한국 군선교의 문제점들에 대한 기독교교육적 모색

Abstract

Today, as it is becoming more difficult to evangelize in the reality of Korean church, the number of young Christians is decreasing rapidly. Korean church is facing difficulties in evangelizing youths, and the fact that the age groups leaving the Protestant Church are those in the late 10s to 30s implies that youths are turning away from the church. Even though people in their 20s and 30s take up a big part of Korean society, their number is highly insufficient in Korean church today. For example, J Methodist Church has 2,000 people attending the Sunday service for adults, while only 30-40 youths attend. In S Presbyterian Church, an average of 5,000 prime-aged believers attend the service, while only approximately 150 youths are attending. With the difficulty in evangelizing youths and the remarkable decrease in the number of young Christians, missionary work in the military is the most important alternative as well as the shortcut to national evangelization. Missionary work in the military is an actual act of preaching the gospels and evangelizing so that 600,000 soldiers in Korea confess Jesus as the Christ and become the people of God. The Korean military is where healthy men of age 18 or above in Korea must offer service for 21 months (in the case of the army), providing an opportunity for evangelization of youths. Missionary work in the military has tremendous responsibilities in terms of Korean church and mission of God, but there is an issue of strategy for missionary work in the military regarding what approach can be effective. The Korean military is changing rapidly today. Soldiers no longer live an army life or receive training under coercive atmosphere or by force as they did in the past. This also became natural in religion or religious activities. This indicates that soldiers can choose their religion by their own decision and participate in religious events, and that they are no longer forced to have a certain religion by others. Thus, it has become an extremely important task for the Korean church to effectively preach the gospels to soldiers during missionary work in the military. It is necessary to seek solutions in terms of Christian education in order to succeed in missionary work in the military by effectively preaching the gospels of God. Therefore, discussing how to do that in terms of missionary work in the military through this study is significant in finding efficient strategies for missionary work in the military. This essay first mentions the characteristics of the military society in order to properly understand the military and explains the problems of missionary work in the Korean military under such unique circumstances. After that, it aims to find solutions to missionary work in the military, and promote Christian education with a new approach.