"Has the short spring of the Korean church passed away forever?"
A message of hope for the church from biblical scholar and preacher Pastor Park Young-ho!
-Recommended by Park Young-don, Park Gyeong-su, Song Yong-won, Song Tae-geun, and Choi Do-seong

“To all Christians who love the church, who suffer because of the church, and who still confess that the church is their hope.”

To follow Jesus is to enter an unfamiliar world.
Those who found hope in Jesus and left their familiar lives experienced bewilderment and frustration along the way.
But in that wilderness of frustration, those who discovered a calling from beyond their vision were able to offer the world a firm foundation of hope.

There is a dark cloud of anxiety in every area of ​​our society.
The voices of crisis are sharp all over the world.
The church as it is now will be shaken.
But the gap created by this shaking will be an opportunity to hear God's calling anew.
If the church returns to its original calling, it will be able to convey unwavering hope to a world in crisis.
As we pondered what kind of church we call hope, we drew out the four pillars that support that church.

Worship is salvation
Serving is healing
Habit is spirituality
Personality is missionary

If we firmly establish the foundation of these four pillars, we will be able to say, “Finally, the church is hope.”
Rather than lamenting that there is no hope, if we build a church that is a source of hope, that church will become the hope of the world.

This book is a newly rewritten version of the sermon delivered at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s Bible Study Group in the spring of 2023.
At the site of the retreat, we experienced the presence of God who mercilessly shook us, broke us, and then rebuilt us, leading us on a new path.
I hope this book will be a valuable tool for discovering the hope that exists among us and forging a future for the church together.
I hope that through this book, not only pastors and seminarians, but all Christians will hear anew God's calling toward the church.

The fact that preaching is easy and theology is easy means that God is easy.
Before God, every Christian must be conscious of his sinfulness.
Before God, every minister must recognize his own shortcomings.
In other words, when I am asked to lead a prayer meeting, I should have the mindset of, 'Lord, how can I handle it?'
Whether we are pastoring a small or rural church, or preaching to a kindergarten class, preaching should be a place of fear and trembling, where we recognize our own shortcomings and confess our unworthiness.
We must approach preaching humbly, knowing that it is the work of conveying God's will and planting God's word in the souls who listen.
God is pleased to use such preachers.
--- p.
22

I've been hearing this so many times lately, but where does the crisis lie for the Korean church? Is it a deterioration in its public image? Is it a decline in worship attendance? From my own experience as a pastor, I can tell you that's not the issue.
The crisis in the Korean church is not a problem of attendance at worship services.
Service and dedication are disappearing from every church.
There is no one to be a Sunday school teacher or a choir member.
I don't want to volunteer.
Although this world is in crisis, the real crisis comes from within.
No matter how big a building is, if a pillar collapses, the whole thing will collapse.
The pillar of the church is service.
Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, I cannot tell you how much the service of each church has weakened.
This is the part that worries me the most.
--- p.
74

Church doors were closed during the COVID-19 outbreak.
At that time, I thought a lot about the Babylonian captivity when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.
"How can we maintain our faith in this current situation?" I realized that even if the church building disappears, if believers have the habit of praying and worshipping, reading the Word, and seeking God, the church will survive.
For a long time, we have thought of the church as being too 'hardware'-centric.
Of course, the church building is also important.
But even if you have a beautiful church building, it is useless if you don't worship there.
If you don't have the habit of worshiping, it's useless.
Folks, if there are people who pray and worship even in the fields, even if the church building collapses, if there are people who maintain that habit, then there is hope for that church.
--- p.
101

When we consider how we should read the Bible in these times, we realize that the situation in the New Testament is very similar to our situation today.
The times in which Luther and Calvin lived were times when the church led the world.
However, the New Testament is set in a society where Christians were a 'minority', barely clinging to the margins and living like candles in the wind.
Could the New Testament, written in such circumstances, have been properly read by people in an era dominated by Christianity? I doubt they could have.
Of course, Luther and Calvin were great teachers of the faith, but they lived in a fundamentally different era than ours.
Rather, we live in a time much closer to the situation in the New Testament.
--- p.
153

Now, don't ask whether there is hope for the Korean church or not.
All I have to do is build a church that will be a source of hope for you.
Then the church becomes the hope of the world.
How many people need to gather to feel hope? How much success in ministry do we need to hear about to feel hope? That's not the case.
If we can give hope to one person who opens the doors of our church and enters, or to one family who feels they have no hope in the world, then that church will become the hope of the world.
If it is hope in God's eyes, it becomes hope.
Do you believe, my friends? Our lives depend on God.

--- pp.
190-191