The Great Revival in Korea 100 years ago doubled church membership, and 40 years ago Louisiana Southern Baptists helped Southern Baptists in Korea increase from about 40 to 600 churches.
PINEVILLE
– The Great Revival in Korea 100 years ago doubled church
membership, and 40 years ago Louisiana Southern Baptists helped
Southern Baptists in Korea increase from about 40 to 600 churches.
That’s according to Louisiana/South Korea: A Baptist Partnership by Oscar Hoffmeyer, Jr..
“They have
visions of [growing like that] again,” said Charles Lowry, a member at
First Pineville and a longtime member of the Cenla/South Korea
Partnership.
The American
contingent of the partnership has been asked to send 10 teams of five
people — including four lay witnesses and one
pastor/preacher/evangelist — to conduct eight-day revivals in several
locations reminiscent of those conducted in the 1970s and ‘80s, when
the number of churches ballooned, Lowry said.
The fall 2007 event is in celebration of the centennial of the Great Revival, and the 40-year anniversary of the partnership.
“We really need
50 people to go,” Lowry said. Already a dozen people have signed up for
the Oct. 22 to Nov. 7 missions trip. The $2,200 cost covers all
expenses, including hotels, travel, and meals.
Lowry welcomes people from all associations and states to join in, he said.
In
addition to dynamic evangelistic services in the churches, participants
can expect to be involved in “finger witnessing” that entails an
American pointing to a passage in a gospel tract as a translator reads
aloud for the person being evangelized, said Carolyn Lowry, who has
participated in many such crusades over the years and who is assisting
her husband in planning the event.
South
Koreans and Louisianans have a long history with one another that began
in the mid-1960s, when O.K. Bozeman, a Baton Rouge businessman, felt
called to missions, specifically Korea, Lowry said.
Bozeman,
who saw a great need and an open door in Korea, contacted Robert L.
Lee, the LBC executive director at the time, and Leonard Sanderson, the
state’s evangelism director. The three agreed to accept an invitation
from the Korea Baptist Convention to begin doing evangelism crusades in
Korea, Lowry said.
The Rev.
Steven No, Korean leader of the partnership and president of the Korean
church development board – equivalent to the SBC’s LifeWay Christian
Resources – came to Louisiana in 1967 and signed the agreement that
bound Louisiana and Korea in evangelism partnership, according to
Hoffermeyer’s book.
The first
major event – the Major Cities Crusades July 5-10, 1970 – involved
about 80 people from Louisiana who conducted crusades in 20 cities, the
book reported. One third of the nation’s population lived in those 20
cities, and a quarter million Koreans attended the crusades, resulting
in more than 11,000 public professions of faith.
“[People]
overflowed the stadiums,” Lowry said. “The response was tremendous.
There was a phenomenal building together of things at that time. Korea
was rebuilding after the [Korean] Conflict, and Americans who came in
were received with open arms. It almost alarmed the missionaries that
the Koreans identified Christianity with Americans. For the first time
in their history, they were experiencing true freedom in their nation.
Any time an American came, or an American team, you could fill up the
auditorium.”
Similar
crusades were conducted in 1980, and during a planning session for that
crusade in 1979, No expressed a desire to develop a Sunday school
program. By 1981, Lowry was the Louisiana church programs division
director over Sunday school, discipleship training, and family
ministry, he said. As such, he was the person No began to work with on
the Sunday school plan.
“We
agreed to make some exploratory visits to see what might be possible,”
Lowry said. “We discovered a great interest in having Sunday
school-type programs, but [the Koreans] had no curriculum, no
associational leaders, and so we had to begin at a very elemental
stage.”
An
American committee, including the Lowrys, revised LifeWay’s simplest
curriculum into a test unit aimed at five Korean age groups, from
preschoolers to adults. Their Korean counterparts translated the
material and revised it to make it culturally appropriate.
In January
1983, more than 1,600 leaders from churches throughout Korea met in
Seoul, South Korea, for a Sunday School Leadership Convention where
Americans taught them the test unit, Lowry said.
At the close of
the convention, attendees insisted Louisianans create curriculum on an
on-going basis. Though the request was denied, Louisiana Southern
Baptists provided Koreans with sets of curriculum materials, including
artwork, at no charge and copyright free, for them to re-format.
The Lowrys and
others traveled back to Korea in later years to train Koreans to write
their own curriculum. At one point, No told Charles Lowry that the
circulation of the Sunday school material was around 100,000 copies for
each issue, and they had the finest Bible teaching curriculum in the
Asian world, Lowry said. In addition, No had listed Carolyn as the
mother of Sunday school curriculum in Korea on a plaque in the church
development board at the Korea Baptist Convention.
In 1985, the
Louisiana/Korea “Evangelism Through the Sunday School” crusade enrolled
6,948 unbelievers in Bible study and reported 1,470 professions of
faith.
The Louisiana
partnership lasted 10 years, Lowry said, with many crusades. The 1990
crusade – final project of the partnership – focused on starting 20
churches, Hoffmeyer wrote.
As of 2006, 19 of those churches were still in existence, Lowry said.
Though LBC did
not renew the partnership with Korea in 1991, the North Rapides
and Central Louisiana Baptist Associations did agree to a limited
partnership in 1999, Lowry said. Later, Big Creek joined the
partnership.
The Cenla/Korea
Mission Partnership includes two projects: evangelism crusades and Camp
USA, which brings Korean children to Cenla for vacation Bible school
and American culture and language training.
“Camp USA will
bring approximately 55 Koreans to Cenla this July 22-August 3,” Lowry
said. The event is made possible in part by VBS offerings from Cenla
churches.
The
upcoming fall crusades are open to anyone who is interested, Lowry
said. For more information, contact Lowry at 318.715.6198 or
cclowry@aol.com. David Cranford, pastor at Tioga First Baptist and
co-chairman for the Korea Partnership, also can provide information.
Cranford can be reached at 318.640.4760 or
d.cranford@tiogafbc.com.