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2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

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Ecclesial Futures – 2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

E D I T O R I A L

2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

June 2023 Special Issue: Current Missional 
Church Perspectives in South Korea

Bokyoung Park, Seonyi Lee

This special issue came into being as a result of a conversation with Nigel Rooms, one 
of the editors of this journal, during the 15th IAMS conference in Sydney in 2022. In 
Sydney, there were several Korean scholars who presented their papers, and many 
of them were in the Christian Communities in Mission Study Group track. Taken 
together they showed the strong interest that Korean scholars have in missional 
ecclesiology. Seeing such increasing interest on this subject from Korean scholars, 
Nigel approached us and enquired whether we, as the leaders of Korea IAMS Fellow-
ship, might be willing to edit a special Korean edition of Ecclesial Futures. Without 
any hesitation, we accepted this challenge, hoping that we could contribute to the 
sharing different voices within the academic discourse which is missional ecclesi-
ology. Thus, the collective journey to produce this issue had begun. Over the course 
of this journey, there were also moments of discouragement and disappointment 
where we might have given up this attempt. Going through the processes of writing 
and translating, as well as the peer-review process, we realized it is not an easy task. 
But by God’s special encouragement and the work of diligent scholarship, we finally 
reached the moment of publication. We are thankful to Nigel Rooms for his persis-
tent encouragement to complete this special issue.

It has been about 20 years since missional ecclesiology was introduced into Korean 
missiological discussion, practice and scholarship. After a few years of the initial 
introductory stage during the early 2000s, Korean scholars quickly developed their 
unique missional ecclesiology from a Korean perspective. Korean missional ecclesi-
ology was birthed from the realization that the Korean church is situated in a very 
different context from the Western world. Missional ecclesiology arose in the West 
from the acute realization that the gospel needs to interact missionally with a highly 
secularized post-Christian culture, Korean missional ecclesiology emerged from a 
totally different situation, especially in its relationship with surrounding cultures.



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Ecclesial Futures – 2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

In the pre-Christianized culture of modern Korean society, Korean Protestant 
churches were segregated from their wider society for a variety of reasons. One of 
them is the theological stronghold of a dualistic worldview that creates such segre-
gation. Another reason comes from the contextual factor in which Korean churches 
are located. Being a minority in society during the early period of Korean Christianity, 
the church had to struggle for its own survival. As a result, a strong sense of Chris-
tian identity was often identified with a sense of belonging over against the wider 
majority. Furthermore, due to the rapid modernization and urbanization of Korea, 
people often suffered from rootlessness and social dislocation, and the local church 
was able to provide identity, community and therefore, this same sense of belonging. 
In developing Korean missional ecclesiology, Kook-Il Han has described this unique 
centripetal and attractional approach in Korean churches as the paradigm of “Noah’s 
ark” where the church provides safety from the wider world and which soon became 
the undergirding paradigm of Korean Protestant churches. There are positive sides to 
“Noah’s ark”, such as the strong commitment of church members to the local church 
as well as a strong sense of identity, as we have noted above. In the case of Korean 
Christians, the communal sense of belonging was often manifested most clearly in 
important moments within members’ lives. For example, on occasions of new births, 
weddings and funerals in the family, the local churches became the main support 
system of the communal Korean lifestyle. When unique contextual factors coincided 
with more overtly theological approaches, the paradigm of Noah’s ark also produced 
a sense of exclusion as a side effect. For this reason, while the Christians in Korean 
churches have strong commitments to their local church, the segregation of faith 
and lifestyle is apparent. In this situation, Korean Christianity needs a fresh view of 
missional ecclesiology that is different from the way in which Western churches need 
a new missional ecclesial approach. Understanding the context, missional ecclesi-
ology should be manifested differently according to the situations in which believers 
live.

From the turn of the twenty-first century, while more research on Korean missional 
ecclesiology has developed in academic circles, there was also a booming of the 
missional church movement in Korean Protestant churches at a more popular and 
practice-based level. Numerous books on missional churches were produced for 
local pastors during the last decade in Korea. Among them are publications by the 
first generation of scholars of the Korean missional movement, including Kook-Il Han, 
Hu-Chun Lee, Hyung-Geun Choi, Dong-Kyu Choi, Seuk-Jae Jun, Byung-Bae Hwang 
and others. However, since many of these publications were written in Korean; they 
are not available to international scholars. There are only a few articles published in 
English, but they are rather scattered in various journals. We believe that this project 
is one of the first major issues in which Korean missional ecclesiology has been dealt 



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Ecclesial Futures – 2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

with extensively in a single academic journal. We think this is only the beginning, and 
there will be more publications on Korean missional ecclesiology in the future.

In this issue, Seung-Hyun (Nathan) Chung proposes to reflect on missional eccle-
siology starting from the theology of creation. Chung carefully investigates the 
missional church movement in Korea during the last two decades. Reviewing the 
current discussion about missio Dei in Korea and applying the creation theology of 
Jürgen Moltmann. Chung argues that the missional ecclesiology in Korea should 
include the theology of creation by using the cases of Kong3al Community and Ilbeot 
Church located in Gang-hwa Island as examples.

Sung-Hyuk Nam deals with missional ecclesiology from digital mission discourse. 
He argues, while online churches are prevalent in Korea, there is insufficient under-
standing of ways to meet the younger generation of non-believers in the metaverse. 
Since online churches generally operate in the analog paradigm, there is a massive 
gap between the metaverse and the younger generation in the digital paradigm. 
Critical contextualization is still necessary in approaching the metaverse as a 
digital mission field. Nam proposes that Korean churches need to understand the 
metaverse as a space of mission and coexistence.

