The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Korea is repaying "an old debt" to the church in Japan, said Pastor Kei-Hoon Shin, president of the Adventist Church in Korea, speaking Nov. 9 at a dedication service for five families--the first Adventist missionaries
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Korea is repaying “an old debt” to the church in Japan, said Pastor Kei-Hoon Shin, president of the Adventist Church in Korea, speaking Nov. 9 at a dedication service for five families—the first Adventist missionaries to be sent from Korea to Japan.
“Almost 100 years ago the Japanese church delivered a most precious gift by sending the first Adventist missionaries to Korea,” said Shin during the ceremony at Sahmyook University, located just outside the capital, Seoul. “Today, we hear with pain that the church in Japan in struggling for survival and revival, and we want to begin to repay our 100-year-old debt.”
Pastor Kenyu Kinjo, president of the Adventist Church in Japan, thanked the church in Korea for sending the mission workers. “More than a hundred years have passed since the [Adventist] message first came to Japan,” he said. “However church growth continues to be slow and we are facing great challenges.”
There are some 15,000 Adventist Church members in Japan, out of a population of nearly 130 million. Only 1 percent of the population professes Christianity, and church leaders in Japan say the country’s highly secular culture has made evangelism, in any form, extremely difficult.
Kinjo said that in spite of current difficulties, he is looking to the future with optimism. “With God, nothing is impossible. We believe that God still loves Japan and its people, that that He has not given up. I hope that one day soon, the church in Japan will again also send out missionaries to share the gospel.”
Pastor Jan Paulsen, president of the Adventist world church, spoke at the dedication ceremony. He reminded the mission workers that as they leave behind their language and traditions to work in a new culture, the message they will be preaching is one that crosses all boundaries, and transcends all cultural differences.
These five families represent the first of 100 missionaries the church in Korea plans to send to Mongolia, Hong Kong, Japan, and other countries in Asia over the next 10 years.