사회적 교회

The Social Church

The church should be social in order to be effective in the community. The author coins a brand-new term, the social church, to emphasize the importance of the social nature of the church and its social responsibility. To be social is to be relational. The author gets the key idea of this article from the following statement of John Wesley(1703-1791). “I shall endeavour to show that Christianity is essentially a social religion, and that to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it.” The emergence of social enterprise in Korea is described as a background of the social church. Chapter 2 treats society and the church. The adjective ‘social’ is analyzed in depth to overcome society-phobia of the church. Instead of social isolation originated from a siege or bunker mentality, active social interaction is strongly recommended. Chapter 3 handles how the missional church could cross over its boundary. Brian D. Russel’s five characteristics of the missional movement is insightful: 1) church as the sent people of God, 2) the world as the locus of ministry, 3) churches as mission outposts, 4) pastor as resident missiologist, 5) new measures for evaluating success. Möbius strip is used as a metaphor for the social church. Chapter 4 deals with Christian social action and the Kingdom of God. After introducing Kenneth Leech’s argument of the social God and Howard A. Snyder’s concept of the Kingdom of God, James Shopshire’s ministry process typology is adopted as a good example of how to become a social church: 1) identify a need problem or issue in community, 2) investigate and analyze economic, political, cultural aspects, 3) study biblical and theological implication, 4) develop a plan of ministry, 5) engage in ministry action, 6) reflection and evaluation of outcomes, 7) renew action plan and engage or go to next level of ministry. The author concludes this article by arguing that secularism can be overcome as long as Christians’ density of love is thick enough. Instead of being afraid of the world, the church should engage in the world as the social church.