Will Urbanology Recover the Resilience of the Korean Church?

Introduction

This article seeks to discover why the Korean church, which has made tremendous efforts to grow and has grown for the past 150 years, is slowing down in the face of contemporary urbanization. It also discusses whether the church’s obsession with growth has ironically led to its deceleration by asking the following questions: What factors have helped the church grow in the past but have become burdensome in an increasingly urbanized world? What are the missiological reasons why these factors have become negative in an urbanized world, and what new perspectives and methods should the Korean church adopt to restore the missiological balance?

This article uses Charles Van Engen’s theory of mission theology, a multi- and interdisciplinary enterprise, to address the missiological imbalances in the Korean church. Van Engen contends that the three areas of biblical foundation, ecclesiological understanding, and contextual understanding are key elements in bringing theology into balance. ¹ With the help of its traditional conservatism, the Korean church still has a good enough emphasis on biblical and church-centered life, but has refrained from a contextual approach. This trend has caused the church to underdevelop its understanding of context and to isolate itself from its ever-changing society. For this reason, this article will limit its research to the church’s contextual understanding as a crucial variable for restoring the church’s vitality. To this end, this article will examine what recent developments in urbanology tell us about the history of the early Korean churches. Readers will see how this urbanological lens provides a framework for interpreting the history of the Korean church and why the benefits of church growth became burdensome in history. ²

The growth factors of the urban churches

The factors that led to the growth of the early church in Korea have been well studied. Research has shown that the growth was due to the collapse of Korea’s traditional philosophical and social systems at that time, the appeal to Koreans of Christianity’s high morality and respect for human dignity, the lack of hostile experience with the West in history, Holy Spirit and prayer movements such as the Great Revival of 1905–1907, and good mission strategy by missionaries using theories such as the Nevius Method. ³ These factors ultimately made Korean Christians church-centered, and the accumulated energy provided a powerful foundation for the church to grow. The growth factors of the urban church were not that different from those of the rural church at the time. From the beginning of Christianity until 1920, Korea had an urbanization rate of no more than 3.4 percent, ⁴ which means that the early Korean church was largely rural by today’s standards. However, some factors contributed more to the growth of the urban church. Some of the factors listed below were initially growth factors, but as urbanization progressed, they ironically became burdensome to the church or caused it to become unable to adapt to change.

First, national urbanization policies contributed greatly to the growth of urban churches. Japan promoted urbanization as part of its colonial rule, resulting in an urbanization rate that rose from just 3.4 percent in 1920 to 13.7 percent in 1944. After World War II, Koreans who had been dispersed throughout Asia as part of Japan’s war strategy returned, and many of them settled in cities. After the Korean War, people also resettled in cities, and by 1955, the urban population had grown to about 24.5 percent. Later, the South Korean government pushed urbanization in earnest, raising the urbanization rate from 28% in 1960 to over 70% since the 1990s. ⁵ This urbanization policy resulted in the movement of large numbers of Christians from rural areas to urban churches.

Second, by the time the missionaries arrived, Korea’s urban environment had created a population of early adopters ⁶ that provided good conditions for Christianity to take hold. Korean cities were the first to receive Western civilization from Japan and China, so Koreans were less resistant to new religions and ideas. In fact, urban Koreans had a great respect for Western education, ideas, economics, and technology, making them easy early adopters. The majority of missionaries were based in large cities such as Seoul, Pyongyang, Gwangju, Wonsan, Uiju, and Incheon, where they were exposed to Western culture, so they were naturally able to work with the early adopters.

Third, the urban mission model introduced by Western missionaries was well suited to the Korean situation, which led to even stronger church growth. The large number of peasants who came to the cities mostly settled in the slums and became low-paid workers. Their lives were often miserable and in desperate need of help. Missionaries at that time were familiar with the American and European Second Industrial Revolution (1865–1900), the Long Depression (1873–1879), and the Great Depression (1929–1939), and these experiences motivated missionaries to conduct various educational and charitable activities. ⁷ Such urban ministry models accelerated a positive image of the church and grew throughout Korean society.

Fourth, Koreans’ high grid and high group tendencies contributed positively to church growth. According to Mary Douglas’s grid and group theory, Koreans, like other ethnic groups in northeast Asia, fall into the category of high grid society in their social distribution. ⁸ This tendency creates a strict and complex social hierarchy. In addition, the influence of Confucianism promotes a spirit of loyalty and filial piety that permeates all aspects of Korean life. ⁹ This background is evident throughout Korea—people are generally loyal to authority figures and classical knowledge and experience, and they revere ancient wisdom, ancestors, elders, and leaders. This tendency has also contributed to the hierarchical structure of Korean Christians, who wait for the decision of the leaders even in matters of detail, respect the older leaders, and repeat what they say instead of creating something new. The traditions were able to bring stability and unity to the church, but they also explain why, even in the midst of rapid social change, the church continues to re-enact outdated patterns and obsessively fixate the church inwardly instead of actively transforming and interacting with the outside world.