Bokyoung Park searches for new ways of missional engagement during the time 
of the Covid-19 pandemic and afterwards in Korea. She surveyed three congrega-
tions as case studies of how local congregations responded to their missional tasks 
during the pandemic. With some preliminary assessments from these case studies, 
she suggests three ways of missional engagement through the local congregation 
in Korea, that is, to engage in personal fellowship using narratives, to perform a 
habitual ethical lifestyle, and to embrace the practice of hospitality.

Bright Myeong-Seok Lee argues that the decline in social trust in the Korean Prot-
estant church is a significant social issue that requires attention and action. In his 
paper, Lee examines that one of the factors of decline may be found in the previous 
dominant method of discipleship training. By using a case study of Suwonsung 
Church that demonstrates the effectiveness of its discipleship training and its conse-
quent impact on social trust, Lee suggests missional discipleship as a way to over-
come church decline. He recommends discipleship which seeks to create a more 
engaging and inclusive environment that inspires the church to lead and participate 
in community service.

Seonyi Lee examines the Nasom Community for Mongolian Migrants as a model 
for missional church in Korea. Analyzing the situation of Mongolian migrants in 
South Korea, she reviews the missionary vision and missionary strategies of Nasom 



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Ecclesial Futures – 2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

Community and how they are implemented in practice. She argues that Nasom 
Community exhibits the missionary potential of the Korean church for Asia mission.

Hyeong-Kyoon Kim explores how Korean immigrant churches in Aotearoa New 
Zealand can be balanced in their view between missions (plural) and Mission 
(singular). Employing interviews and qualitative methodology, Kim concludes that 
missional understanding can be a trigger to interacting between visible belonging as 
missions and invisible belonging as Mission through three missional concepts: the 
purposed, progressed and experienced aspects of mission itself. He also suggests 
practical ways that Korean churches in Aotearoa New Zealand can balance missions 
and Mission by following these three missional aspects.

An-Wei Tan argues small missional churches are a helpful alternative in over-
coming the problem of the current decline in Korean Protestant churches – espe-
cially the much larger ones. As a bi-vocational minister who started Café Underwood 
and ministers with Chinese students in Korea, Tan examines how Korean Protes-
tant churches faced the new phenomenon of “believing without belonging” and 
the increase of bi-vocational ministers in general. To respond to this situation, Tan 
argues that the small missional church provides a helpful alternative to the decline 
of Korean Protestant churches.

In this issue, many of the contributors are emerging scholars, taking their rightful 
place in the global scholarship of missiology represented in this journal. The Korea 
IAMS Fellowship assisted in editorial help for these articles. As the leaders of Korea 
IAMS Fellowship, we are thankful to God that we were able to give them an oppor-
tunity to widen their scholarly opportunities through this assistance. Moreover, in 
this issue, we tried to provide concrete cases of local churches with an analytical 
view of Korean missional ecclesiology so that these articles showcase how Korean 
missional ecclesiology has been implemented in local churches. In Korean Protes-
tantism, the vitality of the local churches and the strong commitment of Christians to 
their churches are notably famous. For this reason, most of the writings are field-ori-
ented approaches, and we have avoided being purely theoretical in our discussion 
of missional ecclesiology. We hope that this will give readers more opportunities to 
catch a glimpse of the Korean missional church movement.

Two small editorial notes need to be made. The first concern is that throughout the 
issue, the word “Korea” is meant to be limited to South Korea. All articles deal with 
the situation of South Korean churches. The second is that the whole study deals 
with Protestant churches in Korea. Therefore, “Korean churches” refers to the Prot-
estant churches in this issue. It is also important to note that some of writings have 



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Ecclesial Futures – 2023 – Volume 4 – Issue 1

already been published in Korean and have been translated, peer reviewed and 
revised to be available to English-language international scholarship.

In closing, we want to acknowledge that the last twenty years of struggle by Korean 
missiologists to formulate a missional ecclesiology fitting the Korean soil has resulted 
in a strong missional church movement in Korea. This issue is a small achievement in 
the larger journey of constructing a contextualization of missional ecclesiology that 
fits the Korean context. In this issue, it is true that the missional church movement has 
crossed over various denominations in Korea, including Methodists as well as Holi-
ness church traditions. All contributors to this issue come from Protestant churches 
and mainly from the Presbyterian denomination. We hope that academic inquiries 
related to missional ecclesiology as well as the ministerial formation of missional 
ecclesiology continue to develop in the Korean context as well as to communicate 
with the rest of the world.

A note of thanks from the Co-editor, Nigel Rooms
It has been a joy to see this project come to birth, especially the growth in confi-
dence that the contributors have achieved in working and publishing in English, the 
(hegemonic) need for which, I recognize, does unhelpfully, for emerging scholars 
from places like Korea, restrict their reach and development. Bokyoung and Seonyi 
deserve a big round of applause from our international readers for keeping going 
when things were, understandably difficult. I want to personally thank them here for 
their hard and committed work to bring this issue into being. The issue as a whole, I 
trust, stands as an important contribution to missional ecclesiology from our sisters 
and brothers in South Korean churches and their diaspora.

About the authors
Bokyoung Park teaches missiology at the Presbyterian University and Theological 
Seminary in Seoul, Korea. She is also serving as President of the International Associ-
ation for Mission Studies (IAMS) from 2022 to 2026, and she is the founding President 
of Korea IAMS Fellowship. Parkbokyoung718@gmail.com

Seonyi Lee teaches missiology at Honam Theological University and Seminary in 
Gwangju, Korea. She serves as an academic dean of Korea IAMS Fellowship as well 
as the convener of Gender in Mission group in IAMS. She is also the editor-in-chief 
of Theology of Mission, the academic journal of the Korean Association of Mission 
Studies. Seonyilee@gmail.com

mailto:Parkbokyoung718@gmail.com
mailto:Seonyilee@gmail.com

