변화하는 다문화사회에서 한국교회 선교의 전략과 과제

Abstract

Mission is the Church’s most fundamental calling. When a church works to fulfill its missionary calling, the community works to form strategies while considering the importance, urgency and efficiency of its mission. When we review ecclesiastic history, it is clear that the Church has gone through many changes to reach its modern form. William Kerry began the age of coastal mission, the first epoch of Christian mission, and Hudson Taylor started the age of inland mission. Cameron Townsend who founded Wycliff Bible Translators and Donald McGavran who started the Church Growth Movement, pioneered the third epoch of mission targeting unreached people groups. Following this phase, we have now gone even beyond the fourth epoch of pioneering missions and have reached the age of mission for multinational and multicultural societies. Today the Korean Church requires a more down-to-earth form of mission within two different kinds of multi-cultural societies. The first problem is that the Korean Church must dispatch missionaries to multicultural societies that have formed as an byproduct of globalization, despite the fact that most Koreans have been exposed to only one language and one culture. The rest of the world has already become more multicultural and respective governments are enacting policies that are appropriate for such changes. The second problem is that even Korea is quickly becoming more multicultural and the need for a alternative form of missionary work is necessary. Therefore, this paper will focus on ecclesiastical missionary strategies and tasks that lie ahead. The factors that bring about multicultural societies and many nations’ social integration policies are calling for change in current ecclesiastical missionary work. In order to establish the said new strategy, the main focus must be rooted in the Scriptures. The Bible testifies missional strategies and methods for bringing the Gospel to multicultural societies. For instance, Abraham and Daniel respectively delivered the Good News to multicultural lands such as Canaan and Babylon. In the process, the Bible also contains testimony of social integration policies that act as models for assimilation, syncretism and pluralism. The Bible emphasizes a process of contextualization that maintains the oneness and exclusivity of the Gospel while maintaining a connection with society itself. Mission targeting multicultural societies must be very strategic. Because individual members of such societies mainly come from different nations and cultural backgrounds they tend to form a new group away from their respective fatherlands. Such groups could act like bridges to their countries of origin. The Apostle Paul strategically spread the Gospel to major urban areas home to many different cultures. The reason being that one urban center tends to be connected to many other smaller satellite cities. Likewise, mission has a very deep connection to culture and understanding of culture can be a stepping stone for missionary work. One can discover world views deeply embedded in cultural structures and they often tend to have religious characteristics. Mission in multicultural societies is most effective through a combination of contextual mission and nations’ integration policies and strategic partnerships. In addition, we require a new form of mission training which has a higher focus on understanding languages, religions and cultures.