Koreans also fall into the high group category according to grid and group theory, and this also contributed to the early growth of the church. ¹⁰ This high group tendency not only makes people highly aggregative, but also leads to a clear distinction between them and us. Because of this strong internal trust system, family and kinship-based network evangelism became popular and contributed enormously to church growth. Based on the dualistic faith tradition, the strong group tendency led the early Korean Christians to build a strong believers’ group and separate themselves from the outside.

Today, however, this hierarchical and group-centered church growth model faces great challenges in the face of urbanization and global non-contact culture. The impact on the urban church is much more serious as the city becomes the frontline of an open society and egalitarianism and this new trend breaks down the traditional fence of churches.

Fifth, the spirit of success, which is deeply rooted in the Korean psyche, became a driving force for leaders to lead believers to be more church-centered. Pragmatic Confucianism ¹¹ has convinced Koreans that to be successful, one must be able to take care of four areas in the following order: self, family, nation, and the world. ¹² This idea has inspired East Asians to live humbly yet pragmatically, to plan their lives for success, to sacrifice today for tomorrow, and to dream of eventually ruling the whole world. This spirit of living for success, combined with the high grid tendency of Korean culture, has instilled in Koreans an obsession with competition and success for the sake of their group.

Such a spirit was no exception in the church. Because church growth is often seen as a sign of a pastor’s success and perhaps God’s blessing, churches have naturally put all their efforts into growth. Urbanization also challenges churches in the city that have been driven by the spirit of success. People are exposed to unlimited global competition, and they put all their energies into success. A large proportion of women have full-time jobs, young people remain single, and the professions are too busy for social advancement. Such a trend directly hits the urban churches because the common contexts between lay believers and church leaders become diminished.

Advantages become burdens

As Korean society became urbanized and transformed into a network society, along with the church-centered lifestyle and dualistic traditions, the traditional elements that served as nourishment for church growth slowly became a burden. With a history of 150 years, the Korean Protestant population grew rapidly from 2 percent of the population in 1945 to 18.4 percent in 1991. ¹³ However, as the urbanization rate increased to 73.8 percent in 1990 and 81.4 percent in 2020, ¹⁴ the church’s growth rate has plateaued: 20 percent of Koreans identified as Protestant in 1995 ¹⁵ and this figure has almost stagnated at 20.3 percent in 2017. ¹⁶ Despite the relentless efforts of the church, its growth rates have declined rapidly.

The influence of the Internet brought an information revolution to urban society, allowing Koreans to have unlimited opportunities, new idea and values, and to collaborate with those who have an unfamiliar background. ¹⁷ These changes posed a great challenge to the traditional church-centered approach to ministry and the leaders who were accustomed to it. This change indicates that shepherds in the city now dramatically lack common ground and empathy for the lives of their sheep. These changes have also diminished the motivators (such as dualism, pessimism, persecution, unstable political climates, poverty, and high grid and group tendency) that initially drove the church-centered lifestyle and fueled growth. Moving into such an urban environment has necessitated rethinking the traditional ministry patterns of the church to be less self-centered, more flexible to change, and more concerned with identifying with the real lives of the sheep.

Three disciplines of urbanology

According to Van Engen, the church must ultimately regain the missiological balance for healthy growth, and the balance must be maintained alongside the knowledge of the world, the Word, and the church. As we have seen, the factors that led to the growth of the Korean church ultimately made the members very church-centered, and this church-centeredness meant that the Korean church was naturally strong in the Word and church area, but not so much in the world area. From the beginning of the church until the end of the Korean War (1950–53), the social network system and lifestyle of the city dwellers did not differ much from that of the rural Koreans, so there was a great deal of cultural resonance between Christians and the surrounding community, even in cities. In this context, interaction with the surrounding community is natural, even if the church doesn’t make a special effort. Furthermore, as cities grew due to the mass migration of peasants, urban churches experienced a revival using the rural style of ministry they had practiced.

