After the last fiasco of the Korean Missionaries in Afghanistan, the Taliban agreed to free the 19 South

Korean hostages on the condition that South Korea withdraws its troops within this year and halt missionary
activities.

According to Henry Lee, a mission leader based in Seoul, this kind of drive is a trait shared by many Koreans,
sending them to dangerous regions.

Henry Lee Works for Frontiers, one of the largest missionary church in USA working mainly on Muslims.

http://www.frontiers.org/
Their advertising slogan is "Serving, respecting and loving Muslims ... In the name of Jesus."

For seven years, Lee worked with Muslims in another red zone, violence-torn Chechnya and Dagestan,
located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea and governed by Russia. He worked to plant churches
and raise national church leaders. After being expelled from Russia in 2003, Lee worked as a mission pastor
in Southern California. He now trains Korean missionaries for Frontiers, which works in Muslim countries.

Lee teaches his students how to enter and gain trust in a Muslim community. All Asians have a mistrust of
outsiders, Lee says. "If I don't know you, I can't trust you." For missionaries in the Muslim world, it is even
more true. "Unless you break into that community, you cannot get them for the kingdom of God," Lee says.

Lee also says it's nearly impossible to pull a Muslim out of his or her community. "We do not do extraction
evangelism," he says. "We don't want to take them out of their community to build a new fellowship. I want
to see God's fellowship built in that Muslim community, and then that community will last and reproduce."

1/8/2009

Korean Missionaries Under Fire

BEWARE of Christian Missionaries

Jamshaid Zubairee
 Jamshaid Zubairee

Korean Missionaries Under Fire

BEWARE of Christian Missionaries

From; http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1647646,00.html

Missions Incredible

South Korea sends more missionaries than any country but the U.S. And it won't be long
before it's number one.

Rob Moll | posted 3/01/2006 12:00AM

Samuel Kang was God's improbable choice to be a leader in the world's fastest-growing
missionary movement. Kang was born in Japan when the Japanese empire was forcing alien
Shinto beliefs down Korean throats.

At the end of World War II, the Kang family returned to Korea and grew deeply fervent in
their Christian faith. The Kangs dedicated Samuel to God, and they told him, "You will
become a pastor."

Kang rebelled. "I did not want to accept my parents' dedication of me to God without my
consent," he says. For years, he resisted God's call. But by the time he was 20, Samuel's
heart softened, and he felt compelled to give himself to God. "No one can escape from his
sovereign call," Kang says.

It took another 20 years of discipling and discernment before Kang set foot on a mission
field. At age 39, Kang and his wife, Sarah (who had discovered her own call to missions
work), left South Korea for Nigeria. When they departed in 1980, there were only 93 Korean
missionaries worldwide.

During the next 11 years, Samuel and Sarah Kang raised a family, planted Nigerian
churches, and started a Bible college for Nigerian pastors. Kang's eyes sparkle as he recalls
his days in Africa. "The Lord gave me this wonderful opportunity to serve him," he says. "If
God gives me another life, may I give it to him as a missionary."

1y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

Kang doesn't look backward very often. Now 64 years old, with silvery hair and a gentle
smile, he is leading an ambitious 25-year plan to help South Korea send out more
missionaries than any other country.

Kang is chief executive director of the Korean World

Mission Association and dean of the Graduate School of Missions Incredible | Christianity Today | A
World Mission at Seoul's influential Chongshin University. Magazine of………
He has helped move South Korean missions into a place He now trains Korean missionaries for

never before imagined: South Korea today sends out more Frontiers, which works in Muslim countries.

missionaries than any other country except the United Lee teaches his students how to enter and
gain trust in a Muslim community ...
States. In terms of missionaries per congregation, Korea
sends one missionary for every 4.2 congregations, which
places it 11th in the world. (The U.S. does not rank in the top 10.)

Majority-World Missions

But more than that, mission scholars agree that Koreans are a potent vanguard for an
emerging missionary movement that is about to eclipse centuries of Western-dominated
Protestant missions. They call it the "majority-world" mission movement. They say this new
term—"majority world"—is necessary to replace the aging terms "third world" and
"developing world." The radical change in Protestant missions is forcing scholars and
missionaries to create new ways of talking about the global scene.

