Page 15 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

experienced rapid growth for more than a century, a growth that arose out of the first mission

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work done there by missionaries in 1884.

Since the last decade, however, Korean churches have encountered “a stagnation and fall-

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off” in membership and attendance. The ministry of the Word was one of the strongest driving

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forces of the phenomenal growth of Christianity in Korea. One survey says that preaching is the

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L. George Paik, The History of Protestant Missions in Korea 1832-1910 (PyongYang,
Korea: Union Christian College Press, 1929), 89. On September 22, 1884, Horace N. Allen, a
medical doctor came to Korea as the first missionary sent by the Foreign Mission Institute of
United Presbyterian Church of North America. Yet, it was not until after the entrance of three
missionaries that Protestant missions actually started in Korea. Mr. H. G.

Underwood as a Presbyterian, and Mr. and Mrs. Appenzeller as Methodists entered
Korea on April 5, 1885. As Baptist missionary, Mr. Malcom C. Fenwick, sent by a Baptist
church in Canada, came to Korea to start a Baptist mission in 1889. For the Baptist’s early
mission in Korea and the growth of the Korean Baptist Convention, see Seung Jin Kim, “A
History of Southern Baptist Mission Work in Korea: Its Impact on Korean Baptist Church
Growth” (Ph.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1995). For the growth of
Korean Church up to 1960, see Roy E. Shearer, Wildfire: Church Growth in Korea (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1966). See also Donald N. Clark,
Christianity in Modern Korea (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986).

5 For him, Young-Gi Hong, “Revisiting Church Growth in Korean Protestantism: A
Theological Reflection,” International Review of Mission 89 no. 353 (April 2000): 190-202, “In
the 1980s the average annual growth in membership was 4.4 percent. Government statistics show
that the growth rate was 3.9 in 1999, 0.6 percent in 1992 and minus 4 percent in 1993….A Major
Presbyterian church in Korea reported a decrease of 1.8 percent in membership in 1998.”

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Changshik Lee, Hankuk Kyohoe-eui Uje-wa Onul (Korean church, yesterday and today)
(Seoul: The Christian Literature Society of Korea, 1977), 30. He introduces one of the policies of
the first Korean missionaries, that “Preaching is planting the church.” See also Chang Bok
Chung, Sulkyo Sayukron (Theory of preaching ministry) (Seoul: The Christian Literature Society,
1992), 135; idem, Homiletic Lecture (Seoul: Yang-Suh Gack, 1982) 3. He says, “Surely the
Korean Protestant Church was rooted into the Word of God that was proclaimed through the
preaching ministry. Because of the root, it could endure the persecutions and grow and bear
miraculous fruits in mission history”.

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