South Koreans grieve the slaying of a pastor in Afghanistan and now question overseas mission work by Korean Protestant Churches.

Taliban rebels in Afghanistan killed Reverend Bae Hyeong-gyu on July 25. His bullet-riddled body was found in Ghazni province in Afghanistan, six days after they kidnapped him and 22 other South Koreans, 18 women and four men.

All the hostages belong to Saemmul Community Church in Seongnam, near Seoul, where Reverend Bae was vice-pastor. The Protestants were in Afghanistan to provide free medical and educational services. They arrived in the Muslim country on July 13 and were to leave July 23.

Auxiliary Bishop Hyginus Kim Hee-joong of Kwangju, president of the Korean bishops' Committee for Promoting Christian Unity and Interreligious Dialogue, sent a condolence letter to Reverend Kwon Oh-sung, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Korea, on July 26. He wrote: "I offer deep condolences to his bereaved family and Church community. I also pray to God for the safe return home of the 22 young volunteers."

The Christian Council of Korea, an umbrella group of conservative Protestant Churches, released a statement on July 26 expressing sorrow over Reverend Bae's death. Besides urging Christians to pray for the other captives' safe return, it demands restraint of Church social-work activities in dangerous places and appropriate safety measures for all overseas Church aid workers.

The Taliban Islamic extremists threaten to kill the hostages if the Afghan government fails to release the same number of Taliban prisoners in exchange. The Taliban that ruled most of Afghanistan until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 also demands the immediate withdrawal of 200 South Korean non-combat troops serving as medics and engineers. They are set to return home in December.

Local media are debating the "hot controversy" among Koreans about reckless overseas mission work by Protestant Churches. Korean-language newspapers such as Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun say in their editorials that aggressive mission work undertaken by Korean Protestants is "inappropriate."

Benedict Park Young-dae, director of lay-run Woori Theology Institute, told UCA News on July 23, "I feel pity, but Protestant Churches need to review their unfriendly mission attitude to other religions."

"Protestant Churches may tacitly regard the brutal death as martyrdom," he added, "but I think he (Reverend Bae) is just a victim of Protestant Churches' overseas mission policy." The Churches should review their mission policy in accord with the prevalent culture and religion of a particular area, he said.

Monica Lee Ji-yun, a 32-year-old office worker, told UCA News she feels deep sorrow "for the innocent death," but questions the reckless missionary activities of the kidnapped group. "Their missionary work was disguised in the name of volunteer service," she said, so she is also wondering if their short stay affected the life of the Afghans.

However, Son Jung-eun, a member of Somang Presbyterian Church in Seoul who did two-week mission trips to Taiwan and India last year, argues that mission work must continue because it is "a must for Christians."

Witnessing to faith in one's daily lives may be the best way to do mission work, she told UCA News on July 26, but it is hard to obtain conversions this way. "So, we need to go out to just sow the seeds of evangelization. The Holy Spirit will grow the seeds."

Imm Min-hyuk, a 34-year-old office worker who professes no religion, agrees that Protestants need to do mission work. "However, they should have paid more respect to the culture and life of the country (Afghanistan)," he told UCA News on July 27. "Unlike South Korea, where religious plurality is admitted, Islam is their culture and life in Muslim countries. It would be better (for Protestants) to spread their truth in a passive way than by offensive and direct mission work," he said.

As of 2006, according to the Korea World Missions Association, Korean Protestants Churches dispatched 14,086 missioners overseas, including some to Islamic countries that ban Christian missionary work in their territories.

Source: UCAN

Click here to return to homepage

by Maryknoll Father William Grimm

When missionary work resumed in Japan in the 19th century, after being illegal for more than two centuries, the task taken up by foreign missioners and the Japanese who joined them as clergy, catechists and religious was that of setting up a local Church.

To that end, they built churches and institutions and set up parishes, vicariates and dioceses around the country.

That style of mission in Japan lasted until the decade following World War II, by which time the normal structures of a national Church were in place, including a native clergy and hierarchy. The work of missioners in Japan had reached a successful conclusion. The goals that motivated their work for nearly a century had been achieved.