However, now that cities are at the forefront of globalization and the cultural characteristics of Koreans mean they are easily enslaved to successism and endless competition, urban churches that focus inwardly can easily become disconnected from the surrounding community, and even church leaders can feel a great disconnect from the daily lives of their members. In this situation, the lack of understanding of the world, i.e. urban people and urban society, creates a missiological imbalance in the ministry of the church. This missiological imbalance means that the church is naturally isolated from its surroundings, which has negative consequences for church growth. In this sense, we will now turn our attention to an academic lens that will enhance the Korean church’s understanding of the world. We will reflect on recent developments of urbanology in sociology, ecology, and anthropology to see if they can be appropriate tools for the church’s contextual interpretation.

First, urban sociological insights can help Korean churches redefine the cities in which they live. Urban sociology studies the social aspects of cities. Thus, it mainly studies the structures, environment and change elements of the city. ¹⁸ Churches have a broader ability to read the city and get a more objective picture of the realities so that they can walk toward the city with the heart of God.

Urban sociology is a branch of sociology that originated in Europe in the nineteenth century. European scholars mainly studied the socio-economic and cultural phenomena of urbanization, such as social stratification, conflict, alienation, and destruction. ¹⁹ In the United States, a group of scholars called the Chicago School made several breakthroughs in urban theories. ²⁰ Unlike earlier Chicago School scholars who had interpreted the city as a single entity, the later Chicago School scholars divided the city into smaller units. They believed that each smaller unit had its own unique dynamics. They also used multiple research methods to uncover the actual dynamics within each unit. As a result, urban sociology continued to develop and served as a diverse social science framework for functional theory, ²¹ urban psychology, urban ecology, ²² and urban structuring. ²³

The past-oriented, inward-looking, text-centered, and lack of contextual understanding of the Korean church has led churches to duplicate the ministries they have been accustomed to in the past, rather than unleashing their creativity. Thus, when pastors plant a new church in a new place, they often ignore the need to understand the people in the new place and their socio-cultural situation and instead replicate their former churches. This tradition of de-emphasizing contextual understanding has left churches clumsy at understanding the people they serve or seeing their surroundings through God’s eyes.

In urban ministry, the first step is to know what God has done and is doing in the city, to see the city as God sees the city, and to know what the church must do to fulfill God’s vision. Urban sociology can provide a lens for Korean churches to interpret the city objectively, to get a big picture of the whole city even before planting new churches, because it can help churches to know the historical meanings of places, the struggles and values of people, and the social dynamics that motivate people to move.

Second, urban ecology can motivate the Korean churches to actively understand their ministry context and to help the churches to change when necessary. This ecological insight can provide a perspective that acknowledges the city as God’s creation and lets the church carry out ministry through the principle of creation. Urban ecology is the study of the city and its surrounding environment through the principles of the living organism, viewing the urban environment as a system that sustains and supports the life of society.

In the early twentieth century, urban ecologists of the Chicago School conceptualized the city as a physical entity and a unit of an organism, a living system in which human beings and other diverse life reside. They also paid attention to the social environment of urban people and their relationship to the moral order. ²⁴ Beginning after World War II, ecologists gradually expanded their areas of interest from the physical dimension to include increasingly large social systems. ²⁵ Recent urban ecology focuses on urban environmental issues, ²⁶ such as urban impacts on biodiversity, ²⁷ climate, and the environment, which are combined with biochemical studies to create a sustainable ²⁸ and remediable urban society. ²⁹ Of course, many ecologists are not even Christians, let alone missiologists. Rather, their theories are based on evolutionary theory and try to understand society from an overly biological perspective, which makes it difficult for the church to apply them directly. Nevertheless, an ecological perspective can help churches move beyond the idea of the city as a place to stay for a while and then leave and be destroyed, to a place of creativity and life.

Such urban ecological insights may help Korean churches gaze beyond internal issues and expand their attention to their surroundings, seeing them as God-given opportunities and resources. It may also help churches see the whole city from God’s perspective by perceiving its surroundings as manageable, transforming, and restoring through the principle of creation and the perspectives of sustainability and life. This perspective fits well with God’s cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28, NASB). Urban ecology may also stimulate the church to realize that the city is more than a temporary place we reside in before moving on to Heaven or just a base camp of evangelism. Instead, it helps us view the city as a place that promotes community sustainability, restoration of humanity, and obedience to the mandate of God. Applying the principle of creation would create tremendous communal opportunities to churches and neighbor communities, allowing them to depend on and coexist with each other in a healthy way. By doing so, the church will recognize itself as a member of its community. The church must genuinely become one with its neighbors, and, to do so, it must become the kingdom of life—the everyday life and the witnessing life. ³⁰ Once the church lives out these principles of creation, it can finally act as salt and light and become a place to share the Gospel, a refuge, and a recovery station for people in the city.