The global majority (5.2 billion people) live in less developed nations. Of the world's 6.4
billion people, less than 18 percent live in developed nations. Scholars say the church's
future in large measure rests in the hands of the global majority.

"The day of Western missionary dominance is over, not because Western missionaries have
died off," says Scott Moreau, chair of intercultural studies at Wheaton College (Illinois),
"but because the rest of the world has caught the vision and is engaged and energized."

Moreau says Americans must come to realize that "missions is a two-way street on every
continent." Today's missionary is as likely to be a black African in Europe as a northern
Indian in south India or a Korean in China. In addition, mission leaders are placing a new
focus on Asia, where 60 percent of the global population lives. Samuel Hugh Moffett, the
elder American statesman of Asian Christianity, told Christianity Today that Asia represents
"the future for missions." Born in Korea to missionary parents and now professor emeritus

2y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

at Princeton Theological Seminary, Moffett has spent his professional life studying
Christianity in Asia. Between 1998 and 2005, he produced the two-volume History of
Christianity in Asia, the recipient of many scholarly accolades.

Moffett paints no pretty picture of the challenges facing the majority-world mission
movement in Asia. "We're starting from way back," he says. After 2,000 years of mission
work, the population of Asia is no more than 8 percent Christian. "We're not doing very
well. Asia is more religious than any of the other continents," he says, yet Asians perceive
Christianity as an "alien" religion, even though "Jesus was born in Asia." This perception
can give Koreans a unique advantage in bringing the gospel from one Asian country to
another.

Another advantage is the evangelistic zeal typical of the majority-world church, a zeal that
has been fundamental to majority-world missionary growth. In 1973, CT reported there
were at least 3,411 non-Western, crosscultural missionaries in the world. That number has
now exploded to 103,000, according to reliable estimates, though figures are difficult to
determine in the majority world.

That total nearly equals the number of U.S. and Canadian Protestant mission personnel,
which stands at about 112,000.

As the Western mission movement matures and slows down, majority-world missions are
expanding. South Korea sends more than 1,100 new missionaries annually. That means
Korea alone sends out as many new missionaries each year as all of the countries of the
West combined.

This rocketing rate of growth is historic. When Kang returned to his home in 1991, South
Korea had sent more than 1,200 missionaries, up from 80 just 11 years before. Today,
almost 13,000 South Koreans are serving as longterm missionaries in countries around the
world.

"For many years," Kang says, "God said at night, 'You are like Jonah. You are like Jonah.' "
Eventually, Kang relented, and he told his wife about God's call to evangelize Muslims in
Africa. But Sarah worried about safety, education, and her own lack of a divine call.

Kang remained patient. Ten years after his initial conversation with his wife, he gave Sarah
a biography of a missionary to Muslims. After reading the book, Sarah asked him to pray for
her as she went to church every evening.

3y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

For nine weeks, Sarah sought God's direction in all-night prayer vigils. At dawn one day,
Kang saw his wife coming home with tears streaming down her face. "God finally called me
as a missionary," she exclaimed. "I do not follow you. I go with you."

Outreach in the Red Zone

On May 30, 2004, terrorists in Iraq linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi kidnapped Kim Sun Il, a
Korean interpreter. The South Korean native had been working for a year with a South
Korean firm that supplied goods to the U.S. Army, an opportunity Kim used as a means of
gaining entrance into the country.

Like many Korean missionaries, he was highly educated, holding undergraduate and
graduate degrees in English, theology, and Arabic. He was also willing to undertake the
dangerous task of working in a war zone.

Kim had a passion for mission work among unreached peoples. Mission experts estimate
that 1.8 billion individuals in thousands of ethnic groups remain unexposed to the gospel.
South Korean missionaries, in particular, are pioneering projects and methods to spread the
gospel in these areas. Korea sends 34 percent of its missionaries to unreached peoples; the
international average is around 10 percent.