However, success brought on a crisis, even though that crisis might not have been widely recognized.

Pioneering became maintenance as more and more domestic and foreign missioners (especially priests) became pastoral workers, supplementing (and largely duplicating) the efforts of diocesan clergy. The work of missionary priests became increasingly defined in terms of pastoral work with -- it was hoped and expected -- a mission thrust, rather than missionary work per se. For men whose basic vocation was evangelization, mission ad gentes became ancillary to their work within and for already existing Catholic communities. It was as if what had formerly been a tool of evangelization -- parish and institutional activity -- had become the object of their vocation.

Even though there have been repeated calls over the past several years for a renewed commitment throughout the Church to evangelization as proclamation, the embarrassing fact is that few, if any, seem sure of what doing evangelization today entails.

We are, as it were, so out of practice that we keep repeating what has been done, hoping that if we do it often enough and long enough it will once again bear the kind of fruit it has not borne in years. In fact, the number of baptisms continues to decline. As the large number of Japanese Catholics baptized in the 1950s and 1960s die without replacements, the Church here will soon enter a steep decline.

Even those who are "professionals" in evangelization, the foreign missioners, are at a loss. Our successes in the past have led us into a sort of dead end. The work being done is valuable, but the suspicion grows that something more is needed, something that missioners should be doing.

Although the Church in Japan is established, the need for pioneering has not ended. The ripe field remains, but it is outside the parishes and other structures of the Church. Our challenge is to find ways in which missioners (both foreign and domestic) can once again involve themselves with the larger Japanese society in ways that introduce people to Christ and his Church. Models are few, so what is needed more than anything else is a spirit of adventuresome experimentation.

That experimentation must be based upon the fact that the Japanese Catholic Church already exists and has primary responsibility for the evangelization of Japan. Therefore, any attempts to develop new modes of missionary presence must be formulated and actualized in conjunction with the Church here, involving not only "professional" missioners but also the laity, clergy, hierarchy and Religious engaged in other tasks. The missioners must see their vocation as animating and facilitating the entire local Church in fulfilling the mission mandate of the Lord.

But the problem remains: what practical steps can be taken?

A problem that has lasted the better part of a century and has become entrenched in the practices and attitudes of the Church in Japan will not easily be dealt with, let alone solved. However, unless the bishops, clergy, Religious and laity make a priority of the search for new ways to fulfill the Church's ancient vocation to proclaim Christ, the future of the Church in Japan is bleak.

Might not the same be said of the Church in other nations of Asia?



Maryknoll Father William Grimm is editor-in-chief of Katorikku Shimbun, Japan's Catholic weekly. UCAN


Click here to return to homepage

“We are working on the necessary documents for the return to Italy of the body of Brother Giorgio Zulianello”, said to MISNA Brother Graziano de Angeli, provincial superior of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in Angola, contacted this morning in Luanda.

Brother Zulianello’s body, explained the Capuchin, is currently at the Sagrado Esperanca Hospital in Luanda.

“We do not know when his body will be able to be brought back to Italy, because some time will be needed for the official papers”, added the Angolan superior of the Capuchins.

In Mbanza Congo, the north-eastern Angolan city (not far from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo) where Friar Zulianello lived, a prayer vigil was held last night by the local population in memory of the Italian missionary, killed in a plane crash along with another four people (three passengers and an elderly man killed in his home when the plane crashed into some buildings while in landing phase).

The residents of Mbanza Congo attended with great emotion a mass celebrated by the Bishop in the Church of the Capuchin missionaries, however not hiding their disappointment that the missionary will be buried in Italy.

Meanwhile, MISNA sources in the past hours said that another two people, including one of the pilots of the Boeing of Angola's state TAAG airline that crashed yesterday on landing in Mbanza Congo, died in hospital from their injuries.

The causes of the crash remain unclear and the local press today reports both the possibility of engine failure and pilot error.

Source: MISNA
Click here to return to homepage