general.”

Bong Ro, who steps down this month as executive director of the World Evangelical Fellowship’s Theological Commission, says the country’s economic expansion has greatly contributed to the church’s contraction—especially among young people. “The Korean churches are losing the teens,” he says. “I think material affluence is certainly one factor. The second factor is the educational system of Korea at the present time for students—teenagers. They are trying to get into better universities, and it is very competitive. The students study day and night, from seven in the morning up until ten or eleven in the evening.”

Still, many Korean students have shown striking fervor for missions in recent years. About 4,500 students gathered for “Mission Korea ’94" at Sogang University in Seoul in August, 1994. About 2,000 of them made commitments to missions. And last May, at the “Student Mission 2000” conference (held at the same time as GCOWE), as many as 80,000 rain-drenched youths at the Olympic stadium in Seoul pledged to either pursue overseas ministry or enter North Korea upon unification of the two countries. Churches and agencies across South Korea are planning major evangelistic initiatives for North Korea as well (see sidebar). If only a fraction of these evangelization commitments is kept, the Korean church should have no problem fielding 10,000 missionaries by 2000.

Making the goal even more achievable, Ro says, is the fact that the south’s 250 theological schools produce an astonishing 7,000 graduates annually—graduates who will have to find work somewhere. “We have a mass production of Christian workers,” Ro notes. “We have to expand and send some of these people overseas.”

Ev Hunt, a missionary for two decades in Korea with OMS International and now a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., says that even though the respected profession of church pastor is no longer the call to self-sacrifice that it once was, missionary vitality has not been diminished. To the contrary, he notes that the Korean Evangelical Holiness Church, which is the third largest denomination in the country, spends more on missions than it does on itself.

“It is the current status symbol for a local church to have a missionary,” said Hunt after a recent visit to the country. “Missions is just booming.”

Still, church and missions leaders inside and outside the country are less likely to be blinded to Korea’s shortcomings by its considerable successes. Lee says that part of the reason for the church’s slowing growth was a shift in emphasis during the eighties from pure evangelism to discipleship training. “Seen in this light, the Korean church did consolidate in terms of its quality to some degree,” Lee says. “Nevertheless, the Korean church should not have emphasized one over against the other. Recently the church (has started) emphasizing evangelism more.”

Lee says increasing numbers of churches are holding evangelism workshops. Others, including David Sang-Bok Kim, who is executive director ofthe Torch Center and senior pastor of the Hallelujah Church in Seoul, say most churches are involved in evangelism. But the emphasis on the Korean evangelical mind continues as well. Hallelujah Church has an institute with 15,000 people enrolled for three years of training as lay ministers. Half are taught in the classroom, half through correspondence. As it has for the last 15 years, the Torch Center annually awards 30 full scholarships to Ph.D. students who are ministers. Noting that many of the leading evangelical seminaries in the U.S. are filled with Koreans, Kim says that the Asian Center for Theological Studies and Missions in Seoul must turn away seven students for each one it accepts. Kim says Korea is home to more people with doctorates in theology and related areas than the rest of Asia combined.

“We believe we have a very bright future of the Korean church in terms of its spiritual vitality and its role in world evangelism,” he says. “In the future there will be more balanced faith. In the past the enthusiasm was sometimes excessive and overzealous.”

Korean Christians also seem to be learning from their mistakes in missions. Ev Hunt says Korean missionaries still struggle with ethnic pride, but he also thinks leaders are more willing to admit their shortcomings.

“I think there are some churches that are much more anxious to send a missionary than they are to make sure that the missionary is qualified and going to the right place to do the right thing,” Hunt says. “It sounds very much like the earlier generation of Western missionaries, but I think there are concerned leaders in Korea who are wanting to say, ‘As we Koreans become more and more enthused about our role in missions, we also want to be more sensitive and do a better job of selecting and training and preparing missionaries to be really effective in what they are doing.’”

While the Korean church often has been cool toward working with Westerners, that hesitation is beginning to melt. The Torch Center’s David Kim says cooperation with developed Western agencies will improve the Korean church’s missionary efforts: “Instead of trying to work alone, networking with and learning from the existing experienced agencies will greatly increase the efficiency of Korean missions.”

Kim is practicing what he preaches. The Korean Center for World Missions provided the venue, along with the Choong Hyun Presbyterian Church, for much of GCOWE. One Western missions leader states, “Many Korean Christian leaders were committed to GCOWE because it would serve as a stimulus to counter the drop in national church growth.” Lee says the conference did a good job in motivating the churches. Bong Ro agrees, saying that maintaining a missionary vision is critical to the church. (Only about 10 percent of Korea’s churches are involved in missions, Ro notes, and denominational support has been uneven.)

“The Korean church leaders have been trying to find the international model that will challenge our churches, especially in the area of missions,” he says. “The AD2000 and Beyond Movement, (with its emphasis on) the unreached peoples in the 10/40 Window, is the best model we can find. The Korean church leaders accepted that and organized the AD2000 and Beyond movement in Korea with over 50 tracks.”

Ro will get no argument from David Kim on the necessity of missions. “We believe the future of the Korean church depends upon missions,” Kim states. “I believe we have now a clear consensus in our churches so far as world missions is concerned. There is no other way. . . . We will definitely play a major role in world evangelization in the next century.”

To that outward focus, however, Ro says Christians will have to make some internal changes to reach their goal of doubling their share of the national population from the current 25 percent to 50 percent by the year 2000. He warns Korean believers not to forget about their own backyard, where Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, and other religious options are resurgent. As they generously and sacrificially giveand erect gleaming new buildings and administer their extensive church programs, Protestants have been verbally spanked for ignoring the rest of society. Many critics (including some Christians) are challenging the churches to remember their roots and do more for the needy, the disabled, the aged, the unwed mothers, and other groups not sharing in the general prosperity—or risk becoming a stench in the nostrils of their neighbors.

Ro states, “In Asia today where only 3 percent of the 3 billion people claim to be Christians and where the traditional religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and so on are prevalent among the people, many non-Christians are asking, ‘What are (the) real differences between Christianity and Buddhism? Can you show me the difference by deeds?’ Unless the Korean churches make their contributions to the society and the nation in the area of social responsibility, future church growth in Korea will be hampered.”

Pointing to the scandal of Roh Tae Woo, Kim says South Korea as a whole needs sanctification. “We need national cleansing,” Kim notes. “We need national repentance and another wave of revivals in the country to be prepared for national and world evangelization.”

Copyright © 1996 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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