한국교회 선교에서 연합 운동의 필요와 대안

Abstract

David B. Barrett said in 1988 that most of the global plans to evangelize the world would be failed unless they resolved the problems of competition and overlapping of Christian resources. Since that time,Lausanne II and AD 2000 Movement placed collaboration as a central goal of missionary strategies. Cooperation and networking become the major talking points in the 21st global missionary endeavor. The purpose of this paper is to study the needs and proposals of cooperative movements in Korean Missionary works with the current of the time. However, ecumenical controversies on oneness of the church is not the concern of this study. The paper limits its scope only to the practical and strategic level. Typical Korean missionary works are individualistic. It seems to come from church individualism. Egoistic denominationalism could be a root of church individualism. Due to a such influence, missionary works of Korean churches are individualistic and independent, and seem to be extremely self-willed. They are strong in competition, but weak in team-works or cooperation. The writer analyzes the problems and presents proposals in six different areas. Those are as follows; (1) Transfer from works of individual churches to cooperation in denominations; (2) Cooperation among Korean missionaries; (3) Cooperation between national churches and missionaries; (4) Cooperation among international mission agencies;(5) Synergy between church structures and para-church structures; (6)Cooperation between missionaries and Korean churches in overseas. Generally, denominational level of cooperation in mission is stable in Korea. However, some individual churches insist to work independently. Missions require highly strategic level of knowledge which goes beyond the ability of individual church. There are understandable reasons, but cooperation is inevitable. Korean missionaries are generally not succeed in the area of teamwork due to sense of entitlement as “ministers of the Lord.” There are four different levels of teamwork; networking, cooperation,coordination, and collaboration. It might better start from the lowest level and move up to higher level of teamwork. All works of missionaries have to be transferred someday to nationals. The writer proposes three different steps to transfer works. In international level, Korean missionaries are quite weak in cooperation. The suggestions of William Taylor about diverse kinds of partnership could be applied in our works. Para-church structure is not rivalry with church structure. Each structure has to recognize its own limitation. Finally Korean churches in the overseas must be recognized as great potential resources in missions. Cooperation in missions is not an option. Due to our selfish and sinful nature or immaturity, cooperation movement should not be hampered.