During Kim's captivity, Zarqawi threatened to kill him unless South Korea scrapped its plan
to send 3,000 troops to join the U.S.-led coalition that had toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The kidnapping took the South Korean government by surprise, and it frantically tried to
rescue the captured translator. It also took Westerners by surprise, as the little-known
Korean missionary movement was given a face on television screens around the world.
Terrorists released video footage of Kim pleading for his life. On June 22, his beheaded
body was recovered outside of Baghdad.

Christians in South Korea see their missionaries as uniquely positioned to bridge the divide
between the wealthy West and majority-world nations. In 1973, during the landmark Seoul
Crusade, Billy Graham predicted that South Korea would be the launching pad for missions
to Asia. (See "Prophecy and Politics.") South Koreans are doing just that, and Kim's
ultimate sacrifice in Iraq is one heroic example of their passion.

According to Henry Lee, a mission leader based in Seoul, this kind of drive is a trait shared
by many Koreans, sending them to dangerous regions.

4y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

For seven years, Lee worked with Muslims in another red zone, violence-torn Chechnya and
Dagestan, located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea and governed by Russia. He
worked to plant churches and raise national church leaders. After being expelled from
Russia in 2003, Lee worked as a mission pastor in Southern California. He now trains
Korean missionaries for Frontiers, which works in Muslim countries.

Lee teaches his students how to enter and gain trust in a Muslim community. All Asians
have a mistrust of outsiders, Lee says. "If I don't know you, I can't trust you." For
missionaries in the Muslim world, it is even more true. "Unless you break into that
community, you cannot get them for the kingdom of God," Lee says.

Lee also says it's nearly impossible to pull a Muslim out of his or her community. "We do
not do extraction evangelism," he says. "We don't want to take them out of their
community to build a new fellowship. I want to see God's fellowship built in that Muslim
community, and then that community will last and reproduce."

Due to the efforts of Lee and others, the church is growing in Chechnya. One larger
congregation is made up of more than 70 percent Muslim-background believers. The
situation is similar in other pockets of Asia where Korean missionaries are working.
According to the Korea Research Institute for Missions' (KRIM) biennial report, 47 percent
of Korean missionaries are working throughout Asia, and roughly one quarter work in
Muslim countries.

After ministering in Dagestan, Lee moved further north into Russia for safety reasons.
Eventually, Lee was forced to leave the country entirely, but not before he had spent four
years training 12 church leaders and pastors. By entering the region from southern Russia
for two weeks at a time every two months, Lee was able to train national church leaders in
Chechnya, teaching them Old and New Testament theology and other seminary-level
courses. Lee remembers, "One leader said to me, 'Even though you didn't plant the church,
you laid a foundation.' "

Lee turns somber when he recalls the 12 believers he discipled in Chechnya and Dagestan.
"Even though I can't continue to teach them, my disciples are teaching the next generation
of church leaders in the North Caucasus. They will remember me, and I will remember
them."

5y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

One powerful memory sticks in Lee's mind. It was a hot week on the Black Sea, and the
facilities were run down. The Chechen leaders were holding their first retreat. Every
evening after prayer, they sang traditional Chechen songs and danced traditional Chechen
dances. But they were singing and dancing to God the Father, who sent his son Jesus Christ.

"We came to have a sense of unity that we are in the same kingdom," Lee says. "That was a
really special moment of Chechen Christianity."

Lone-Ranger Complex

Steve Moon, director of the Korea Research Institute for Missions, says Korean missionaries
love the romance and adventure of pioneering mission work. Their role model is Horace G.
Underwood, the first Presbyterian missionary to Korea.

"When Korean missionaries go out to the field, they want to be the first missionary,
especially as a Korean," says Moon. "We are strong in starting new projects."

But that entrepreneurial spirit has its downsides. "We have many lone rangers," Moon says.
"Many Korean missionaries are on their own. They will start their own ministry instead of
joining a team."

Koreans often lack crosscultural competency as well, Moon says. Americans not only have
missionary experience, but they also have crosscultural opportunities in their own country.
Koreans come from a monocultural, monolingual country.

This tension is not unusual in the history of missions. "Wherever there is a renewal or
revival anywhere in the world, it results in missions," says C. Douglas McConnell, dean of
Fuller Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies. Each emerging church has tried to export
its characteristics to other places, says McConnell, who recently co-authored The Changing
Face of World Missions.

