News
Churches in Korea who used to be at the "receiving end" of mission efforts are being transformed to become a "missioning" or sending church, according to representatives of the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) who met with WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia in Geneva, Switzerland on 14 October.
The PCK moderator, Rt. Rev. Dr Sam Hwan Kim, also spoke of a "great debt" the Korean churches, government and people had towards the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the global ecumenical movement.
Kim explained that the Korean churches had received not just missionaries but financial and moral support and solidarity when they were struggling under colonization and later under dictatorship.
Kim visited the WCC offices along with the PCK general secretary Rev. Dr Seong Gi Cho and a group of Presbyterian pastors representing an informal network called WCC Friends in Korea. The group reaffirmed the church's support to WCC programmes, both with financial and human resources.
In the discussion with the WCC general secretary, the PCK moderator highlighted the interest of his church in WCC activities on evangelization and spirituality, such as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, as well as the PCK commitment to work closer with the churches in the global South, in a multilateral way, through the WCC.
Kobia stressed the role the PCK can play in fostering global partnerships between the mainline Protestant churches and the Pentecostal or Evangelical churches.
On Wednesday 15 October, the group also visited the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, since ecumenical formation and theological education are key issues for the pastors of WCC Friends in Korea, most of whom work in very large congregations or "mega churches".
With more than two million members, the Presbyterian Church of Korea is one of the largest denominations in the country dating back to 1884 when the first Korean Christian who was baptized in China by a Scottish missionary founded a church in North-Eastern Korea.
Other WCC member churches in Korea are the Anglican Church of Korea, the Korean Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea.
