The largest Methodist congregation in the world is the 120,000
member Kumnan Church in Seoul, Korea, whose pastor/bishop is an
colorful enthusiast for South Korea’s alliance with America.
“Without [the] U.S. presence, Korea would not have grown to be
one of the largest concentrations of Christians in the world,”
explained a senior U.S. Army chaplain to the United Methodist
News Service recently. “The Korean people are on fire for the
Lord. Bishop Kim credits his success to prayer and preaching the
unadulterated Word of God.”
Methodist Bishop Hong-Do Kim is the 70-year-old pastor who led a
75 member congregation to become one of the world’s largest
churches. He has helped organize three pro-American rallies in
Seoul, and has visited the Pentagon with other Korean pastors to
thank the U.S. for its military presence in South Korea. Bishop
Kim vividly contrasts with U.S. Methodist officials, who have
repeatedly condemned the U.S. presence in South Korea.
“Your country is always kept in our minds as a country that
helped us receive the Christian faith and defend our country half
a century ago, when Korea’s peace and democracy were at the brink
of great danger,” Bishop Kim wrote President Bush several years
ago. “We are always grateful to your country and your people and
are very pleased that we maintain the closest ally relationship
between our two countries.”
Bishop Kim chairs the Korean-American Protestant Pastors’
Association, which helped raise $1.3 million for stained-glass
windows in the Pentagon’s Memorial Chapel after 9/11, according
to a U.S. military news service. “Wherever I may go I like to
express my gratitude to America,” Kim told a reporter while at
the Pentagon in 2006. “We can feel [the] safety,” thanks to U.S.
troops.
The Kumnan Methodist Church and the Save North Korea Coalition,
of which Kim is also an officer, have produced a documentary on
the spiritual importance of the U.S. South Korean alliance called
Unite Us in Thy Righteousness. The groups made 30,000 copies of
the DVD available to Korean and U.S. military forces. The U.S.
has 25,000 troops stationed in South Korea. After a U.S. tank
accidentally ran over two school girls in South Korea in 2002,
candlelight vigils morphed into huge anti-American rallies in
Seoul demanding U.S. withdrawal. Kim organized his church and
other clergy to counteract the anti-American sentiment. But he
had already long been an ardent critic of communist North Korea.
At one prayer rally of recent years, Bishop Kim and other clergy
prayed for the “salvation” of North Korea. In his sermon, Kim
somberly warned that a peace treaty with North Korea and
withdrawal of U.S. troops would lead to a communist take-over,
ultimately destroying 50,000 South Korean churches and
slaughtering 13 million Christians, citing the examples of Maoist
China and Cambodia under Pol Pot. He also said that a communized
Korea would become a “beggar country” where “hard work gives no
reward.” The bishop concluded, “When communists mention peace,
they mean ‘communized unity.’”
Bishop Kim as a child fled with his family from North Korea. He
credits Billy Graham’s preaching for his conversion, and he
credits continuous prayer and refusal to compromise core
Christian convictions for the fantastic growth of his church,
where 2,000 are baptized every year. The church had been founded
by a “socialist” woman who headed a women’s college, Kim reports,
and after 14 years still had fewer than 100 members. Now there
are almost that many associate pastors who help lead the massive
Sunday services in the 16 level church in downtown Seoul, plus
daily worship at 5 a.m. At least two church members are praying
in the church’s basement on a 24 hour, 7 day basis, and the
church sends missionaries to China, south Asia, and Latin
America. Besides pastoring his own church and serving as a bishop
in the Korean Methodist Church, Kim leads seminars and revivals
around the world.
Unsurprisingly for such a flamboyant character, Kim has had his
apparent moral failures and controversies. In 2006 he was fined
and given a three-year suspended sentence for misappropriation of
church funds. The bishop insists the allegations were false, and
the case seems not to have impaired his ministry. After the 2004
tsunami in Asia that killed tens of thousands, Kim credited the
disaster to a divine judgment on “hedonism, lechery, [and]
drugs.” He opined that more observance of the Sabbath might avert
such calamities. Yet he added, “We mustn’t think that it was good
that they were struck by a disaster. We must take pity on them
and help them.”
A complete stranger to political correctness, Bishop Kim is
especially blunt when preaching about friendship with America or
opposition to communism. He joined a rally outside the parliament
to support South Korea’s dispatch of troops to serve with the
U.S. in Iraq. And he has insisted that “Korea will always be with
the U.S. in uprooting such elements [of terrorism] forever from
the earth.” Kim often recalls that the U.S. sent its first
missionaries to Korea 120 years ago. “Thanks to their missionary
devotions to our country,” he says, over 25 percent of South
Korea is now Christian, and South Korea now dispatches 12,000
missionaries abroad. “If they were not here, we are destined to
plunge ourselves into death without the Gospel.”
When a recent United Methodist delegation from the U.S. visited
Bishop Kim’s massive church, even its most liberal members were
evidently impressed. Presiding over a declining U.S.
denomination, and usually not willing to look at growing U.S.
churches, the American church prelates might heed the example of
a thriving Korean church, even if it is pro-American.
