Churches’ Missional Engagement during the Pandemic and afterwards in Korea

Abstract

The paper describes new ways of missional engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic and afterwards in Korea. While Covid-19 is inflicting serious damage on the entire Korean society, the damage to the Protestant churches is serious. The local government’s prohibition of ‘in-person gathering’ for worship resulted in the decrease of membership and endangered the unique paradigm of ‘in-gathering’-centred ecclesiology in Korean Protestant churches.The study tried to understand how local congregations coped with the changed situation in their missional engagement. Three congregations were used as case studies of how the local congregations responded to their missional tasks during the pandemic.With some preliminary assessments from these case studies, the paper suggests three ways of missional engagement of local congregation in Korea during the pandemic and even after the pandemic: 1) engaging personal fellowship using narratives, 2)performing a habitual ethical lifestyle, and 3) embracing the practice of hospitality.