공동체를 통한 전도: 역사적·현대적 사례 연구

Abstract

The crisis of the Korean Church in the 21st century is the crisis of evangelism. Churches should more focus on the restoration of communality rather than seeking to a new way of evangelism. Since conversion is process, effective evangelism is possible where the genuine koinonia exists. This paper dealt with historical and modern cases of the evangelism through communities such as St. Patrick's Celtic monastic community, Wesley's class meeting, and Wooridle church's mokjang. In common, those three cases proves that communities in the church particularly small groups played a crucial role in evangelism; after experiencing Christian communities non-Christians become Christians like "belonging comes before believing." Through the case study of those three cases I found implications that the church ought to provide dynamic small groups having active sharing and fellowship based on the word of God; the church should have discipleship training system that produces serving small group leaders who shows exemplary lives rather than intellectual and skillful to teach; meeting at home providing informal setting with the meal are more effective; having couples together in small groups is beneficial to stimulate men's participation. Discipleship training system should promote small groups and pursue life-changing instead of delivering knowledge; in sermon, sermons emphasizing applications in how to apply the word of God into our daily lives are effective. Even though this study provides many implications, evangelism is about changed life (being) through the restore of communality of the church rather than about methodology (doing). In specific, for the restore of communality small groups, discipleship training systems, and sermons should have organic and inter-supportive relationship with each other.