South Korea's rapid church growth in the '70s and '80s led to a remarkable missionary
consciousness, but it will take some maturing before it becomes as effective as it could be.
Learning cultural sensitivity takes time, McConnell says. "To be very honest with you, I
have [been insensitive] myself. The process of helping local Christians to understand the
faith in their own categories is relatively sophisticated. It takes a couple of generations of
missionaries."

6y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

It took Americans and the British two or three generations to learn to contextualize the
gospel, he says, and it's amazing that Koreans are catching on so quickly.

Korean congregations often send missionaries directly, without an outside or

denominational agency. While this process makes local churches more mission conscious
and helps them identify better with the outreach, it also creates problems. Mission scholars
say some churches tend to view missionary church plants as extensions of the home
church. In some congregations, serving on the mission field has even become a step on the
ladder of pastoral promotions.

Korean competitiveness also has a double edge. Koreans' aspiration to outdo America may
result in huge numbers of Korean missionaries, but as one missionary to Japan told CT,
competitiveness among missionaries there has made it harder to raise up national church
leaders in an already difficult environment. Missionaries, he says, focus on their church
rather than working together with other missionaries to build seminaries and schools that
can help the church at large.

In addition, Timothy Park, a professor at Fuller and director of its Korean-studies program,
says recent Korean missionaries have not always followed the indigenous church principle
that made the first missionaries to Korea so successful. In communist countries, for
example, many indigenous churches were thriving, says Park, who was a missionary to the
Philippines. But as soon as these countries opened up to foreign missionaries, the churches
became weak and dependent.

"They enjoy financial support and lose the sense of depending on God and doing their best
to help their churches grow. They depend on [Korean missionaries] for support, and they
are eventually controlled by the missionaries."

Even though Park helped to create a Philippine church association, the church is not
growing. "In terms of the number of congregations, it increases, but not in terms of
membership," he says. Sheep stealing is a major problem. Missionaries start new churches
by using Korean mission funds to lure members from other congregations. (From Jamshaid;
Good…Keep it up) This way the missionaries can report successful church plants to their
home churches. "Nationals compare missions' supporting policies, and they try to belong to
the one that's the most generous." (From Jamshaid; Good)

7y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

"The foreigners create great problems," Park says. "A former general secretary of the
Christian Church of the Philippines told me they are agonizing over the situation. He said
unless foreign missionaries leave the Philippines, he doesn't think the church will grow."

But Korean mission leaders recognize these problems and are working to address them. To
begin with, they are encouraging churches to send missionaries through agencies, which
ensures quality training and also eliminates undue influence from the sending churches.

Western Model Less Useful

Majority-world missionaries say one cultural advantage works strongly in their favor. A
former mission director put it this way: "There is a team working in northern India. There
are a couple Koreans, a Japanese, an Ethiopian, a couple Americans, and a couple
Australians. [Thus] it is very difficult for Muslims in northern India to say that Christianity
is a Western religion."

In addition, majority-world missionaries know that the Western model of missions has
cultural elements that are not well suited to their work in the field. Western-style missions
are dramatically more expensive to maintain and require a large, complex organization to
raise and disburse funds worldwide.

The majority-world model is more like a network. Due to financial constraints, it has to be
more flexible and collaborative. Because majority-world missionaries are often culturally
closer to those they serve on the mission field, they are also more attuned to local cultural
situations.

These differences are subtle, but significant. One Korean missionary to Afghanistan
complained that his Western coworkers were too analytic and too policy-driven.

Sung-Chan Kwon is now executive director of Global Bible Translators, but for six years he
worked as a Western agency-sponsored missionary in Afghanistan. He says he could not
accomplish his mission while following the overly rigid regulations and policies his agency
specified.

Kwon says he was required to ask local Afghans first to itemize their needs before he
started a project. But Kwon believed building relationships should take priority over
determining the best project. "The West wants to control people with regulations. The heart

8y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

is more important," he says. It's better to teach someone what it means to be a missionary,
Kwon says, than simply to teach them what to do.

