EDITOR’S NOTE: This year’s Week of Prayer for International Missions in the Southern Baptist Convention is Nov. 30-Dec. 7. Each year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions supplements Cooperative Program giving to support Southern Baptists international missionaries’ initiatives in sharing the Gospel. This year’s offering goal is $210 million. To find information and resources about the offering, go here.
SOUTH KOREA (IMB) – As the sun goes down over South Korea, another life ends in suicide.
The sad statistics in the country called the Land of the Morning Calm still affect International Mission Board missionaries Hun and Eunjoo Sol.
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in South Korea among those in their teens, 20s and 30s. Combine these sobering statistics with fewer young people involved in church or wanting anything to do with faith and the Sols have reason to ask God for a big vision. Their vision includes a church plant on all 48 university campuses by the end of 2028.
When they consider how often Koreans are dying without Christ, they have no time to waste.
Hun and Eunjoo are thankful for a second-floor space in a building of a busy Seoul neighborhood. Their missionary team uses the rooms to host two church plants, English-conversation groups, and trauma-healing ministries. The space, strategic to their ministry, is provided by the generosity of Southern Baptists. The small location serves a big mission field.
Hun and Eunjoo lead a team of IMB missionaries serving in Seoul. Specifically, this team focuses their ministry on college students and young adults living in and among Seoul’s 48 universities.
Hun and Eunjoo are dedicated to bringing an authentic and loving gospel into people’s lives, often through non-traditional ways. They are seeing significant response to trauma-healing ministry. They call it THinK — Trauma Healing in Korea. Through this ministry, young people can receive a listening ear and non-medical counseling, while also pointing people to the hope of the gospel.
Hun said they see their ministry as two-fold.
“We want to help Korean churches train missionaries and start churches, and we want to reach students with the gospel and connect them to a Christian community.”
The Sols met on a praise team of their Korean church when they were in college. They moved to California to lead a church and start their family. After 18 years of Hun pastoring in San Jose, California, the Sols felt God call them to another international mission field. Forced to leave the first country where they served with the IMB, they considered a need for Korean Americans to help strengthen IMB’s relationship with Korean Baptists.
“I didn’t expect to be back in my home country, but I knew God could use me here,” Hun said.
The Sols have an important perspective on how Christianity has faded in Korea. Once thriving churches are now very small and aging. Young people show little interest in healthy churches in a country where the influence of cults is very strong.
Pray
• Pray God will fulfill the vision of 48 churches reaching every university campus in Seoul.
• Pray with the Sols for God to grow their missionary team. Ask God to heal Eunjoo from a medical condition that affects her vocal cords. Much of her ministry is speaking and leading, which has become difficult.
• Your prayers matter to the work in South Korea. Ask God’s Spirit to move across the country with hope and healing.
Learn more about this story on the IMB’s interactive web page here.