Third, urban anthropology can also help Korean churches understand context because it highlights the importance of subjectivity and uniqueness of city groups. In contrast to urban sociology, urban anthropology divides society into many smaller groups and understands them using a microscopic view.

Urban anthropology originated from studies on urban peasants, issues in non-western cities, and problems of urban life such as poverty, deviance, or minority issues. ³¹ Later, this scope of interest expanded to include urbanization, urban space, social relations, and even globalization. Traditionally, anthropologists conducted their research on the developing world, especially on colonial areas or subjects of war. From the 1930s, however, a few pioneers shifted their research focus toward the cities in the West. ³² Unlike the earlier scholars who viewed the city as one homogeneous entity, these new anthropologists divided urban lives into smaller subgroups. Upon discovering the different cultural dynamics of each subgroup, they eventually defined the city as a “mosaic of social worlds.” ³³ This idea brought these scholars to perceive city groups as living organisms interacting with other groups and developing their own cultures. ³⁴ This subculturalism can help urban churches recognize the diverse groups with different cultures and promote creative ministry rather than simply replicating past methods.

Numerous scholars also contribute to urban anthropology today. ³⁵ Urban anthropology has continually developed its methods for data collection, owing to its motivation toward “theoretical work on urban systems, labor flows, and social networks, the incorporation of political, economic approaches drawn from geography, sociology, political science, and the emergence of the anthropology of space and place.” ³⁶ From the 2000s, urban anthropology “expanded to encompass historical, political, and economic as well as spatial analysis advocating an anthropology of the city, rather than in the city.” ³⁷ Recently, the areas of gender issues, multiculturalism, and ethnonationalism have also caught the attention of urban anthropologists. ³⁸

As urban anthropology heavily associates people and society, it can help the Korean church move away from becoming a superorganism and instead encourage the church to understand the characteristics of the lives, groups, networks, information flows, and changing dynamics in urban settings. This micro approach can also promote the church’s interest in the unique culture of the group. Because every church is in a different context, this concept of the cultural theme can thus embed and clarify the unique, God-given mission to the church. The cultural theme can also help leaders examine issues within their communities and build realistic ministry plans accordingly.

More practically, the following anthropological issues might help Korean churches better understand urban lives. First is understanding the reality of urban life: their changing values, social networks, global environments, and psychological issues. Second is the understanding of urban groups such as kinship, religion, class, and occupation. ³⁹ Third, the urban space and time that reflects worldviews, power, social networks, groups, social classes, and relationships. ⁴⁰ Finally, the Korean church must understand the phenomenon of urban change. ⁴¹ The city constantly changes people’s thoughts, desires, and abilities, causing them to change themselves accordingly and prove themselves through competence, success, and self-actualization.

Missiological implications

This article began with the premise that a lack of understanding of context is the reason for the stagnation of Korean churches facing urbanization. In order to better understand the context, this article proposes to pay attention to the three disciplines of urbanology: urban sociology; urban ecology; urban anthropology. The missiological implications of addressing the three urbanologies are as follows.

First, each of the three disciplines of urbanology can provide unique and meaningful insights for restoring the inherited growth factors of the Korean church and its relationship with the community. The objective and macroscopic concepts of urban sociology can help the Korean church overcome prejudices and unrealistic views of the city and instead interpret it through the eyes of God. Through urban ecology, the church can perceive and respond to the city through the principle of creation and cultural mandate. This ecological perspective also helps the church address its role as a member of the community. Urban anthropology can inspire the church to address the cultural issues of groups and could help create an appropriate contextual message and ministry to the people.

The insights of the three disciplines complement each other and can broaden the scope of Korean urban mission. They also help Christians to define their ministry philosophy through God’s eyes instead of holding onto subjective viewpoints. In other words, instead of expecting the church to fulfill its own ministry, the insights of urbanology can help the church to accompany God in His work, i.e., the Missio Dei.

Second, the three disciplines of urbanology can enable the Korean church to significantly advance its mission potential. Unlike in the past, the networks of today’s city dwellers already contain an intergroup character that enables them to work smoothly with unfamiliar people. Therefore, this artificial environment in which people have to meet unfamiliar people promises unprecedented mission potential.

Third, the urbanology can help the Korean church identify the socio-cultural themes of the city. The theme provides important direction for the church to work contextually. ⁴²

A final and clear statement is that urbanology cannot save souls, but can only partially answer the problem. Only the Word of God can answer ⁴³ the ultimate problems in the city, and there is a big gap between social science and the Bible. For example, ecology is based on the natural sciences of botany and many non-biblical premises such as evolution. Therefore, it is crucial to critique and screen urbanology using biblical criteria. Like all people, urban people need Jesus, who is the only way (John 14:6).