Korea, the Pacific, and Latin America

Today's Reading

The story of missions is often told as a Western story — Europeans and Americans going to the "ends of the earth." But some of the most remarkable chapters were written by people who received the gospel and made it their own, often transforming it in the process.

Korea is perhaps the most striking example. Christianity in Korea did not arrive through Western missionaries in the usual sense. In the late eighteenth century, Korean scholars in Beijing encountered Jesuit writings and brought them back to Korea. A Korean delegation was baptized in Beijing in 1784. When the first Protestant missionaries arrived in the 1880s, they found a community already hungry for the faith.

The Korean church grew explosively — particularly after the Japanese occupation (1910–1945), when Christianity became intertwined with Korean national identity and resistance. Today, South Korea sends more missionaries per capita than any country except the United States.

The Pacific Islands received the gospel largely through indigenous evangelists. Polynesian and Melanesian converts from one island group carried the faith to the next, often at great personal risk. The "Polynesian Mission" of the early nineteenth century was one of the most effective missionary movements in history — and it was led entirely by Pacific Islanders.

Latin America experienced a dramatic shift in the twentieth century, as Pentecostal and evangelical movements swept across a region that had been nominally Catholic for centuries. By 2020, Protestants comprised roughly 20 percent of the population — a transformation driven not by foreign missionaries but by Latin American preachers and grassroots movements.

Biblical Connection

John's vision in Revelation celebrates this diversity: "And they sang a new song, saying, 'Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation'" (Revelation 5:9). The gospel is not a Western product with a global market. It is a divine message addressed to every culture on earth.

Paul reminded the Corinthians of God's pattern: "For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:26–27).

Going Deeper

Sebastian Kim observes of Korean Christianity: "Korean Christianity is remarkable not because Westerners brought it, but because Koreans made it their own — often at enormous cost" (Theology in the Public Square, Chapter 5). The same could be said of Christianity in Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines, and dozens of other nations.

The pattern is consistent: the gospel thrives not where it is imposed from outside but where it is embraced from within. The missionary may plant the seed, but the soil determines the shape of the tree. And the trees that have grown across the Global South are magnificent, diverse, and often unrecognizable to the Westerners who first planted them. This is not a failure of missions. It is its greatest success.