Some Koreans are starting to host forums to discuss what Korean missions should look like
in the future. "In terms of theology and missiology, in terms of methods, we may not be
unique," says David Lee, director of Global Missionary Training Center, which trains about 7
percent of Korean missionaries. "But it's uniquely Koreans doing this with Korean structure,
with Korean church support, with Korean zeal and Korean spirituality, which is willing to
suffer and willing to shout to God with perseverance."

However, others believe missions are missions. "There is no such thing as Korean
missions," says one well-respected Korean pastor.

Steve Moon writes in his 2002 report that while Korea will continue to work with Western
mission agencies in the beginning of the 21st century, it may be time for Korea to look back
East and learn how to help other majority-world countries develop their mission
movements. "China and India will play crucial roles in evangelizing the existing unreached
world. … Korean missions are expected to develop both the philosophy and the skills to
[build] smooth partnerships both with international mission agencies with a Western
background and with indigenous mission agencies with a two-thirds-world background."

Many Korean missionaries work in China, where they help train house-church leaders.
David Lee, who has also served as chair of the World Evangelical Alliance mission
commission, sees a big role for Korean missionaries in getting Chinese missionaries
involved in Korea's Back to Jerusalem project, which aims to send 100,000 missionaries to
the Middle East. "If we can somehow assist them in terms of a more modern way of
thinking and coping and understanding context and crosscultural communication," he says,
"I think they would have a greater survival rate."

Next Pentecost

As experienced missionaries return from the field, the Korean missions movement matures.

Instead of retiring in 1991, Kang started a new career. He launched a mission agency and
became an academic dean at Chongshin University and director of the Korea World Mission
Association (KWMA).

9y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

Kang and the association plan to send 100,000 full-time Korean missionaries by 2030. They
hope to mobilize 50 percent of Korean churches to be involved in missions, recruit 1 of
every 300 Korean Christians to become missionaries, adopt 200 unreached people groups
every five years, and send 1 million tentmakers into difficult-access countries by 2020.

It's an ambitious plan, and not everyone believes it is practical. Steve Moon says the project
is "unrealistic." The mission infrastructure is already overwhelmed, he says. Currently the
infrastructure in Korea can only support about 5,000 missionaries. The only way to send
100,000 missionaries would be to include tentmakers in the definition of a missionary. One
pastor on the board of KWMA says that although he didn't vote against the project, it is too
ambitious. Koreans' ambition can be a problem, he says, and this is a good example.

But others defend the project. Even if KWMA doesn't achieve its goal, they say, it will have
accomplished much. Furthermore, many skeptics in 1988 said it was unrealistic for a group
of Korean church leaders to send out 10,000 missionaries within 12 years. Yet the church
leaders nearly did it.

So beginning in June of this year, at the first Protestant church established in Korea, KWMA
and other groups will inaugurate their plan with a month-long, countrywide missions
awareness program called World Mission Korea 2006. It will include all major
denominations and agencies, says Kang. The whole nation will participate, with meetings in
Seoul and 18 other cities throughout the month of June, all focusing on completing the task
of world evangelization. By the end of the month, says Kang, "No church may say, 'We
never heard about missions.' "

"We Koreans need to have a vision and goal for the future," Kang says. By developing
international partnerships, using the resources of Korean diaspora churches, and recruiting
retirees or mid-career professionals as tentmakers, Kang says, Korea has the resources to
achieve its goals.

At the same time, many church leaders are preparing for the centennial of the Korean
Pentecost, the 1907 revival in Pyongyang that many consider the birth of the Korean
church. Mirroring that revival, respected pastors and church leaders are publicly confessing
sin. (From Jamshaid; In Islam You don’t have to do this publically……What would be the
affect on the children when their father will “confess” that I raped someone or had
incestuous relations with my sister or their mother will confess that I enjoyed PRE-Marital
Sex or had illegal relationships with this or that man…….of course most people will still be

10 y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

LYING…..confessing Minor sins and LEAVING the Major sins HIDDEN. No one will confess
that he had murdered someone) Many hope for another revival that could produce an
expanded awareness of missions.

So what happens if, despite immense hurdles, South Korea manages to reach the world's
estimated 6,000 unreached people groups? What if it leads 21st-century missions into Asia,
the final frontier of missions, and shepherds the majority world as it takes up its role in
fulfilling the Great Commission? What happens if Korea's missions miracle continues?

