세계 기독교 상황과 한국 교회

Currents of World Christianity and the Korean Church

From the long history of Christianity we may identify some currents that have flowed strongly in the past and which may enable us to discern some of the directions for mission in a new century. Christianity seemed to most people to be a Western religion, indeed the religion of the West; but now Christianity is entering a new phase of its existence, as a mainly non-western religion. Put differently, the worldwide resurgence of Christianity coincides with the waning of the religion in what is now a post- Christian West. Thus, we could see that Christian advance in the world is not progressive, but serial. Given the changing face of the Christian faith and the globalization of Christianity, the writer following Lesslie Newbigin (1989) and Philip Jenkins (2002) asserts that the churches that have grown most rapidly in the global South such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America are far more traditional, morally conservative, evangelical, and apocalyptic than their northern counterparts. Western liberal scholars have recently declared that Christianity is declining, or that it must modernize its beliefs or risk being abandoned altogether. However the writer contends that just the opposite is true. Regarding the issue of national evangelization and world mission as the most essential tasks of the Korean Church at the moment, after evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the Church, the writer has provided some suggestions. Finally, as a conclusion, given the fact that at different periods, different areas of the world have taken leadership in the Christian mission, the writer emphasizes the necessity of self-reform of the Korean Church which has the largest church in the world Paul Yonggi Cho's Full Gospel Church.