"We expect Christ to come back," says Kang.

Rob Moll is associate online editor for CT.

Related Elsewhere:

Also posted today is:

SIDEBAR
Prophecy and Politics | How revivals and the Olympics made Korea the wunderkind of
missions.

Inside CT
Honoring Pioneers | The early missionaries to Korea serve as examples to modern-day
ones.

The Korea Research Institute for Missions' English site has more reports on the status of
Korean and Asian missions. Its most recent report is not yet available in English.

The Journal of Asian Mission, archived at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary has published
several scholarly articles on Korean missions, some of which influenced the shape of this
article, including:

The Missiological Challenge of David Yonggi Cho's Theology, by Hwa Yung, 2004

A Survey of the Korean Missionary Movement, by Timothy Kiho Park, 2002

Mission: Nine Hurdles for Asian Churches, by Wonsuk Ma, 2000

11 y

www.answering-christianity.com
Jamshaid Zubairee

Rethinking of Korean Missions, by Andrew Byung-yoon Kim, 1999

Westminster Theological Seminary's SaRang Korean Missions Center researches the Korean
church and has archived its history.

News articles on Korean missions include:

An Act of Subversion, Carried by Balloons | A Korean missionary sends aerial messages of

faith over border to North (Washington Post, August 10, 2005)

Korean Missionaries Carrying Word to Hard-to-Sway Places | A South Korean missionary

here speaks of introducing Jesus in a "low voice and with wisdom" to Muslims, the most
difficult group to convert. (The New York Times, November 1, 2004)

S Korea's zealous Mid-East missionaries | South Korean Christian missionaries have begun
targeting the Muslim world in an effort to win converts from Islam. (BBC, May 6, 2004)

North Korea's missionary position | Churches are opening in North Korea, a country long
known for its hostility to any religion, and especially Protestantism. (Asia Times, March 16,
2005)

The character of the Korean church was largely set by a revival in 1907. Called the Korean
Pentecost, and detailed in a book by that name written by missionary observers, the revival
began practices such as early morning and evening prayer and the public reading of
Scripture.

Korean Pentecost: The Great Revival Of 1907, by Young-Hoon Lee, is a scholarly history of
the revival, published in The Journal of Asian Mission.

The Korean Pentecost: The Revival That Prepared Thousands For Eternity, edited &
compiled by David Smithers is a short history compiled from The Korean Pentecost and
other sources, available from the Revival Resource Center.

More Christianity Today articles on missions includes:

The Soul Hunters of Central Asia | The most Baptist state in the world—Nagaland—is vying
to become a powerhouse for cross-cultural missions. (Feb. 10, 2006)

12 y

www.esnips.com/user/jam2000
 Jamshaid Zubairee

Seeking Shelter | Christians scramble to aid earthquake victims before worst of winter hits.
(Dec. 8, 2005)

The Missionary King | How a double-M.D. couple ended up getting the royal treatment in
Nigeria. (Nov. 21, 2005)

The Gospel for All People | It's not your father's missions movement. (Nov. 10, 2005)

Christian History Corner

Liberating Faith | When Korea threw off Japanese rule in 1945, it was as much a victory for
the church as for the nation. (Aug. 12, 2005)

The State of Missions | The director of World Inquiry talks about the challenges and
priorities of the evangelical missions community. (June 25, 2003)

The Defender of the Good News: Questioning Lamin Sanneh | The Yale historian and
missiologist talks about his conversion, Muslim-Christian relations, Anglican troubles, and
the future of Christianity. (Oct. 1, 2003)

Reimagining Missions | Two scholars seek to rescue the Great Commission from narrowly
evangelistic readings, but their answers may be dangerously wide (2001)

The Future of Missions? | A global gathering affirms new models while developing countries
criticize North American approaches. (Nov. 1, 1999)

Missions' New World Order | The twenty-first century calls for us to give up our nineteenth-
century models for worldwide ministry. (1994)

Why We Go | Recapturing our motivation for missions. (1994)

13 y

www.answering-christianity.com